The whole situation is so extreme it almost reads like sick parody. Last year there were riots in Israel when some IDF soldiers were arrested for raping prisoners. The riots were in defense of the rapists, and were attended not only by extremist Israeli civilians but also Israeli lawmakers, who stormed the military base where the rapists were being held.
The leaker releases a video of some of the abuse and is then accused of "blood libel" against the IDF by the Minister of Defense, Israel Katz. That phrase, "blood libel", is specifically intended to invoke the old medieval stories of Jewish people sacrificing and eating gentile children for their religious holidays. For leaking a video proving that the abuse is real.
One of the rapists is now paraded as a hero on Israeli TV. Sick, sick society.
And all we have to do to have them roll over on our command is to threaten the halt of the billions of weapons and aid we send annually. My main issue is that Israel/US relations feel like the tail is wagging the dog. Israel exists because of the West. It shouldn't take a rocket scientist to recognize that we have immense leverage over them due to them being surrounded by enemies and dependent on US weapons systems like the Iron Dome... we can basically force them to do whatever it is we want. I blame the US and the bought politicians for the tragedy in Gaza as much as I do the Israeli's.
I have the feeling Israel simply will go the way of Rhodesia within a few generations due to the actions of this war resulting in widespread de-legitimization on both sides of the political spectrum and especially generationally. No one in the US actually wants to spend tax money on a patch of land in the Middle East the size of New Jersey, especially if they don't behave.
US military aid is around 1% of budget. The consensus in Israel is to stop accepting this aid from USA.
Iron Dome is Israeli weapon system. Out of all weapons that Israel gets from USA the only things that Israel doesn't produce domestically are planes (Usa killed Israeli fighter jet project 40 years ago) and helicopters. All other weapon systems are domestically produced. Israel is eighth largest arms exporter in world
I'm not so sure that is entirely accurate. Most of Israel's military superiority is based completely on air supremacy -- Dahiya doctrine. Even w/ F-35's this requires tons of US produced munitions (smart bombs etc). The Iron Dome system was jointly designed by US/Israel and most of the actual consumables are supplied by Raytheon.
I think it is accurate to say that if the US wanted to cripple Israel they pretty much could do so on a whim, using nothing more than sanctions. That also applies to any other non-superpower country of course. What I mean to say, we could sanction them like Russia etc. and it would probably have a much larger impact if we really wanted them to do what we want.
Dahiya doctrine is wikipedia fantasy. There is no actual facts that prove that Israel has one.
Smart bombs - Israel produces their own (for example used to take out nasrallah. iirc "spice"). In Iran (and stupidly in Qatar) were used Israeli air launched ballistic missiles (there are a bunch of models. classified. nobody knows what they are exactly. some code names were leaked last year via classified USA report that was leaked). F35 that Israel using has Israeli electronics package.
Iron Dome was designed by Rafael and IAI (check wikipedia). I held mainboard in my hands like 15 years ago. Raytheon manufactures it, because this way Israel can make use of aid money (can be only spend in USA)
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There is no mention of rape, let alone mass-rape, let alone mass-rape that was sanctioned and systematized by Palestinian authorities and venerated by the Palestinian public in the article you linked. That aside, no, the normalization of punitive rape as retribution for war/revenge rape is not the hallmark of a healthy society, particularly one that anoints itself a beacon of post-Enlightenment, secular, liberal democratic values in a region it purports is barren of them.
Uh, yes there is. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/mar/04/un-envoy-repor...
https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/33068418/hamas-terrorists-rape...
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c1mz8gxzg82o
It was the Palestinian government that committed and sanctioned mass-rape, and now protects the perpetrators. I don't think any sane person would call it "a beacon of post-Enlightenment, secular, liberal democratic values" ... Obviously a policy of sanctioned military sexual violence (Palestine) does not compare to losing control of a prison guard (Israel)
I mean I get that you want to only want to discuss the Israeli government losing control of one of their prison guards after the worst violence the country ever experienced in it's entire history, and you don't want to discuss the planning and committing of mass murder, genocide and mass rapes as a weapon of war by the Palestinian government ...
The problem in any war is always the same. "Both sides are bad". Ukraine is committing unnecessary atrocities in the defense of their country, so is India, so is the fucking UN, say in Haiti, but they are largely mistakes and lapses and loss of control. Russia, however, has a policy of mass-rape, allowing massacres, killing civilians, even maternity wards with babies were purposefully attacked. But just because both sides are forced into violence, and both sides will lose control on occasion, does NOT mean their sides are even remotely comparable, morally speaking. And even Russia is 10x more moral than the PA and 50x more moral than hamas.
> is Israeli society, by supporting this woman, perhaps expressing support for punishing rapists and mass murderers, even where such punishment does not entirely follow the rules?
It’s unclear what woman you refer to, but anyway I don’t think there is enough “support for punishing rapists” to cancel out the riots in support of the alleged rapists, or the government, military, and media campaign to demonize the whistleblower with incendiary lies like “blood libel.”
