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1210 points jbegley | 29 comments | | HN request time: 2.321s | source | bottom
1. herf ◴[] No.43658726[source]
This is a really hard problem. Just consider that there are ~150 Muslims for every Jew worldwide. In the USA it's the reverse - 2:1 in favor of Jews, concentrated in particular geographic areas.

Imagine what it means to get ranking right here - if you let just 1% of the international population into the USA ranking system, you have a majority in favor of Palestine, and of course these ideas will spread in communities without a lot of people who can represent Jewish history. It's clear to me why this happens, but fixing in an algorithmic but fair way is also extremely difficult.

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2. wesselbindt ◴[] No.43658829[source]
I think there's an erroneous implicit assumption in your reasoning, namely that to be Zionist is equivalent to be Jewish, and to be anti-zionist is to be Muslim (otherwise, why would you be talking about Jew:Muslim ratios). The fact of the matter is that not every Zionist* is Jewish (in fact, the vast majority of Zionists are christian), and vice versa not every Jewish person is a Zionist (Jewish voice for peace, the ultra orthodox, etc).

But even beyond that, I think engaging in censorship to hide an ethnic cleansing is an affront to humanity.

* Here, I'm taking Zionism to mean to be in support of the way Israel has formed and continued to form in the past 77 or so years. I am aware that there are many different interpretations of Zionism (to illustrate the breadth; Noam Chomsky considered himself a Zionist), but this particular interpretation is the one that is relevant to this conversation.

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3. t0lo ◴[] No.43660950{3}[source]
The pager attack indiscruminantly attacked healthcare workers and killed a 9 year old girl and another child. It was the definition of untargeted, immoral and unprofessional. How does eliminating over 3% of a population, of which the majority are women and children amount to anything but deliberate extermination? There is nothing defensive about the IOF, or the army which calls palestinian citizens "human animals" and says "no child is too young to be a terorist"
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4. sfx77 ◴[] No.43661091{4}[source]
There is nothing indiscriminate about attacking Hizbollah pagers. There is however something indiscriminate about attacking civilians like on Oct 7. Targeting civilians as a matter of fact. Even if someone called them "animals" it's hardly equivalent to women being raped and having their breasts cut off, and being stabbed while being raped. That would be "treating" people like animals. Let's not forget who launched this whole war. Hamas.
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5. t0lo ◴[] No.43661216{5}[source]
There is a strong irony in focusing specifically on the weaponisation of rape in war as an act of terror where the official rabbi of the idf states that rape against palestinians in justified in times of war, and that the idf only has a 1% conviction rate in cases of sexual violences offences against palestinian prisoners by israeli army forces. Even the name of the attack by Hamas "Al-Aqsa flood" is a reference to the decades of persecution and systemic dehumanisation and othering by Israeli forces. The world didn't begin on October 7.
6. sfx77 ◴[] No.43661238{5}[source]
are you under the impression that 70 years of attacks on Israel are humanitarian? I'm sorry but rape is not ironic. The attacks on Oct 7 were absolutely where this conflict started, as there was a ceasefire or if you want to go further back. How come jews were attacked before zionism? Also Israel is the only party here seeking peace. What's the conviction rate of Hamas rapes? Zero. Also, unlike Hamas, the IDF does not use rape as a tool of war.
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7. Philpax ◴[] No.43661269{5}[source]
You're right, attacking civilians is bad. So what does it say about a nation when it kills at least fifty thousand? (https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6...)
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8. t0lo ◴[] No.43661295{6}[source]
How can israel be the only party seeking peace when 90% of the population approved the wars expansion into lebanon, and 90% approved of the renewed offensive, and the use of stronger force in 2025 (israeli democratic/statistical surveys), when Israel broke the ceasefire this year and has taken more territory in the west bank, syria, and now gaza based on recent reports of the new goal of seizing the entirety of rafah. And don't lie about the sanctioning of rape as a tool of war in israel, it is also a society where 50% of don't believe marital rape is an issue, if you want to talk about immorality. https://www.timesofisrael.com/idf-taps-chief-rabbi-who-once-...

There is only one colonialist expansionist force in the region.

