Highly recommend: Killing Hope by William Blum, it dissects the history of the many authoritarian regimes the U.S. supported since WWII, coups the U.S. engineered, the revolutions it strangled in their infancy, governments it systematically destabilized, and the popular movements it crushed (often under the veneer of “stability” or “containment”).
what is the point of a society that doesen't have common utilities? and where does one draw the line at what is necessary for a decent life in a modern society?
The externalities need to be weighed into the cost too no?
How much global warming and environmental destruction is caused by launching rockets? A grid is built once and can be maintained for a very long time at a much smaller operating cost. Space stuff is expensive...
I have followed this conflict since Operation Cast Lead and the beginnings of the siege on Gaza.
Israel has been using enormous amounts of force against the Palestinian people since then, with death tolls of _at least_ 100 dead Palestinians for every dead Israeli.
For a very good account of life in Israel around the time of Cast Lead I recommend Guy Delisle, brilliant diary in comic form.
His partner was working for Doctors Without Borders, the Israeli Army refused to let them enter Gaza to help the people suffering under their bombardments.
There are horrific acts on both sides going back very very far. I grew up in a country with a relatively balanced media reporting on the issue and have tried my best to stay informed. Suicide bombings, bus hijackings, mass murders.
The inequality in force applied has still been a constant.
Also, the fact is that any peace deal has been made impossible by the hunting down and killing of anyone that could actually hold that conversation. All secular and left wing movements in Palestine have been eradicated in favor of Hamas, Islamic Jihad et al.
Likewise the Israeli extreme right wing now in power killed their own prime minister for trying to negotiate.
Also see the birth of Hezbollah as a response to Israeli invasion of Lebanon, which also gave rise to suicide bombings. These then spread across the region.
The reason Israel invaded was to fight the Palestinians there who were displaced by the founding of the Israeli state and the following conflicts.
Edit: the Palestinian groups there were doing raids in northern Israel and fleeing back across the border to Lebanon
It's a gordian knot at this point and i am very doubtful there will ever be a peaceful solution.
The first and most important and existential order of business is accounting and decommissioning/transfer of the 200 illegal nukes from the country that built and hosted and still lies about them. It's not just about the middle east, its a matter of the entire worlds potential destruction into nuclear chaos due to nukes ilegally being in the hands of a paranoid violent entity with a long history of unprovoked aggressions.
All I can think is that there is no chance of proper peace talks or any kind of truth commission since oct 7 / the genocide in Gaza.
The most likely outcome in my view is that Israel succeeds in cleansing and redeveloping Gaza and keeps settling and splitting up the West Bank until the Palestinians become nothing but 2nd class citizens in a singular state.
This will not stop the terror attacks.
It's all very depressing. I think both sides have lost.
Israel has put Gaza under siege & total blockade since 2006. The population has been used for low paid work in Israel and treated more or less like cattle.
Forcible accounting of the 200 nukes, their confiscation/decommissioning and crippling bloackades against the country illegally holding nukes and lying about them could be a beginning.
Really? I acknowledged your point before I pointed out its limits. It seems weird you would flag that. Either way,
I’ve seen what makes HN upvote, flagging doesn’t bother me.
But what GP said is true - we can see UNRWA educational materials.[0]
Im not sure what is being taught in orthodox jewish schools in Israel, but I’m pretty certain that in secular Israeli public schools, death of Arab neighbors is not glorified, terrorism and martyrdom is not glorified. [1]
Unlike that of UNRWA.
In other words, one side promotes violence, the other does not
HN flagged a post that pointed out that Palestinians continually attack Israeli civilians. One can listen to any news article to point out each night’s rocket attacks and confirm them.
It’s not surprising they would also flag a post pointing out UNRWA curriculum.
Because people flag facts, this site is essentially a cesspool when it comes to discussing anything political. The moderators have recently been manually un flagging political posts, and then writing their own comments about people they dislike such as Dan’s recent comment about Elon Musk.
It’s a cliche that everyone thinks a site is going downhill, but Hacker News is absolutely going downhill.
> HN flagged a post that pointed out that Palestinians continually attack Israeli civilians
I think the people might have chosen to downvote it for omitting the critical context that israelis continually attack Palestinian civilians, more frequently and in greater numbers.
Personally, I don't think that critical omission was done intentionally. People make mistakes! It's how we respond when those mistakes are pointed out, which defined us. Do we acknowledge the mistake, correct ourselves, maybe apologize? Or do we double down and complain when people point it out?
It's terrifying everywhere, really shines a light on the insane levels of propaganda we live under. I don't really know what can be done about it, it's really just hard to wrap my head around living in a country that so explicitly and directly supports an ethnostate and their active genocide.
I find this bewildering. Im not German. Im not Israeli.
Yet I have known that Israel sails German subs (the best in the world) since.... the Greek financial crisis (the subs were part of the scandal) ? Certainly since the mid 2010s.
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