Who? Both sides are accused of rape. Of course the victims of this prisoner abuse were war criminal rapists who paraded their 50+ dead victims through the street and the prisoner abuse was one prisoner, a war criminal, who got victimized afterwards.
What I'm saying is that, first, the crimes don't compare. Two, the mass-rapist war criminals (referred to as "victims" in this news) have support from the Palestinian government, and won't see real punishment.
So whilst yes, prisoner abuse is a crime and bad and ... once again only one side is receiving criticism, while the "victim" side committed 1000x worse crimes.
Hm, I thought the Israeli killrate was only 50x Hamas.
Honestly, cold-blooded shoving a stick into a prisoner’s rectum feels more evil than some other types of rape, but I’m not going to offer any moral calculus about it. It’s all evil. Killing after raping is more evil, I’ll agree. I condemn the evil actions on both sides. Rape is never justified, even against a mass-rapist or mass-murderer.
Also, the woman you invoked was likely dead by the time Hamas got her body, so she was not tortured as the Palestinian prisoner in the video was allegedly. Again I don’t really want to do moral calculus, but it does make a difference if you insist on comparing these crimes. https://www.nytimes.com/2023/10/30/world/middleeast/shani-lo...
If you don't think a single Gazan goes to jail then I have a bridge to sell you ...
how many will go to jail, prosecuted by other Gazans, in Gaza?
There was a time when rule of law was an aspiration. Sectarian violence and revenge may be sometimes understandable, but never laudable, IMHO.
the middle east has rarely played by those rules, not in recent memory anyway.
Rape whataboutism.
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Do you have any evidence of any of this?
of what? bodies of women paraded on the streets?
No wonder our leaders have gotten along so well in modern history (U.S.)
What is happening in these modern democracies that has led to this sick embrace of cruelty, pessimism ,and apathy?
It really feels like pessimism is the rot or maybe anti-optimism; how can things ever get better if the culture rejects the idea that better things are possible?
Better things are possible, very difficult, and extremely necessary. Fight for it.
This is common in fundamentalist theocracies.
just to correct your timeline. riots were at base of military police and not all over Israel as can be understood from your message.
Leaker leaked the videos in order to show seriousness of accusation because before that wasn't clear what exactly happened and many people thought that soldiers were simply rough with prisoners and military policy actions not justified.
Leak happened august last year. Katz statement happened this week.
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Hamas has already violated the ceasefire. I do not see a solution.
What kind of solution are you thinking of?
>What kind of solution are you thinking of?
The Final Solution[0](tm) of course.
And the irony would be incredibly risible if it weren't so tragic.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Final_Solution
Edit: Added the missing link.
Removal of all non-Israelis from land of Israel, wiping out every trace of their presence, and repopulating the new lands with new Aliah. There's no other way to stop violence.
Fascinating. "Land of Israel" being only "from the river to the sea" or the Daniella Weiss version "from the Euphrates to the Nile"?
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It's a common accusation of pro-Israel side that the whole world is so blindly and forcefully pro-Hamas that Israel can and must to do whatever it takes, even bending or breaking rules it would otherwise respect.
IME this is just not true. Sure, antisemitism is real, especially among certain strata of the society.
BUT in the main, my observation is that no one supports Hamas or their approach. Even people who are very critical of Israel in the West (but not beyond the line of fringe, rabid antisemitism) state that 7/10 attacks were horrific and Hamas is a terrible terrorist org.
I can't help but feel that the "whole world hates us" view is a hyperbola, at some level deliberate, to justify doing whatever Israel wants to civilian Palestinians.
If you look at israels definition for hamas and what the lavendar system will designate as a valid target (targets being bombed in an automated workflow with zero human oversight), all non-jewish-israeli might just be hamas in their eyes. It might just be israel will stop its war when the world is israel.
There is plenty of support for Hamas and its methods.
> The real reason there is such a huge backlash against her is because anyone with room temperature iq would predict that that would be how Israels opponents would take it,
What matters more, prosecuting rapists or protecting Israel's reputation? That's not really a question, I already have your answer.
I strongly condemn the October terrorist attack but I don’t see how someone can defend the morality of the IDF after the Gaza campaign.
We are talking of an army arbitrarily establishing no go zone in the middle of streets, not publishing them and then having snipers shoot down civilians crossing these imaginary lines including the ones coming to get back the corpses of their murdered family members. An army so blood thirsty they shot their own defenceless hostage who came in front of them with hands raised.
It’s pretty clear at that point that the IDF has absolutely no moral. This doesn’t in any way mean I support Hamas.
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I think it is hugely underappreciated that in most of "the west" we can have public media content that is critical of army/politicians/administration and just makes the nation look bad abroad.
I'm talking less about "free speech" as a concept and more about how the majority still thinks its worthwhile to have and allow such things even if they hurt.
This is not something to take for granted, and I often find people oblivious to this privilege. There were lots of voices arguing along similar lines during the Snowden leaks ("should be punished/swept under the rug because it makes America look bad"), but I think this is truly a cornerstone of a free society, and the concerning thing here to me is not even how the Israeli lawyer or Army acted, but how Israeli public perception is seemingly changing on this.
