It's absolutely not worth noting that because it simply isn't true.
If anything, the MoH numbers are lower than the actual death toll. Even the IDF said internally the numbers were right and their own statistics state that 83% of casualties in Gaza have been civilians.
This is a statement of fact but the context is missing quite a lot. The IDF is a uniformed military force and Hamas is an ununiformed organization intentionally hiding among soft targets. Hamas also has children among it's soldiers.
Hamas intentionally created the situation where the IDF will kill women and children to accomplish their objective.
The IDF incursion is also a response to an attack by Hamas that targeted non-combatantants for murder, rape and abduction.
I don't think any of that is a controversial but correct me if I'm wrong.
I always find it fascinating that pretty much every time pro-Israel posters like yourself bring up Sudan, they only use it as a cudgel to deflect from the IDF's actions in Gaza, not out of any legitimate or sincere concern for the people of Sudan.
> The October 7 massacre passed with barely any notice in much of the Western world.
Verifiably false.
> Yet the moment Israel responded to recover the hostages—if not earlier—there were already demonstrations everywhere against so-called Israeli “atrocities.”
Because we've seen time and time again the brutal methods the IDF uses to retaliate against the entire population of Gaza, employing collective punishment against innocents. And the protesters were sadly proven very right yet again.
> Even with regard to the war in Gaza, Hamas’ use of human shields[1] has resulted in significant civilian casualties [...] Instead, the criticism overwhelmingly targets Israel for civilian deaths caused by Hamas’ human-shield strategy.
Surely even you realize that bombing a building when you know there are human shields held within is a bad thing, right? If you know there are innocent people in the blast radius of your bomb and you still fire the bomb, you are the villain in this story. The IDF has killed more civilians than Hamas has and it's not even remotely close, a difference of tens of thousands at minimum.
Did I suggest that? I'm pointing out the blaring hypocrisy of a company sitting on $350M in cash that opted to double the size of their company without having a clear strategy to become profitable. Then after laying off half the company, the CEO publicly states it's because the laid off workers don't have the skills they need for "the new era". I would really like to see in these scenarios the CEO accept a tiny bit of responsibility for their failures to set strategy and over hire, instead of publicly shaming 70 people they chose to hire in the first place. That's a failure in leadership, not in employees.
It’s better for startup investors if it goes big or fails sooner. That’s the entire purpose of investing 100’s of millions into these companies.
If the CEO has no idea how to do that they should shut down the company or stand aside and find a better CEO, not try and milk as much money from they can by keeping the company shambling along as long as possible.
130 employees making <$3m in revenue seven years in means you have to do something else. The information we all have now is that the bottom line is not very much so whatever they were contributing to the bottom line can't be that much.
You have to go find a different business when this happens.
I’ve been on a year plus journey with this. My back pain was lower back and every few months I’d “throw out” some part around my shoulder blades and be flat in my back for a day or two. It got pretty bad.
I went to physical therapy for two months because that’s all insurance would pay for. My spine was weak and lacked stability. They had me doing stretches for back mobility and core strengthening. I continued that when insurance ran out and added in a lot of walking and other light weights and calisthenics.
It’s been a long journey and I’m only half way to where I was. The worst part is I did it to myself by becoming sedentary for to many years.
Best of luck for your continued recovery. Keep at it.
I can’t tell you to do this because I don’t know your medical history, but slowly working your way up to medium weight training can also be a game changer. Re: squats, Romanian deadlifts, pull ups, dead hangs.
Deadlifts are what caused my bad back, and also, surprisingly, what fixes it. The difference is that a 120kg deadlift caused it, and a 50kg deadlift fixes it.
Exercise is great, but don't lift too much weight. Prefer more reps instead.
Upper back and neck pain for me. Went to a Phys. Therapist and got a set of exercises. It was largely muscle weakness from bad posture - something many, many people will likely suffer in the coming years thanks to staring at screens on handhelds.
Mine was because I have the posture of a lump of VERY wet clay.
Also, losing weight helped a lot - less to carry around and hold in the right places.
Prolonged sitting deconditions the gluteal muscles, and other muscles often compensate, which can overload them and alter hip/pelvic control. When tissues are strained, the body initiates repair via inflammation—a normal phase of healing. Routine NSAID use can blunt aspects of musculoskeletal healing in some contexts, so it’s worth using judiciously and with clinical guidance. With reduced movement, fascia can lose glide and become stiffer, limiting mobility. Over years, chronic abnormal loading may contribute to osteophytes (joint margins) or enthesophytes (at tendon/ligament insertions). Targeted strengthening, mobility work, and load management from a PT typically help.
Computers have been more in the realm of the younger generations for a long time now, and young people can handle bad posture and other things more easily than the elderly can. I mean we're waiting on them to reach the age where their body can no longer handle it.