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9. sfx77 ◴[] No.43661349{7}[source]
You are conflating the current conflict with the history of peace accords. Currently Israel wants to get rid of Hamas and rightfully so, after the October 7 attacks. I was referring to the multitude of peace attempts preceding this conflict where Israel conceded above 90% of what the Palestinian leadership wanted more than once, yet the Palestinian leadership refused. "Colonialist expansionist"? How many people speak Hebrew in the middle east? What expansion? If you want to look at an actual colonialist expansionist force you will look to Iran, who funds Hamas, Hizbollah, and the Houthis, they are currently colonizing Lebanon, Syria, and are using the Palestinians as pawns. Israel is a tiny country the size of New Jersey with less than 10 million people. Iran is 90 million people.
10. sfx77 ◴[] No.43661361{6}[source]
Again, you are not differentiating between targeting and collateral damage. Hamas broke a ceasefire and targeted civilians. Israel went in to destroy Hamas with the unfortunate result of civilians dying as collateral damage. When you say 50k, there are several problems. For starters you are quoting the Gaza Health Ministry which is Hamas and is provably unreliable. On top of that about 40% of those are Hamas fighters, which you are failing to differentiate between. If you take the time to look at urban warfare statistics, you can see that the IDF has put more effort into preserving civilians than any other army. If you don't believe me just reference John Spencer who is the head (and founder I believe) or urban warfare studies at West Point. You're also ignoring the biggest point, which is that Hamas attacked Israel, which pulls Israel into a war they did not want. During the ceasefire, why was there not a push for peace by Hamas? Why did they think murdering innocents, raping teenagers at a music festival, and kidnapping families and babies is the right course of action? It's amazing to me you are defending this in even the most remote sense? Why did Gaza not build itself into a productive economy and instead elect Hamas, a totalitarian religious regime into power? It's a ridiculous argument to even begin to try and make excuses for this.
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11. t0lo ◴[] No.43661384{7}[source]
Israel authorised 20 civilians to be killed for every 1 hamas fighter at the beginning of the war https://www.businessinsider.com/israelis-military-idf-civili.... That's laughably inhumane. Not even russia comes close to this brazen disregard for human life. This is about recognising that all innocent human life is equal, and whichever civilian population is receiving the most suffering deserves the most aid and support consequently. 1 Palestinian life has the same value as 1 Israeli life.
12. sfx77 ◴[] No.43661406{7}[source]
Even if that's true the civilian to combatant death ratio is around 1:1, while in most urban combat scenarios it's 9:1. You are still overlooking what Hamas did on Oct 7. Don't forget that Hamas started this conflict. You can keep attacking Israel to try and keep me on the defense, that doesn't make you right or even convincing.
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13. t0lo ◴[] No.43661425{7}[source]
It makes sense when you value one innocent israeli life the exact same as one innocent palestinian life. And Gaza hasn't had elections since 2007, and the acting European Union policy chief Josep Borell has stated on record Israel and Netenyahu deliberately funded Hamas to hinder the credibility of the Palestinian Authority, and reduce positive sentiment toward the Palestinian people, which obviously worked.

https://www.politico.eu/article/israel-funded-hamas-claims-e...

14. sfx77 ◴[] No.43661431{7}[source]
Hamas was not created by Israel. Hamas was not voted in by Israel. Israel did not attack Israel. Stop blaming Israel for Hamas.
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15. t0lo ◴[] No.43661434{8}[source]
I just want you to give equal value to one innocent Palestinian life as you do one innocent Israeli life. Can you do that for me?
16. sfx77 ◴[] No.43661440{7}[source]
I give value to every life, why don't you hold murderers responsible for their actions? Hamas is not innocent. .. btw I can't respond to you comments directly for some .. mysterious.. reason.
17. t0lo ◴[] No.43661450{8}[source]
I never said Hamas was innocent, I wholly welcome the ICC prosecution of Hamas leaders as I do for Israeli leaders, they both need to answer for their crimes. But when all innocent human lives are equal those who are experiencing the most suffering should get the most support? Do you agree? The only atrocities we can stop are the ones that are happening now.
18. sfx77 ◴[] No.43661501{7}[source]
Not at all, the ICC is a kangaroo court. They issued a warrant for Netanyahu and a dead Hamas leader. That is insane. Also have you seen the U.N.s resolution against Israel?! They have more resolutions against Israel than against the rest of the world combined! I can't explain that except for either some foreign interest funding them to condemn Israel in this way, possibly anti-semitism, or maybe the entire body was co-opted by malicious actors. Just as a point of comparison about how one sided and strange the criticism of Israel is, recently a mass grave was found in Syria with 100,000 dead in it. That's more than twice this entire war, plus they were NOT combatants. That's Bashar Al-Assad. To top it off he is also killed an additional 600,000 of his own citizens. The war in Yemen, largely perpetrated by the Houthis (another Iranian militia, much like Hamas, and Hizbollah) killed another 400,000 people. These are insane numbers and these are not defensive wars. Yet somehow Israel is worse? Iran has murdered who knows how many of their civilians since 1979, North Korea, Russia, but a tiny democracy in the middle east is the devil? It's complete bs. The Israel conflict is somehow popular, it's just anti -westernism coupled with support for socialism / communism for some odd reason, which is popular at the moment, mixed in with anti-semitism.. anti-zionism is the same thing btw. Zionism as described in modern political terms started around 1880, that's 145 years ago! There is no Zionism anymore. Also, it's a weird term. As I've mentioned basically all jews are "zionists" because they will all gravitate to "zion" which is a mountain in Jerusalem. It's the same as Muslims gravitating towards Mecca. If I was "anti-maccanism" it's the same as being anti-muslim.
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19. t0lo ◴[] No.43661537{8}[source]
Yes, these all are wars, conflicts and massacres that have already happened and we can do nothing about. The current atrocitiy against the palestinians needs to be stopped. I'll ask you again do you believe the side with the most innocent suffering deserves the most support.