> ..and the concerning thing here to me is not even how the Israeli lawyer or Army acted, but how Israeli public perception is seemingly changing on this.
Nothing changed, they have always been this way..
The absence of all ugly is the real ugly.
>Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu echoed his defence minister's words on Sunday, saying that the incident at Sde Teiman was "perhaps the most severe public relations attack that the State of Israel has experienced since its establishment".
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cy0kpd97qqko
This is all very inconvenient that people know the truth I guess ...
I'm not versed enough in the full history of Israel, but perhaps attacking several of your neighbours, buying anti-citizen and anti-journalism spyware, raping prisoners, keeping a de facto dictator in power… well, I think Israel has done plenty to smear its own image.
Am I in a bubble? Because for more than a year I'd be hard pressed to find anyone in my country that would still be pro-Israel as a whole. Some nuanced support, surely, but also widespread condemnation.
Quick correction: they are the main exporter, not purchaser, of the spyware people see named in famous cases against journalists, politicians, et al.
Ah, I see, you're right. I'm surprised they're a big exporter of something that would've sold like hot cakes to the Nazi party. The people making this crap must sleep very well at night…
>Defense Minister Israel Katz welcomed Tomer-Yerushalmi's resignation, stating that anyone who spreads "blood libels against IDF troops is unfit to wear the army's uniform".
the truth is antisemitic.
Reality has a well-known liberal and pro-Palestine bias.
Delusion does.
Why does the reportimg say she "abandoned" her car at the beach? She was at the beach when she was located. People usually do not take their cars with them once they arrive at their destination. To get out and walk is not abandoning the car.
she either tried to commit suicide or tried to stage it. she was found wet without some of her clothes
Wet without some of her clothes, at a beach. Isn’t that what people do at a beach?
At night, in wet clothes ,after sending something like goodbye letter to family?
The IDF was formed from the merger of 3 terrorist organizations responsible for bombings and murders of Palestinian, British and even Jewish civilians. Not much has changed.
Way to rewrite the history. Don't let facts get in the way of your hatred though.
They were forced to disband, lay down their arms and merge into pre-existing IDF, specifically because the methods are not acceptable, some of them declined and had to be disbanded by force.
Did you know that Menachim Begin, the first prime minister of Israel, was the leader of Irgun?
'As head of the Irgun, he targeted the British in Palestine,[3] with a notable attack being the King David Hotel bombing. Later, the Irgun fought the Arabs during the 1947–48 civil war in Mandatory Palestine and, as its chief, Begin was described by the British government as the "leader of the notorious terrorist organisation".'
The first prime minister of Israel was David Ben-Gurion.
Targeting the British during the Mandate was an act of anti-colonization, not unlike other factions that wanted independence from the British at that time, and the Irgun did warn the British before hand but they did not evacuate the hotel which was the central offices of the British Mandate and the Headquarters of the British Army
Yeah good catch on the first Prime Minister bit. But let's hear you try to whitewash the Deir Yassin massacre. Irgun were wicked.
He also later was a Nobel Peace Prize laureate.
The targeting the British happened primarily during the holocaust when British were limiting Jewish migration (which has directly resulted in many many deaths).
The history is complex and it is very easy to find reasons to dismiss people who lived through very difficult times and had to make very difficult choices.
Don't forget: It was the raping that caused the damage to the IDF and the global standing of Israel, not the leaking.
But nowadays it seems to be en vogue again to shoot the messenger.
But you can't get away with anything if people keep reporting the truth. And the IDF is used to getting away with everything. Therefore the reporting is the problem.
Interesting, that when it comes to Israel, it's a scandal and not an exposure. With every other country, an apple would be an apple and not a banana.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chelsea_Manning
Definitely. Not even talking about likes of Russia or China where said person would simply disappear.
I think the term you are looking for is “blood libel”, which I haven’t heard until recently.
From context, it means “to speak the truth and present irrefutable evidence to back it up”.
I guess that’s a crime?
No, it's a very specific thing and not at all applicable here. Blood libel was something along the lines of "the Jewish people are murdering children to use their blood for secret ceremonies"[0]. The "libel" part should give it away - it doesn't apply to someone revealing true facts.
The people calling it blood libel because the facts are inconvenient and make Israel look bad are being disingenuous.
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Even assuming that the points you present are all factual, your (more than) eye-for-eye position does not align with Western and democratic values. He is a murderer, so kill him for his crimes, and kill his familiy and friends, too, because they are all guilty, without trial, by association! That's what happened in Gaza and you seem to like that.
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I don't like or condone what Hamas did at all. Their crimes should not be ignored and I never said so. They should all be in prison and stay there.
But that someone did something horrendous against my people does not make it right for my people to kill them, at an extend far, far greater than what Hamas has caused Israelis to suffer under. You cannot in a sane mind propose that genocide is ever justified. If you do, then you must also believe that all the Germans should have been killed after what they did to the jews. Do you propose that?