My dad had a business installing mainframes when I was young - back when mainframes were still installed in individual businesses, you know. At the time I was a kid, but I know we always had some of the first tech on the block, so I doubt many had tech before me.
I'm reaching the age where I can no longer handle a bad posture - I assume this is going to start getting bigger in the next 5-10 years. I could be wrong, I dunno, but I don't think so.
I recommend McGill's Back Mechanic book, which is an end-user focused distillation of his academic work.
It suggests simple tests to discover exactly where your pain is coming from and then appropriate exercises to mechanically strengthen the right area and a few workarounds to avoid stressing that area in regular life e.g. alternate ways to pick up light items from the floor.
McGillcs big three are three simple exercises that are generally good for those with no patience for ordering a book and intros to them can be found all over YouTube.
There's no need to do them heavy for health purposes. The problem with most back pain is people do nothing. Capping them at around 100kg is probably more than enough and will also prevent other injuries.
The nice thing is that it's _very_ easy to get to a lifting weight that's considered super heavy in normie reckoning, but a warmup weight for folks that lift regularly. In other words, you can get to squatting 50kg/100lb (one 15kg plate on a side) in a couple of months where you won't even think twice about that much weight, but it's still a huge weight to be squatting. Stopping there, and not chasing the gains is a perfectly good way to work your body out on a regular basis.
The absolutely liberating feeling that comes with the noob gains is incredible. Knowing you can lift those weights, safely, without injury, was an incredible experience for me. I topped off at a hair below 100kg squats before life got in the way.
Yes, I'd say anything you can get with noob gains is fair game. By noob gains I mean everything you can get from just increasing the weight a bit every time you hit the gym.
Once you need more complicated programming to make progress, your noob phase is probably over.
For what it's worth, I got up to 170kg backsquats at about 72kg body weight back in the day. The most complicated programming I did was a weekly cycle. ('Texas method'.)
But that was only down to thighs parallel to the ground. Years later I worked more on my flexibility to be able to squat all the way down (but with less weight).
When I turned 50 I started capping my max weights because I was more worried about long-term joint and ligament health than ultimate strength. I no longer lift above two plates (225lbs) for anything, even though that is well below my deadlift, squat, etc.
It's been a couple years, now, and honestly I wish I'd made the change sooner. I haven't lost any functional strength, and my recovery is a lot smoother. Haven't had any injury since, either.
I’m almost 30 and made this change about a year ago.
I now rotate between high rep (sets of 20 rep max) and medium weight weeks (sets of 8-12 reps). My joints haven’t ached in a while and I’ve become much less prone to random muscle tweaks. Mike Isreatel has an excellent intro to high rep training [0]. It produces pumps and mind-muscle connection like nothing else!
I actually went too far into the high rep/volume training direction for several months, but realized I needed to reincorporate medium weight lifts when I started losing a bit of grip strength. I am now super content with my current rotation cycle!
I'm over 50, and I am back chasing the 1,2,3,4 plate standards at a lower bodyweight than when I first achieved it.
The only change I've made is two train only twice a week, rather than three or four times. Thinking of doing the split in Radically Simple Muscle, though, where it is 2 heavy compound lift days per week and a 3rd bodybuilding/machine day.
Similar, though I would also add shrugs or reverse flies to get those traps. If I let my traps get weak I get a lot of pain in that region, especially after long periods of sitting
For me it was the combination of deadlifts and couch stretch, because I found my hip flexors were fighting to tilt my hips forward. That combination essentially 'cured' any back pain I had. It's not a real cure because if I'm inactive it comes back but so long as I'm moderately active I have no pain
Goblet? Or is this something new? Deep goblets are great for opening the ankles and hips/SI area in ways that have helped my back. Some combination of improving mobility in other reasons prevents my back from overcompensating I guess
2 kids under 4 (and another due next month) fixed my back pain. Turns out that constantly picking up babies and toddlers is the exact amount of exercise my back needed.
Be careful, I'm currently in treatment for a shoulder that has given me significant trouble and I suspect it was due to picking up my (bigger and heavier than average) son. Not that I have hard evidence, but it was pretty much the only frequent physical activity that could strain my shoulders when the problems started, as I didn't exercise apart from long walks.
Not GP but my husband suffered from absolutely debilitating back pain that limited his activities drastically. He went to PT. The fix was consistent exercise and stretching. The cause was muscle weakness and imbalance. He has to maintain it, otherwise the pain starts again.
Aside from resolving the cause, I had to use a foam wedge knee bolster to stabilize me while I slept for an unrelated injury, and I was amazed how much that almost immediately also reduced my lumbar pain.
Swimming 100%. I was injured far enough I had problems even with walking and load bearing activities, but I was able to swim which enabled my recovery.