PS. I am not on the "side" of israel or palestine, if Israel were to have these numbers and systemic colonialist oppression I would jump to supporting them and pushing for humanitarian support. I just recognise the moral reality of the situation. Me, and most people like me, are on the side of humanitarianism, because all lives are equal, and so are all deaths.

20. sfx77 ◴[] No.43661561{7}[source]
Again there is no "colonialist oppression". Israel was formed in 1948 under fire. 5 to 7 Arab countries attacked the Jews when this country was formed. Why? Why didn't they attack Lebanon when they were formed? or Iraq? or Syria? They were formed by the same colonial powers that formed Israel? Why were Jews not allowed to buy land in their "Mecca"? You're speaking nonsense. Again, you are ignoring what is happening here. Israel did not attack anyone. They were attacked by Hamas, and this is not the first time. Israel left Gaza in 2005, Hamas got elected 2006 and ever since it has been nonstop attacks on Israel. Israel tried to avoid wars by "mowing the lawn" which meant small strategic strikes to try and quell the attacks. After oct 7 it just became clear that they cannot leave Hamas in power. If you truly wanted peace you would turn your attention to Hamas not Israel. You would not overlook the fact that Hamas has embedded itself in the civilian population for the past 16 years, that has indoctrinated the Palestinians to hate Israelis and Jews, trained soldiers, child soldiers, embedded their munitions in civilian structures, hospitals, mosques, schools, built tunnels under the entierty of Gaza. How are you overlooking all of this?
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21. t0lo ◴[] No.43661570{8}[source]
I'm not. All that I ask you to acknowledge is that 60,000+ dead civillians is worse than 1,200 dead civillians when you weight all human lives the same. Can you do that?
22. sfx77 ◴[] No.43661574{6}[source]
Because when you say that it makes it sounds like Israel randomly attacked Palestinians, which is not what happened. (can you re-enable comments on your comments?)
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23. t0lo ◴[] No.43661586{7}[source]
Three quarters of Israel's victims have been women and children. They had a nicknamed "Daddy's Home" protocol which was designed to blow up houses when the whole family was home to maximise the chance of killing the "alleged" terrorist (of which they only spent 10-20 seconds identifying). Are you blind to the atrocities of the past two years or do you really just not value an innocent palestinian life the same as an innocent israeli life.

(I think that you can only comment on a new comment after a couple of minutes)

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24. sfx77 ◴[] No.43661679{8}[source]
that's a lie. https://www.yahoo.com/news/hamas-quietly-drops-thousands-dea... https://www.nytimes.com/live/2024/05/14/world/israel-gaza-wa... It's not even the first lie as the UN revised their statistics silently as well.

It's pretty amazing how much bs you're willing to believe about Israel, yet not a single critique of the perpetrators of this attack or their supporters. Sounds to me like you're just set on condemning Israel no matter what the numbers say, no matter who attacks who, no matter if rape happens, children get kidnapped. It's weird.

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25. t0lo ◴[] No.43661913{9}[source]
You have refused to acknowledge the validity of my sources, or the others sources (lancet peer reviewed article), which highlight the significant imbalance in human suffering between the two sides, and continued to derail the topic away from the current atrocities. We have covered all of your arguments already. My only conclusion is that you don't believe palestinians have the same right to life as israelis, and that is a very sad conclusion, or you deliberately refuse to acknowledge the reality of it and get off on trying to win arguments from your position while already knowing it's morally flawed and are engaging in bad faith, which is disturbing. I only wish you could value all human life the same. You are missing out on something great. Palestinians are not animals any more than Israelis are.