You are explicitly advocating for ignoring law and order. You prefer lawless lynching without order. My ethic values do not allow this and I find it stupid and disturbing.
The problem with this argument is that Israel responded militarily to an attack by hamas by attacking fighters using human shields.
That is NOT a genocide, according to the human rights conventions. If having civilian victims at all is a war crime then every police officer in the world is a war criminal.
But what hamas did on Oct 7 2023, that satisfies without any doubt whatsoever every last requirement for genocide. They emptied 2 machine guns in a kindergarten classroom because the children "were Jews". There were no survivors. Oh and as it always goes in racist attacks: 2 of the dead children (the black ones) were not Jews.
Your position is to some extent defending war criminals. It is relevant to mention what these Palestinian "victims" did.
The problem I have lies less in killing human shields employed by Hamas (which is a terrorist/war crime). The bulk of the genocide is what happend after Isreal's invasion into Gaza, and after Hamas was effectively eliminated as a credible major threat.
However, it does not help Isreal's case that they also employed human shields, thus putting themselves on the same level as Hamas.
When was hamas "effectively eliminated as a credible major threat"? Wasn't there yesterday a new item how they have at least 200 fighters stuck in ambush tunnels behind the yellow line and demand to be taken, with their weapons, to safety, in Red Cross vehicles?
They added they would refuse any deal that didn't let them keep their weapons, instead they would keep up attacks, despite agreeing to a ceasefire stating otherwise.
One might add that of the 11 points in the ceasefire agreement hamas signed, this one demand violates 5. Just this one action.
https://www.israelhayom.com/2025/11/03/hamas-terrorists-dema...
It's sad and pathetic how this very public hamas demand is pretty much to an itemized list of what everybody keeps claiming hamas never does, from hiding behind medical services to having zero intention of abiding by peace agreements.
I'm done discussing this. You are entirely blind to failures of the Israeli government and you do not see Palestinian lives as worth saving. There is zero reflection.
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This is the first time I've ever seen someone suggest there was truth to the blood libel. It seems pretty obviously absurd to me that there would exist a Jewish ritual requiring Christian blood. Can you provide this "irrefutable evidence," please?
It's a reference to the video of israeli crimes being referred to as "blood libel"
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I appreciate how quickly you jump from "oh we need incontrovertible proof of guilt" to "oh that proof isn't real it's a hoax"
In one sentence, you managed to make up two things I never said, put them both in quotes, and then falsely allege I jumped from one statement I never said to the other I also never said. This shows an impressive amount of bad faith.
> suspects in a violent assault on a Palestinian from Gaza, including anal rape. The victim was hospitalised with injuries including broken ribs, a punctured lung and rectal damage, according to the indictment
... then...
> “The [investigation] in Sde Teiman caused immense damage to the image of the state of Israel and the IDF [Israel Defense Forces],” the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, said in a statement on Sunday. “This is perhaps the most severe public relations attack that the state of Israel has experienced since its establishment.”
... then unsurprisingly...
> a far-right mob gathered outside Sde Teiman calling for the investigation to be dropped.
... and so...
> said in a resignation letter last week that she had authorised publication of the video to defuse attacks on military investigators and prosecutors working on the case.
>The indictment said the soldiers assaulted the Palestinian prisoner and sodomized him with a knife, causing multiple injuries... When military police came to Sde Teiman in July to detain the soldiers suspected of abuse, they scuffled with protesters opposed to the arrests.
How the fuck do people go out there protesting in support of the violent rape of prisoners? Sickening stuff.
protest happened in different place after arrest. at a time it wasn't clear what exactly the charges and people thought that soldiers were rough with nuhba terrorist (those are special forces of hamas that were extra active at october 7th)
indictment that you quote was presented to court months later. prosecutor leaked video (10 days after arrest) to show to public severity of accusations
That's average person for ya.
Do you mean the average Israeli? You can’t believe the average person is like this.
Why can't we believe that? There are rallies for rapists in other countries. The current US president...
Seems like you either don’t understand math and what the word “average” means or you are just being inflammatory.
You don't seem to have a problem judging entirety of Israeli population by a fringe minority (and even that fringe minority is being misrepresented).
who got Durtarte elected in the Philippines? or Trump in the US?
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"they" didn't debate it in knesset. it was screaming match in one of subcommittees meetings in which, quoting the cbs news:
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Lawmaker Hanoch Milwidsky was asked as he defended the alleged abuse whether it was legitimate, "to insert a stick into a person's rectum?"
"Yes!" he shouted in reply to his fellow parliamentarian. "If he is a Nukhba [Hamas special forces that took active part in october 7th, and did a lot of killing and raping], everything is legitimate to do! Everything!"
--------------------------
One Zionist says the caught-on-video-rapists are innocent until proven guilty. Another Zionist says that the unknown and untried Palestinian as a valid target for rape. Another Zionist says that rape can be self-defense.
What a movement.
so, you admit that what you said about "knesset debate on right to rape" is lie ?