Weak glutes are a common symptom from sitting too much and then other muscles around the hips compensate which causes multiple issues with hip tilt and gait.
For upper, I'd highly recommend adding rear delt flys and face pulls at twice the frequency of any chest or shoulder workouts. Most people have overdeveloped front delts and underdeveloped rear delts and that can cause severe imbalances.
Also for upper (especially if you get neck pain or upper back pain between shoulder blades): Traps (shrugs, reverse fly, and/or face pulls are my preference)
With my husband (and probably most people who already already suffering with pain) the pain was too much to walk, and walking was very much counterproductive, so this is bad advise, especially the l "focus on resisting the urge to tell me why it can’t be done" part. It's not the type of pain that you can just power through. He said the pain caused his legs to physically stop working. He had to do PT exercises first and build up to walking.
A fork that has not been touched in at least 7 months does not inspire confidence, especially when the mobile apps depend on the server staying up to date.
AMD has also often said that they can't compete with Nvidia at the high end, and as the other commenter said: market segments exist. Not everyone needs a 5090. If anything, people are starved for options in the budget/mid-range market, which is where Intel could pick up a solid chunk of market share.
Regardless of what they say, they CAN compete in training and inference, there is literally no alternative to W7900 at the moment. That's 4080 performance with 48Gb VRAM for half of what similar CUDA devices would costs.
FP16+ doesn't really matter for local LLM inference, no one can run reasonably big models at FP16.
Usually the models are quantized to 8/4 bits, where the 5090 again demolishes the w7900 by having a multiple of max TOPS.
with 48 GB of vram you could run a 20b model at fp16. It won't be a better GPU for everything, but it definitely beats a 5090 for some use case. It's also a generation old, and the newer rx9070 seems like it should be pretty competitive with a 5090 from a flops perspective, so a workstation model with 32 gb of vram and a less cut back core would be interesting.
Playing this corny HN-brained faux-debate game when Israel is blocking hundreds of aid trucks from entering Gaza and letting children starve to death is in really bad taste.
It's not "faux". I mean it genuinely. It's one thing to claim that Israel should ensure food security (that's my point of view). It's quite another to claim "collective punishment", and that doesn't stand up to scrutiny.
By the way, there are hundreds of trucks on the Gaza side of the border, the opposite of blocked, let through by Israel, but the UN refuses to collect them and distribute them: https://x.com/Ostrov_A/article/1950577195153580306
It's impressive how thoroughly Hamas has won the information war when they have made it so heart-wrenchingly emotive that presenting any alternative view point is "bad taste" (at best, it can also be much worse).
The appropriate question is does this meet the intent requirements for collective punishment?
All these international crimes do have various requirements. Collective punishment in particular has more intent requirements than many other war crimes. Death and destruction in and of itself is not sufficient.
> The appropriate question is does this meet the intent requirements for collective punishment?
Let's put Netanyahu in front of the ICC and let the lawyers figure it out.
Edit: That isn't tongue in cheek, I think it is one of the few ways to difuse the cauldron of violence that keeps brewing hotter and hotter. A broad international coalition to hold the leadership on both sides responsible for their war crimes.
The ICC lacks juridsiction over the war crime of collective punishment, so that would be an easy win for Netanyahu. To charge him with collective punishment either the united nations security council would have to create an ad-hoc tribunal, a domestic israeli court could charge him, or some other national court under the principle of universal juridsiction could bring charges. The ICC cannot.
More generally though I agree. I'm a big supporter of the ICC and generally believe it to be a fair court. I'd like to see those accused stand trial, present their defense, and let justice be done no matter which way it leads.
I'm still not sure what you mean. Are you saying that when children are unintentionally killed in war that is "punishment"? Were the children killed by NATO troops in Afghanistan "punished"? For that matter, do you think Oct 7 was Palestine "punishing" Israel?
> A blatant lie.
Interesting. How are you so sure that the article I linked is a blatant lie and the one you linked isn't?
Oops, I killed 17,000 kids, totally an accident, my bad, so I'm just gonna keep doing the same thing, but I said it was an accident so that's totally cool right?
You realize that's more than a order of magnitude more than the total number of people killed on October 7th? If October 7th was justification for this war, what Isreal has done in response justifies so much more. (To be clear, I don't believe in collective punishment so neither is justified.)
> How are you so sure that the article I linked is a blatant lie and the one you linked isn't?
I start by looking at the sources reputations, then look at the amount of context that they include that contradicts their implicit or explicit view point. From there the process gets more complicated if necessary.
In this case you have blog source that clearly elides relevant context against a news article that presents the position of both sides coming from one of the more trustworthy news organizations. I don't necessarily trust the AP to be unbiased or not spread propaganda but in comparison to that blog, it is pretty easy to guess which is more reliable.