Your classic claims of "un bias" "kangaroo court" and "world is biased against israel" have been proven wrong a hundredfold, and are stale and archaic by this point, and people will never stop supporting palestinians, because people who know they are moral and are set on being moral won't be put off, no matter how much you try and twist the knife. you wont silence morality, equality, or humanity, no matter how much you try to to help your narrative.

26. igravious ◴[] No.43662276{3}[source]
> This is nonsense, there is no genocide, ethnic cleansing, apartheid or anything of the sort.

False. False. False.

‣ re: genocide [genocide Gaza](https://www.google.com/search?q=genocide%20gaza) ‣ re: ethnic cleansing [ethnic cleansing](https://www.google.com/search?q=ethnic%20cleansing%20israel) ‣ re: apartheid [apartheid `Israel`](https://www.google.com/search?q=apartheid%20israel)

What does it say about your view of the world that what you claim to be nonsense are in demonstrable facts of reality?

I'm not going to spend half-an-hour posting and explaining each and every link from pages and pages and simple Google searches. To summarize:

(1) The architecture of oppression in that part of the world has been characterized as apartheid [“Israel imposing apartheid on Palestinians, says former Mossad chief”](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/sep/06/israel-imposin...) by many many many individuals (both Israeli and non-Israeli) and organization. You say there's no apartheid and yet a former Mossad chief says there is.

In order for there to be an apartheid there must be an architecture of oppression. `Israel` is intent on resolving the conflict arising directly from this oppression by removing the source of the problem, that is to say

by (2) ethnic cleansing which is why the Naqba, the forced expulsion of ~750,000 people with no right to return in contradistinction to the so-called "right of return" worldwide Jewry with no links to the land beyond ancient ancient religious history,

and (3) it tuns out now as we can all see with our very own eyes that `Israel` is now also willing to take the ultimate step, they are willing to commit genocide. They told us they were going to commit genocide. They then proceeded to carry out a genocide (which they paused and restarted) and they boast about committing a genocide. The ICJ rules that what `Israel` is in the process of carrying out what conceivably amounts to genocide and the ICC incredibly announced arrest warrants for the European-born Benjamin Netanyahu (sorry, I mean Benzion Mileikowsky) and Yoav Gallant. The horror we've witnessed on a daily basis and you deny reality to its face.

> If you read about the history of the conflict, every single time Israel has defended itself against Hamas (Israel has responded 100% defensively)

False.

`Israel`, with the backing of the USA, is an occupying power. By definition an occupying power is an oppressor. Every people have a right under international law to resist oppression, to resist occupation. If and when they do resist the occupying power is not "defending itself" the occupying power seeks to perpetuate the architecture of oppression.

> it's been called a genocide. [every single time Israel has defended itself it's been called a genocide.]

False.

I want to point out that even though what you're saying is false† … even if it were true (which it is not†) … it doesn't negate that what is presently taking place in Gaza is tantamount to genocide. That's a transparent fallacy. Say I went around calling every animal I saw a cow. I see a cat and call it a cow. I see a dog and call it a cow. You get the idea. I'd be misclassifying animals, right? (Misclassifying them as cows). Now let's say that I then see a cow and called it a cow. Just because I had up to this point been misclassifying animals (as cows) it doesn't then follow that cows are not cows. That's how unsophisticated your argument is.

> Even the blockage was called a genocide.

blockade‡ False.

Gaza is under an air/land/sea blockade which is illegal under international law. The blockade has not been in any remotely widespread fashion called a genocide.

> Also the pager attack, which was the most targeted attack in history, has been called a genocide. This nonsense has to stop.

False.

Perhaps they were to some degree but not a all widely and not by prominent voices.

> Also yes, anti-zionism is anti-semitism.

False.

categorically and demonstrably false … take [Betar Worldwide](https://betarus.org/) … on their homepage they say “WE ARE BETAR: LOUD PROUD ZIONIST ACTIVISTS WE STAND STRONG JEWS FIGHT BACK LEAD PROUD FIGHT ANTI SEMITISM” … loud proud Zionist activists” (got that?) … this is the same org who on who have posted three times on April the 5th (2025) that “They are all Nazis.” with an image with the text “THERE ARE NO INNOCENTS IN GAZA” [They are all Nazis.](https://x.com/Betar_USA/status/1908369503630606404) … not to mention the actual government of Israel itself* [“THERE ARE NO INNOCENT CIVILIANS THERE.”](https://x.com/DrJillStein/status/1802832054280950263) and I'm presuming the government of Israel is Zionist – given that Zionism in its present form is a genocidal movement criticism of Zionism cannot be antisemitism. We must be able to criticize genocide. Saying “anti-zionism is anti-semitism” is a false equivalence and tries to use cancel culture tactics to silence dissent. It's a disgusting underhanded maneuver.