> A member of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's Likud party, speaking Monday at a meeting of lawmakers, justified the rape and abuse of Palestinian prisoners, shouting angrily at colleagues questioning the alleged behavior that anything was legitimate to do to "terrorists" in custody.
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/israel-hamas-war-idf-palestinia...
there was no debate in knesset as you wrote about right to rape. there was 1 sentence said in knesset subcommittee. from same article that you linked
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Lawmaker Hanoch Milwidsky was asked as he defended the alleged abuse whether it was legitimate, "to insert a stick into a person's rectum?"
"Yes!" he shouted in reply to his fellow parliamentarian. "If he is a Nukhba [Hamas special forces that took active part in october 7th, and did a lot of killing and raping], everything is legitimate to do! Everything!"
--------------------------
do you admit that you lied about " debate in knesset about right to rape" ?
There is no rape shown in the video.
It is really a gross thing to do when you try to convince us that what we saw — in that deliberate act of sexual abuse — is not what it is: rape.
But what else can I expect from the movement that justifies murder and starvation of children as necessary for peace.
according to hospital report no rape took place. but sure, from grainy video you can see exactly what happened
Israeli soldiers sexually abuse a Palestinian prisoner, while the leaker gets hounded. From settler violence to cases like this, there is little or no accountability anymore in Israel.
anymore? Based on the many books I've read about Israel, there was never any accountability. It's just more prominent and unavoidable now because of social media.
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Soldiers are on trial. Isn't this is how accountability looks like
Honestly, no. Throwing some particularly 'bad apples' under the bus doesn't equate to accountability.
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It would be nice to see some actual change. It's not just these soldiers. The rape and torture of prisoners has been noted in Israeli law enforcement for years. The entire institution needs to be gutted and cleaned up.
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Do you have a non-hyperbole response?
soldiers committed (allegedly, to be determined by court) a crime. crime is been prosecuted by military prosecutor. usually this is how accountability looks .
you suggested that it's not appropriate and they been thrown under a bus. i'll say that your response is the one that started with hyperboles
Accountability does not end with the two people that caught with the most egregious of the crimes. It also extends into addressing the systems that lead to them torturing other people. If Israel was taking accountability for the crimes they've committed it would stop at two random soldiers. So to re-answer, honestly no, this doesn't not look like accountability to me.
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Again resorting to hyperbole...
Again making accusations without any facts.
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I'm trying to be as charitable as I possibly can be, but it looks like you're arguing that brutal prisoner torture is deserved if the victim is (portrayed as) heinous enough. Is this correct or was your argument something else?
I can understand the impulse, but not the conscious arguing for it.
I am railing more against the totally one-sided reporting then against that this is not ok.
Recently, any time I see someone railing against about one-sided coverage, it sets off alarm bells for where the person themselves is coming from.
To explain, there was a study of partisan bias I once read, wherein a mixed audience is shown some factually neutral piece of media, then asked to rate the bias of the piece along with some other questions. Naturally, the strongest partisans felt it was the most biased against them (something we've seen replicated in dozens of studies), but the more interesting outcome was that they teased out why the partisans felt the media was so biased. The overwhelming argument from both sides was that the media in question lacked additional context that would specifically justify the actions of their own side, even though that was not the focus of the video.
My big take away from this is that if a person is demanding additional, one-directional contextualization, especially if said context seems like it stretches/moves the topic of conversation, I'm probably reading polemic disguised as truth seeking.
But that is totally unreasonable ... what would you do if I accuse you of child molesting? Let's say I make a video focusing on that. Obviously it's not true, but that doesn't prevent anyone from making such a video.
I think you'll be insisting on additional context and moving the topic of conversation away from child molesting and your involvement therein to, oh, perhaps "fake news".
The sad truth is that it's fundamentally true that the reality on the ground is not a compromise between both sides. There is an actual reality.
Honestly, thinking it through, there's no way I'd engage the public at all on something like that except possibly a singular utterance that no, it didn't happen, ever, not even close, it's a bold faced lie.
Trying to contextualize or talk about fake news or doing anything else feels very shady to me in that context. You do often see this sort of hemming and hawing from people online during these cancellation campaigns, and I cannot even fathom what inspires them to do anything other than directly and aggressively defend themselves.
> what would you do if I accuse you of child molesting? Let's say I make a video focusing on that.
Depends strongly on what you mean of "make a video focusing on that". Is the video just repeating the accusations, without giving any evidence? Is the video a fake? Or does it show actual evidence of child molesting?
I think the moral judgement of this would depend strongly on whether actual molestation has taken place and whether or not the video shows evidence of that.
If it didn't show evidence or the evidence was fake, the case can be dismissed without any additional context and the blame would be on the author of the video for spreading libel.
But if it was true, what kind of context would you expect would change the outcome? "That kid totally deserved it"?
Incidentally, Israelis make the same demand on the world to ignore any "context" for October 7.
Do you usually complain about journalists not presenting the rapist's point of view, or only when those rapists are IDF soldiers?