There seem to be a few strands getting entangled here. If you look earlier in the thread you'll see I'm asking for justification of the claim of "collective punishment". So far I haven't seen any, and indeed I haven't seen any direct responses to that request at all.
An observer following the thread (and maybe this applies to you too) might think "But what I am seeing as so egregious, why does it matter if it's technically 'collective punishment' or not? That's just nitpicking, splitting hairs, and a really awful thing to engage in when such suffering is occurring". Well then, if someone has such a strong argument that it easy for them to make it without leaving hairs that can be split, without leaving anything that could technically be nitpicked then let them make that argument. But so far I haven't found that argument. The arguments that I have found so far have loose ends, and when I pull on the loose ends I find invariably that the whole argument unravels.
So, the number of fatalities is not really relevant to this particular thread of discussion, but if you want to have a discussion on that topic, maybe we can check up front whether we have a reasonable basis for such a discussion: Do you believe that absolute numbers of civilian casualties determine morality in war? I don't.
I don't see any other reason to kill 17,000 kids like that except as collective punishment or genocide. You seem pretty clear that it was neither so I'll leave it up to you to provide another reasonable explanation for why Isreal would want to intentionally kill that many kids.
1. "Not seeing any other reason" doesn't seem to be a particularly strong argument. But let's take it at face value. Estimates of German civilian deaths during WW2 range from 1.5m to 3m people:
Was that because the allies were "collectively punishing" or "committing genocide" on Germans? I don't think so, and I don't see any reason that civilian deaths in Gaza imply that either.
2. Do you have a source for your death statistics that doesn't ultimately trace back to the "health ministry" of an internationally proscribed terrorist organisation?
3. Not all children who have died in Gaza since 2023 will have been "killed by Israel". Many will have been killed by Hamas for a variety of reasons, including misfired rockets, booby trapped houses, mosques and schools, and getting caught in the crossfire. Since Hamas knows that every child death will be attributed to Israel it's quite happy for that statistic to rise.
4. As far as I can tell, Israel does not kill children (or any civilians) intentionally. Any civilian killed by Israel in Gaza was unintentional, and civilian deaths occur in any war. This happens all the more in Gaza since Hamas deliberately puts civilians in harms way, and booby traps civil infrastructure or uses it to hide in.
5. Hamas is the government of Gaza, and as such it seems like it is their responsibility, not Israel's, to take action to ensure that harm is prevented to their civilians, up to and including freeing the hostages they hold and unconditionally surrendering. That's what the governments of Germany and Japan ultimately did.
> "Not seeing any other reason" doesn't seem to be a particularly strong argument. But let's take it at face value. Estimates of German civilian deaths during WW2 range from 1.5m to 3m people:
To be fair, I think the allies commited a bunch of war crimes they were never charged with during WWII, and firebombing is high up that list as is dropping nuclear bombs on cities.
That said, WWII was an actual war and Germany (and the axis in general) lost fewer people than their enemies.
This is not a war, this an occupation and slaughter. Isreal has killed 50 times as many people as Hamas.
> Do you have a source for your death statistics that doesn't ultimately trace back to the "health ministry" of an internationally proscribed terrorist organisation?
These numbers are pretty much universally acknowledged as more likely to be too low than too high (including by Isreal.)
Here's a study not done by a Palestinian organization that says that the official Palestinian estimate is 40% too low.
> 3. Not all children who have died in Gaza since 2023 will have been "killed by Israel". Many will have been killed by Hamas for a variety of reasons, including misfired rockets, booby trapped houses, mosques and schools, and getting caught in the crossfire. Since Hamas knows that every child death will be attributed to Israel it's quite happy for that statistic to rise.
I don't even know what to say to the twisted amount of self deception involved in that sentence. "It's not us, they're just killing themselves guys, not our fault."
> As far as I can tell, Israel does not kill children (or any civilians) intentionally. Any civilian killed by Israel in Gaza was unintentional, and civilian deaths occur in any war. This happens all the more in Gaza since Hamas deliberately puts civilians in harms way, and booby traps civil infrastructure or uses it to hide in.
Isreal happily kills civilians to avoid risks to their soldiers, that's why this "war" has such a disproportionate death toll.
> Hamas is the government of Gaza, and as such it seems like it is their responsibility, not Israel's, to take action to ensure that harm is prevented to their civilians, up to and including freeing the hostages they hold and unconditionally surrendering. That's what the governments of Germany and Japan ultimately did.
Hamas won one election 20 years ago and neither Isreal nor the USA recognize Hamas as the government a sovereign country. It seems pretty bad faith to claim Hamas is the government only when it is convienent to blame them. (To be clear Hamas deserves plenty of blame.)
However, I place the responsibility and the majority of the blame on the group with the vast majority of the power: Isreal.