> Zion is a mountain in jerusalem, mount zion. Jews gravitate towards Jerusalem and "Zion" in the same way Muslims gravitate towards Mecca. It's like if I wanted to destroy Mecca, but said I'm not anti-muslim. It's a ridiculous argument.

Huh? So what if that is where the Zion in Zionism/Zionist originates from. What a nonsense (to use the categorization that you employed) argument.

You made at least eight factually incorrect claims in the space of 123 words according to my word count. That's a factual error once every 15 words. To me nowadays that is what Zionism is; it is counterfactual to its core and has become pro-genocidal – in fact in hindsight the genocide was built into the ideology.

† as in, it is false that whenever `Israel` responds to Palestinian resistance that said response is consistently deemed to be genocide – I've been following the `Israel`/Palestine so-called conflict for all of my adult life and this present horror that is being unleashed in Gaza post Oct. 7th is the first time many and multiple serious voices have called what Israel is doing genocide.

‡ [Blockade of the Gaza Strip](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blockade_of_the_Gaza_Strip)

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27. t0lo ◴[] No.43663701{4}[source]
Once you get to a certain point of education on the issue you realise that it is actually laughably easy to dismantle pro-colonialist and genocide arguments on this issue, as much of the oppositing positon is based on lies and the hope that the other person finds the issue too complex to understand. All that's left is their obvious and often inhumane personal biases.
28. sfx77 ◴[] No.43664080{4}[source]
This is more nonsense. For starters you posted a bunch of Google searches for "genocide gaza" "israel apartheid". I'm not sure what that's supposed to prove, except confirmation bias. Also posting a lot of text doesn't make you right.

Second, apartheid are a set or racist laws within a country. There is no apartheid in Israel, every citizen has equal rights including the 2 MILLION muslim arabs living there. There are Arabic political parties, Arabic supreme court judges, there was actually an Arabic supreme court judge that sent an Ashkenazi president to prison! That's not apartheid, this would never have happened in South Africa.

Genocide when you try to kill an entire people. Here is the definition "the deliberate killing of a large number of people from a particular nation or ethnic group with the aim of destroying that nation or group." How is 50k death, with about half of them being Hamas genocide? It's laughable. Israel, as they've stated many times, are after Hamas. If anything you need to re-examine your perspective. Hamas is who committed genocide, they were just too weak to pull it off.

It's funny that you mention "The Nakba" and you don't even know what it means. For starters the "catastrophe" isn't the displacement. What people mean by it is that they failed to destory Israel. Second, it didn't happen in a vaccuum. It was part of the larger context of the Arab Israeli war, where 5 countries, including many people residing in the region attempted to genocide (your favorite word) the newly formed Israel. Also, literally every history book that isn't 100% one-sided will show you that it was a mix of reasons for the 700,000 people that were displaced. Many, if not most, were urged to leave by their leader who told them they would annihilate the Jews and they could go back, some left out of fear, since war was coming, obviously, and some were driven out, which makes sense. If you attack a people, they will drive you out. Another thing that isn't mentioned there which IS an ethnic cleansing, is the ethnic cleansing of Jews from Arabic countries during that same period. If you look at the population of Arabic countries from 1948 and now you will see a stark stark difference. You definitely won't see something like 2,000,000 Jews living in these places.

What is Israel and the U.S. occupying this is a nonsense argument as well. People who claim that, think that somehow the entirety of Israel is occupied. More nonsense.

The blockade is not illegal, if it was it still wouldn't matter as no country can be expected to absorb terrorist attacks. Funny how the focus is always on Israel and not Egypt, who has a "blockade" as well. Btw, these did not exist until the Intifadas. They make sense.

The pager attack, was the single most accurate military attack in military history.

Writing "false" on my arguments doesn't maks you right. You are just spreading propaganda, and I urge anyone reading this research this on their own. You are both extremely uneducated on this and need to read books not do Google searches.

29. sfx77 ◴[] No.43664258{4}[source]
This is John Spencer the chair or urban warfare studies at West Point Academy. The most prestigious military academy in the world. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=25xaPTsmGGE