I can find no evidence for the claim that this prisoner was one of the people involved in October 7th.
Also, to call shoving a metal tube up a prisoners ass to the point it causes an intestinal rupture “beat up” is incredibly disingenuous.
Drop Site (@DropSiteNews) reports that the victim was a civilian and not a fighter, and was released without charge in the past month as per leaked documents.
This is an allegation. There's been no trial and the footage, which was doctored, does not clearly show this. Innocent until proven guilty.
Reuters—OHCHR: weaponisation of food as potential war crime (June 24, 2025).
Reuters—UN adds IDF to list of grave violators against children (June 7, 2024).
Reuters—breakdown of verified Gaza deaths (women/children) from UN rights office (Nov 8, 2024).
Just allegations.
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Do you really expect all of us to defer our judgement and trust in the integrity of the Israeli courts? The knife didn't shove itself into that prisoner's ass. Those soldiers are rapists.
Actually, in this case I expect you to reject common law standards you would otherwise embrace: the right to a fair trial, the presumption of innocence, the writ of habeas corpus, standards of evidence, etc., and instead to rely on your instincts and feelings. It feels nicer for many to think like a medieval peasant than an enlightened liberal when it comes to Israel and the Jews.
Nor am I surprised by your antipathy to Israeli courts, despite the fact that Israel’s courts rank highly on independence and rule-of-law lists, are broadly regarded as independent and capable of delivering fair process. Bodies that effectively vouch for this include Freedom House, global rule-of-law datasets (e.g., the World Bank WGI), and the practical trust reflected in extradition arrangements with other western countries.
Like this? https://opiniojuris.org/2025/05/14/how-did-the-israeli-supre...
That's the Supreme Court defending the starvation policy in Gaza. That exact court that liberal, progressive Israelis were fighting tooth and nail for during the last years, as the last bastion of democracy.
The opinion piece you link to is false in two respects: first, Israel has never had a starvation policy in Gaza, and second, the courts never defended the policy because it never existed.
Yeah yeah, and the 6000 trucks on the Egyptian side of the Rafah crossing were just standing there for fun.
https://www.bbc.com/news/live/c0k77xm651jt
https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2025-08-14/ty-article-ma...
https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2025-08-12/ty-article-ma...
Even now, during the ceasefire, Israel only allows goods in through Kerem Shalom and Kissufim and keeps the other crossings shut, even though aid organizations urgently demand that they must be opened. Explain to me why.
I see you're linking to some debunked articles about the gaza starvation hoax.
Do you seriously think Israel had a policy of starvation? Obesity is common in gaza; there are restaurants everywhere; there aren't any pictures of starving families; all the pictures of starving kids have turned out to be of kids with serious pre-existing conditions; there have been only about 200 malnutrition related deaths in two years of war in gaza, orders of magnitude less than here in the US. And no belligerent in the history of war has ever allowed in more aid to the opposing side than Israel.
I've heard those exact lines from several pro-Israeli commenters.
How would you even expect this to work? There was a two-year nonstop bombing campaign and an official "total blockade" for several months. How could there possibly be "restaurants everywhere" after that?
Also, Haaretz is an Israeli newspaper itself. Is the conspiracy running so deep?
"How could there possibly be "restaurants everywhere" after that?"
There are plenty of restaurants in Gaza, as a quick Google search will reveal, so this is a question for you to ask yourself. Perhaps your premise is wrong.
You're right, there actually are lots on Google Maps.
Except some of them would be beyond the Yellow Line, in the area where the IDF troops are and which is strictly off-limits for civilians. And none of them have any reviews that are newer than from two years ago.
(Compare with the markers on the Israeli side where the latest reviews are often just weeks or days old)
There are active restaurants in Hamas-controlled areas. There are hundreds of videos (and recent google reviews) proving this. Here's one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DFjhyAsHYFo
And now we're onto gish galloping - word of advice that this tactic works best while speaking; when typing, lobbying a multitude of bullshit claims at a rapid pace doesn't have quite the same effect.
>Obesity is common in gaza
This maybe works as a claim if humans exist in non-linear time where 2020 and 2025 are perceived simultaneously. In fact, though, it's not a claim that any current data evinces.
>there are restaurants everywhere
And as we all know, a restaurant under rubble without sufficient access to ingredients or consistent utility supply is still operating at full capacity and its patrons don't need to have funds, able bodies, or the absence of the threat of random artillery strikes to avail themselves to their services.
>there aren't any pictures of starving families; all the pictures of starving kids have turned out to be of kids with serious pre-existing conditions
Adults have more developed organs and digestive systems than children and those pre-existing conditions are ones that would either have been managed with sufficient access to food or had resulted from prenatal nutritional deficiencies caused by insufficient access to food. Your previous point was solipsistic, this kind of immaterial distinction, though, is just cynical.
>there have been only about 200 malnutrition related deaths in two years of war in gaza
Outside of a comment on Threads, I can't find any source for this. I wonder how many qualifiers you'll add to the ynetnews editorial you'll quote in support of this one.