At a certain point, the comparative death toll and comparative wealth/power imbalance make it clear: Isreal is engaging in genocide, not war.
> This is not a war, this an occupation and slaughter. Isreal has killed 50 times as many people as Hamas.
Right, so we come back to my original question, which I asked in order to determine whether we have a basis for a discussion: "Do you believe that absolute numbers of civilian casualties determine morality in war? I don't."
In any case, whilst we're looking at multipliers, what do you think of the Battle of Mosul?
By a variety of accounts the US, UK, France and Turkey participated in a battle that killed maybe 10 or 20 times as many of the opposing side than were killed on their side. According to some estimates they killed 40,000 civilians, more than 20x as many as the number of military that were killed on their side. Was that an "occupation and a slaughter"?
So I'm not sure we really have a basis for discussion. We simply differ on fundamental moral principles. However, I will respond to your points.
> I don't even know what to say to the twisted amount of self deception involved in that sentence. "It's not us, they're just killing themselves guys, not our fault."
Themselves? I'm saying Hamas is killing civilians, be it directly, by deliberately putting them in harms way or by stealing aid, not that civilians are killing themselves. Unless you're saying that the civilians are Hamas, which I don't think you are. And I certainly believe that Israel has responsibility to minimize civilian casualties and the responsibility to ensure aid flows freely, but until the unconditional surrender of Hamas and the release of all hostages I believe that Hamas holds all the moral responsibility for what happens to its people.
> Isreal happily kills civilians to avoid risks to their soldiers, that's why this "war" has such a disproportionate death toll.
This seems very unclear to me. If they had wanted to avoid risk to their soldiers they wouldn't have sent any in, they would have conducted only bombing operations. In fact, one reason to send soldiers in would be for the exact opposite reason: so they could minimize civilian harm.
Why do you think soldiers are on the ground at all, if they want to avoid risks to their soldiers?
> Hamas won one election 20 years ago and neither Isreal nor the USA recognize Hamas as the government a sovereign country. It seems pretty bad faith to claim Hamas is the government only when it is convienent to blame them. (To be clear Hamas deserves plenty of blame.)
It doesn't matter who recognises them. Before Oct 7th they had the monopoly on violence within Gaza. They are the de facto state. Civilian wellbeing is ultimately their responsibility, like German civilian wellbeing was the German government's responsibility in WW2.
Furthermore, normally in times of war, third countries allow civilians to flee to safety. Why won't Egypt? Why won't other countries take in refugees via Egypt? Why do they insist that civilians must stay in harm's way?
Above, in response to my claim that Hamas is responsible for Palestinian civilian deaths, you wrote sarcastically "It's not us, they're just killing themselves guys, not our fault." so it seems you do believe, to some degree, that they are Hamas's people.
> However, I place the responsibility and the majority of the blame on the group with the vast majority of the power: Isreal.
You're in good company. It is very common to believe that "might makes wrong".
> At a certain point, the comparative death toll and comparative wealth/power imbalance make it clear: Isreal is engaging in genocide, not war.
Ah OK, so you're not basing claims of genocide on the legal standard, just a difference in death toll and wealth/power imbalance. You're welcome to do that, of course. You can use words however you want, but that doesn't match the legal standard within international law.
The death toll is appalling. Hamas should be receive the utmost pressure to unconditionally surrender and release the hostages. Egypt should receive the utmost pressure to allow civilians to flee so that Israel can finish off Hamas and destroy the terror infrastructure they have built in Gaza. And by the way, I don't know what's happening there because I'm not there. All I know is what I see in front of me: arguments that don't seem to hold water, and an alternative perspective which is barely seeing the light of day.
> "Do you believe that absolute numbers of civilian casualties determine morality in war? I don't."
I believe it matters how many people you kill. Killing more people is bad.
I think the overall morality is complicated and based on more than that, but yes both the absolute numer if deaths and the ratio of deaths between sides and between combantants / civilians also matters.
> In any case, whilst we're looking at multipliers, what do you think of the Battle of Mosul?
I think any battle where you kill that many more civilians than combatants is deeply problematic. There were war crimes on both sides of that conflict as well.
Technically speaking, the ISIS were the occupying force and this was a "liberation" but I don't think that matters so much practically or morally. The people assuming control had the moral responsibility to keep people safe.
> Furthermore, normally in times of war, third countries allow civilians to flee to safety. Why won't Egypt? Why won't other countries take in refugees via Egypt? Why do they insist that civilians must stay in harm's way?
Isreal has a well established history of refusing to allow refugees to return to their homes.
I agree that Egypth should be allowing them in and does share some moral responsibility.
> It doesn't matter who recognises them. Before Oct 7th they had the monopoly on violence within Gaza. They are the de facto state. Civilian wellbeing is ultimately their responsibility, like German civilian wellbeing was the German government's responsibility in WW2.