>no belligerent in the history of war has ever allowed in more aid to the opposing side than Israel.
Per Israel and its material partners, yeah. Not so much per every internationally recognized human rights watchdog, aid organizations that aren't staffed by mercenaries and funded by the IDF and the US, or genocide scholars and other academics in related fields. It's unclear whether simple credulity or ideological priors are at play in accepting such a premise.
All the claims are true.
> Obesity is common There are countless videos of obese people in Gaza today.
> Restaurats everywhere. Google it! Not restaurants under rubble, but restaurants serving faties today. Here's a short list of open restaurants: - Manaqish restaurant - Ghazetna restaurant - Hotdog restaurant - Zaitouna cam restaurant - Chef Hamada - O2 restaurant
> No pictures of starving families. Yes, of course adult bodies are more resilient, but in real famines (unlike the one in Gaza) adults die too. And the kids that look starving had preexisting conditions.
>there have been only about 200 malnutrition related deaths in two years of war in gaza A googleable claim.
>no belligerent in the history of war has ever allowed in more aid to the opposing side than Israel. It's a factual matter, nobody debates it. You can't find a country that sent more aid to a belligerent on a per capita basis.
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Translation: "Yeah bro, we really should avoid due process, common law standards, court hearings, and all the progress that's been made in the past 400 years of western jurisprudence and instead we should all just trust me bro."
Your argument reflects medieval peasant thinking and you use sarcasm to paper over a lack of substance, because if you say what you think in a non-sarcastic way it would sound ridiculous ("yeah, no trial. let's just declare him guilty and treat it as fact.").
Right, because over the course of the past 400 years, those institutions have always worked everywhere and no one's ever been at the margins of the justice system, been arrested arbitrarily or ignored by the police, had to languish in jail without a charge, been denied access to competent attorneys, a fair and speedy trial, or been subject to institutional biases and unwarranted imprisonment. Certainly that would never happens in a territory where it has happened routinely for 70+ years.
You phrase your argument in a sarcastic way, because if you clearly stated what you mean your argument would appear ridiculous.
Take the sarcasm out of your position and this is essentially what you're saying: "Yes, I reject the past 400 years of progress in jurisprudence because it's not always perfect, and I would prefer for us to return to medieval times."
No, that's what has been identified within the past 400 years as a straw man. You aren't even acknowledging the possibility of miscarriages of justice, let alone the possibility that it can be an institutional pattern. You should probably reflect on that and the impact it has on your argument, particularly in light of how it's been observed in the Israeli justice system.
Look, I also find sarcasm extremely annoying, it's an anathema to meaningful discussion.
However... your non-sarcastic interpretation is clearly in bad faith, and ratchets up the hostility even further.
Why post this jeering reply?
He's advocating for a return to medieval methods of justice, and trying to cloak that advocacy with sarcasm. If that's not worth derision (the kind of derision where you simply point out what one is saying), what then is worth derision?
I fail to see how that conclusion is even possible. He's not advocating for anything, he's just taking the opportunity to dunk on Israel.
His actual cloaked argument, insofar as it exists, is that Israel does not uphold these standards you value. You clearly disagree, and of course the sarcasm is unproductive, but he's not advocating barbarity (but levying an accusation of it).
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You're the first person to bring up jews. The rest of us are talking about israelis, try to keep up.
And you won't get far trying to cast critics of Israel's actions as Jew-hating. It's a tired move.
I'm not trying to get the commenter to tone it down. Nor am I certain that they're jew-haters. I'm trying to get people to realize that however they feel about Jews their standards of evidence are absurdly different when it comes to Israel.
The video in question is troubling and should be investigated, but it does not clearly show rape, so I think that for someone to say "this shows rape" and "no matter what evidence comes out in trial I can dismiss that because it's a trial in Israel" is medieval peasant thinking.
> I'm trying to get people to realize that however they feel about Jews their standards of evidence are absurdly different when it comes to Israel.
That the video doesn't show rape and/or was doctored are also contested allegations, so your pearl clutching about double standards rings extremely hollow.
The whole point of the judicial system is to navigate through contested allegations. A trial is what I'm advocating for. You're the one suggesting we should prejudge this, no trial needed.
I actually haven't said word one about whether there should be a trial. Conversely, you said this:
>There's been no trial and the footage, which was doctored, does not clearly show this (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45806468)
>I also pointed out that the video doesn't clearly support the allegation, and the video has been doctored. (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45806559)
There is no assertion in these sentences that treats the video being doctored and not showing a rape as contested allegations that need to be established as fact over the course of a trial. Maybe you've changed your mind in the past couple of hours, though.
I made an argument that there should be a trial and argued explicitly against those who think thee shouldn't be a trial. Here's how you responded to my defense of common law and due process:
"Right, because over the course of the past 400 years, those institutions have always worked everywhere and no one's ever been at the margins of the justice system, been arrested arbitrarily or ignored by the police, had to languish in jail without a charge, been denied access to competent attorneys, a fair and speedy trial, or been subject to institutional biases and unwarranted imprisonment. Certainly that would never happens in a territory where it has happened routinely for 70+ years."