When an occupying power destroys all the local infrastructure, deliberately destroys the police force and assume defacto control of the country, they assume the responsibility as well.
> but until the unconditional surrender of Hamas and the release of all hostages I believe that Hamas holds all the moral responsibility for what happens to its people.
The hostages were almost released. It is people like you that insist on unconditional surrender that are the reason they aren't home. That and Netanyahu's malicious desire to hang on to power.
I seriously dont unsterstand the stance that Hamas has ALL moral responsibility for civilian deaths. That doesn't match any moral framework I have ever read or heard about and seems be be just a jingoistic talking point.
> You're in good company. It is very common to believe that "might makes wrong".
I believe power comes with responsibility, yes.
> The death toll is appalling. Hamas should be receive the utmost pressure to unconditionally surrender and release the hostages. Egypt should receive the utmost pressure to allow civilians to flee so that Israel can finish off Hamas and destroy the terror infrastructure they have built in Gaza.
I don't have any support for Hamas or their choices or their war crimes, but then again my government isn't supplying Hamas with weapons to commot those war crimes with.
What I can't understand any moral individual believing what Isreal is doing is ok.
I've answered most of your questions, so I have a question for you: What percentage of the Gaza population needs to be killed before you will call it genocide or even just stop supprting Israel? 2% isn't enough so is it 5%, 20%, 50% or even higher? Will you continue to support Israel until they've killed 100% of the Gazans and achieved peace?
> > Furthermore, normally in times of war, third countries allow civilians to flee to safety. Why won't Egypt? Why won't other countries take in refugees via Egypt? Why do they insist that civilians must stay in harm's way?
> Isreal has a well established history of refusing to allow refugees to return to their homes.
Hmm, I don't want to put words into your mouth here, but ... surely you can't be saying "I believe those civilians are being slaughtered/collectively punished/genocided and it's better to keep them where they are rather than let them flee to save their lives because they might not be able to come back"?
> I agree that Egypth should be allowing them in and does share some moral responsibility.
Just out of interest, would you say that the proportion of moral responsibility that Egypt has is equal to the proportion of news coverage and Hacker News discussion Egypt gets on this issue? And if not, do you have an idea why not?
> When an occupying power destroys all the local infrastructure, deliberately destroys the police force and assume defacto control of the country, they assume the responsibility as well.
Yes, "when". Israel is not yet in control of the Gaza Strip. Hamas still retains fighting capability and the war is ongoing.
> The hostages were almost released. It is people like you that insist on unconditional surrender that are the reason they aren't home. That and Netanyahu's malicious desire to hang on to power.
Almost? What stopped it? I doubt I had anything to do with it. I don't think Hamas or Israel are listening to me. Furthermore I doubt Netanyahu has any incentive to keep the hostages in Hamas hands. If there's one thing that could make him even more hated, even more punished in the next election, it's hostages remaining in the Gaza Strip.
> I seriously dont unsterstand the stance that Hamas has ALL moral responsibility for civilian deaths. That doesn't match any moral framework I have ever read or heard about and seems be be just a jingoistic talking point.
Well, fair enough. You're welcome to your moral framework. It's one reason I don't think there's much basis for discussion here. We simply disagree on fundamental things. My view is that if Israel is conducting itself according to international norms on war, then any harm that comes to civilians is the moral responsibility of Hamas.
> > You're in good company. It is very common to believe that "might makes wrong".
> I believe power comes with responsibility, yes.
Ah, but that's something different. I agree that power comes with responsibility. There is a common belief that in any conflict the party in the wrong is the more powerful one. I don't agree with that.
> What I can't understand any moral individual believing what Isreal is doing is ok.
I can't understand how any moral individual can believe what Israel is doing is not OK! But I guess there are a few reasons for that, including having different beliefs about what Israel is actually doing. If I believed what I saw on the BBC, Sky News, CNN, NYT, WaPo etc. then I'd probably feel the same as you do.
(Individual actions of Israel or Israeli combat units may not be justifiable. In fact, I don't see how that's realistically avoidable in war. Israel should punish its soldiers that commit war crimes. I think the strategy of limiting aid is flawed: they should flood the Strip with aid so there is no risk of food insecurity.)
> my government isn't supplying Hamas with weapons to commot those war crimes with
Do you live in the west or the middle east? If so then your government probably has funded Hamas, actually. In fact if your country is a member of the UN then it probably has given at least some small amount of funding to Hamas. Billions and billions in (so called) aid have been poured into the Gaza Strip. Who is in charge of how it is spent? Hamas. Is that how they funded their military tunnels and weapons? Yes.
> I've answered most of your questions, so I have a question for you: What percentage of the Gaza population needs to be killed before you will call it genocide or even just stop supprting Israel? 2% isn't enough so is it 5%, 20%, 50% or even higher? Will you continue to support Israel until they've killed 100% of the Gazans and achieved peace?
As I said, I do not believe absolute numbers of casualties determine justifiability in war. I believe war goals and means determine justifiability. I support Israel's just war goal of eliminating Hamas's military capability and securing the release of the hostages. I think that this war goal is the most just I am aware of in my lifetime, and Oct 7th was one of the most abhorrent events of my lifetime. Hamas's military capability must be utterly destroyed. Israel must not deliberately target civilians or civilian infrastructure. According to internationally accepted norms of law if the enemy military hides amongst civilians or uses civilian infrastructure for military purposes (including hiding military tunnel entrances in or booby trapping schools, mosques and hospitals) then they no longer have special protection.
I hope that everyone would agree with me in this point of view, but maybe not, particularly not people who believe that absolute numbers of casualties are a relevant consideration.
Someone might say: "but they're already deliberately targeting civilians and civilian infrastructure!". OK, maybe they are, in which case I no longer support Israel. But maybe they're not, in which case I do support them. I don't think any of us here on this thread truly know, because we're not there. We haven't seen it. The best we can do is make a determination of what to believe based on different sources of information that we trust, and the arguments that we hear. Israel has many more detractors than supporters globally (I would guess the ratio is something like 100:1) so I simply don't expect most of the reporting to be fair to Israel. Furthermore, I find that many anti-Israel claims simply don't hold water, such as the one that started my participation in this thread. After such scandals as the so called "Jenin massacre" (which turned out to be just a normal military confrontation) I'm not quick to jump to conclusions.
> Hmm, I don't want to put words into your mouth here
Kinda seems like you do since I didn't say anything like that.
> surely you can't be saying "I believe those civilians are being slaughtered/collectively punished/genocided and it's better to keep them where they are rather than let them flee to save their lives because they might not be able to come back"?
I said that Egypt bears some responsibility for the deaths because of they made that choice. I provided historical context because I think Isreal also bears some responsibility for that Egypt's choice because of Isreal's historically poor behavior towards returning refugees with the wrong ethnicity.
> Just out of interest, would you say that the proportion of moral responsibility that Egypt has is equal to the proportion of news coverage and Hacker News discussion Egypt gets on this issue? And if not, do you have an idea why not?
That's a weird question. Moral responsibility isn't something you assign as a fraction and certainly isn't based on how much coverage something gets. That's a bizare way to think about morality, so I'm not even sure why you'd want to ask that in a good faith discussion.
> Furthermore I doubt Netanyahu has any incentive to keep the hostages in Hamas hands
Netanyahu has both a clear lust for power and a slate of corruption charges hanging over his head. This conflict has been quite effective at helping with both, why would he want it to end?
> My view is that if Israel is conducting itself according to international norms on war
They aren't, that's why the ICC has issued arrest warrants. Given your stated stance, you should support Netanyahu turning himself in.
> Ah, but that's something different. I agree that power comes with responsibility. There is a common belief that in any conflict the party in the wrong is the more powerful one.
If a significantly more powerful party is in a conflict with a less power part and is killing way more of them, then yes, the does put the more powerful party in the wrong, reglardless of whatever talking point they have. The more powerful party has the greater responsibility for achieving peace and protecting lives and the failure rests primarily on them.
> As I said, I do not believe absolute numbers of casualties determine justifiability in war. I believe war goals and means determine justifiability.
I didn't ask about absolute number, but a percentage of the population. You seem to be saying that there is no percentage at which you will adjust your point of view. If Isreal kills 90% of the population, that really wouldn't count as ethnic cleansing to you? What about 100%? There's really no point at which you would stop just taking Israel at its word?
> Israel has many more detractors than supporters globally (I would guess the ratio is something like 100:1) so I simply don't expect most of the reporting to be fair to Israel.
If the entire world is telling you to stop murdering children, maybe you should consider listening?
> I simply don't expect most of the reporting to be fair to Israel. Furthermore, I find that many anti-Israel claims simply don't hold water.
Like the Pro-Isreal claim that you made and I debunked? How about casting doubt on the widely accepted death toll numbers?
I've seen the kind of information sources you cite. It's pretty clear you only look for sources that confirm your world view.
> > Hmm, I don't want to put words into your mouth here
> Kinda seems like you do since I didn't say anything like that.
> I said that Egypt bears some responsibility for the deaths because of they made that choice. I provided historical context because I think Isreal also bears some responsibility for that Egypt's choice because of Isreal's historically poor behavior towards returning refugees with the wrong ethnicity.
They're indeed not your words, but I can't understand how what you said can be in contradiction with them. I can't help but conclude that you're describing a world where countries believe a population is suffering genocide, could take them in to save them, yet don't do so because they might not be let back. Please do tell me where I've gone wrong here.
> > Just out of interest, would you say that the proportion of moral responsibility that Egypt has is equal to the proportion of news coverage and Hacker News discussion Egypt gets on this issue? And if not, do you have an idea why not?
> That's a weird question. Moral responsibility isn't something you assign as a fraction and certainly isn't based on how much coverage something gets. That's a bizare way to think about morality, so I'm not even sure why you'd want to ask that in a good faith discussion.
I don't think it's bizarre (and I certainly didn't say moral responsibility is based on news coverage!). News coverage is certainly something you can assign as a fraction. If, when presenting news on a particular topic, only one country gets wall to wall news coverage and forum discussion of its behaviour and there is barely mention of others despite them sharing some degree of responsibility, that seems pretty odd to me, and I'd want to try to understand why!
> > Furthermore I doubt Netanyahu has any incentive to keep the hostages in Hamas hands
> Netanyahu has both a clear lust for power and a slate of corruption charges hanging over his head. This conflict has been quite effective at helping with both, why would he want it to end?
I didn't say he wanted it to end. Elections will come around regardless of whether it has ended. If there are still hostages in Gaza when the election comes he will be judged very harshly by the electorate. Losing the next election puts him at increased risk from corruption charges so if he wants to avoid those charges he'll be trying his best to get the hostages out.
> > My view is that if Israel is conducting itself according to international norms on war
> They aren't, that's why the ICC has issued arrest warrants. Given your stated stance, you should support Netanyahu turning himself in.
Perhaps you are confusing warrants with judgement?
> > Ah, but that's something different. I agree that power comes with responsibility. There is a common belief that in any conflict the party in the wrong is the more powerful one.
> If a significantly more powerful party is in a conflict with a less power part and is killing way more of them, then yes, the does put the more powerful party in the wrong, reglardless of whatever talking point they have. The more powerful party has the greater responsibility for achieving peace and protecting lives and the failure rests primarily on them.
OK! Well, I completely disagree, and as such I don't expect we can make any more progress in this discussion, but I'm glad we managed to at least tease out this critical difference, so I thank you for persevering in the conversation. (We also disagree on how to determine the facts of the matter, but I think that's a less fundamental disagreement.)
> > As I said, I do not believe absolute numbers of casualties determine justifiability in war. I believe war goals and means determine justifiability.
> I didn't ask about absolute number, but a percentage of the population.
A percentage of the (let's say pre-war) population corresponds directly to an absolute number because the pre-war population is a known constant.
> You seem to be saying that there is no percentage at which you will adjust your point of view. If Isreal kills 90% of the population, that really wouldn't count as ethnic cleansing to you? What about 100%? There's really no point at which you would stop just taking Israel at its word?
Correct, I do not judge morality of war by the percentage, or equivalently, absolute number of fatalities. I judge it based on the war goals and war conduct. Theoretically, and it won't happen, but theoretically, if the Gazans fight to the last man, woman and child before giving up the hostages and before disbanding the military capability of Hamas then in my view it is just to pursue the war to that length.
The same would have been true of my view of the conduct of the allies against Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan. They were entitled to seek unconditional surrender. If Nazi Germany had not capitulated after Hitler's suicide, the allies would have been within their rights to continue to prosecute the war until capitulation, and no doubt more civilians would have been killed and more civilian infrastructure destroyed until they did so. Now, that's not to say that Israel, the US, the UK couldn't choose or have chosen to stop earlier for other reasons, I'm just saying I don't see it as a moral limit. I see Israel's war as just, and I see the allies' war on Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan as just, so in my mind that allows them to seek total victory.
> > Israel has many more detractors than supporters globally (I would guess the ratio is something like 100:1) so I simply don't expect most of the reporting to be fair to Israel.
> If the entire world is telling you to stop murdering children, maybe you should consider listening?
Yes, I definitely think it's worth listening! In fact I have been listening very hard. But I also don't judge truth based on absolute number of voices either.
> > I simply don't expect most of the reporting to be fair to Israel. Furthermore, I find that many anti-Israel claims simply don't hold water.
> Like the Pro-Isreal claim that you made and I debunked? How about casting doubt on the widely accepted death toll numbers?
> I've seen the kind of information sources you cite. It's pretty clear you only look for sources that confirm your world view.
You're welcome to think whatever you like about what I look for. I'm quite content that my practice of searching for discomfirmatory evidence is a healthy one, and I will continue to engage in it.
If anything, the MoH numbers are lower than the actual death toll. Even the IDF said internally the numbers were right and their own statistics state that 83% of casualties in Gaza have been civilians.
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6...
https://www.theguardian.com/world/ng-interactive/2025/aug/21...
https://www.vice.com/en/article/israeli-intelligence-health-...