To me that sounds like you're saying that the standards of jurisprudence developed since the enlightenment are unnecessary because they sometimes fail, and that therefore a trial would be superfluous; it's fine to prejudge rape in this instance. This is at least my reading of your comment; I admit your comment is dripping with sarcasm so it's hard to tell what you actually meant.
I've also been consistent that the accused should be presumed innocent and has a right to due process. If you disavow your prior comment and agree with these common law principles then congratulations you've found a point of agreement with a zionist, and you disagree with the others in the thread who argue that a rape definitely occurred and the accused can be presumed guilty.
>I made an argument that there should be a trial and argued explicitly against those who think thee shouldn't be a trial
Correct, you made a straw man: literally no one is saying there shouldn't be a trial in this thread. You know who isn't? The Israeli government, the military whose members are accused of a crime, and a large and vocal segment of the Israeli population. The same cohort _do_ want a criminal case levelled against a whistleblower who was being intimidated for trying to do her job. The fact that this case is being pursued with significantly more vigour makes most reasonable observers question the level of commitment Israeli society has to the values you're evangelizing. But I mean, how sincere your commitment is is still up in the air, because again, you've never walked back your unsupported claim that the video is doctored.
I see you ignored this opportunity to confirm the accused is innocent until proven guilty and deserves a fair trial before people call them rapists. Too bad.
Of course I didn't walk back my claim that the video is doctored, and of course it's not unsupported. Here is one of many articles alleging the video is doctored and pointing to the specific person (Guy Peleg) who doctored it by splicing together different clips from different days: https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/sde-teiman-the-leak-that-sho...
This is just reporting, and it will need to be tested in court. But my claim is not unsupported.
>I see you ignored this opportunity to confirm the accused is innocent until proven guilty and deserves a fair trial before people call them rapists. Too bad.
It's not actually required for someone involved in a discussion to waste their time responding to straw men.
>This is just reporting, and it will need to be tested in court.
Ah, so we've moved on from strawmanning to moving the goalposts.
Just because you called my argument a strawman doesn't make it one. Since I see you're not willing to advocate for normal common law justice, I don't think we'll ever agree, and I'll put this argument to rest.
By the way, there is no serious debate about whether the video was altered. Any casual watcher an see it's spliced clips. The question is only whether it was altered maliciously, to paint a specific picture. That is what needs to be tested in court.
>Just because you called my argument a strawman doesn't make it one.
No, of course not, the fact that you keep trying to derail the argument by mischaracterizing what the people you disagree with are saying makes it a straw man. No one here has rejected the common law convention or said there shouldn't be a trial. A sizable contingent of your ideological brethren have. You refuse to confront this, and that's your own cross to bear.
>By the way, there is no serious debate about whether the video was altered. Any casual watcher an see it's spliced clips. The question is only whether it was altered maliciously, to paint a specific picture. That is what needs to be tested in court.
Not especially, the material question is whether it depicts the assailants performing the acts that resulted in the prisoner's injuries. Notably, you've stopped even trying to argue that point.
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My comment clearly advocates for common law standards: the right to a trial, the presumption of innocence, and so on. Am I understanding correctly that you think this advocacy--a staple of western thought--is bad faith? You prefer mob rule, no courts, medieval justice, and so on, and consider that good faith? What a topsy-turvy world we live in.
The US side doesn't quite have this, but man we sure have a parade of officials shown the door or who resign. No major leaks like this, but:
A. Notable how in the US all the JAGs were dismissed almost immediately, https://www.military.com/daily-news/2025/02/24/people-are-ve...
B. And now CIA Deputy Director Michael Ellis has let go of Counsel there & appointed himself Acting General Counsel, https://www.nytimes.com/2025/10/06/us/politics/michael-ellis...
C. And top southern command admiral just retired after having bombing boats in the carribean. https://www.nytimes.com/2025/10/16/us/politics/southern-comm...
Sure seems like the US is trying to purge faster than any weak links can form.
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/israel-hamas-war-idf-palestinia...
Here is a member of the Knesset explicitly endorsing the anal rape of Palestinian prisoners
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Either the soldiers weren’t doing anything wrong and the video didn’t need to be secret or they were then why are you more worried about the exposure of the wrongdoing than the wrongdoing?
Imagine thinking it’s narcissistic to put your career and life at risk to protect your fellow military prosecutors. You need an education on what narcissism is.
Sooo, what do you think about Edward Snowden?
Seems like a moment of moral clarity for someone who had an opportunity to do the right thing. I suppose the organization in question here needs to screen more aggressively for individuals with zero moral compass.
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i was explained by moderator that it falls under "new phenomenon" part of guidelines and of interest to community
Weird how Sudan doesn't, totally not because of the Jews not being involved, totally.
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> Hey, not super familiar with HN norms.
You can learn more about the intended norms through the Guidelines and FAQ, at the bottom of almost every page but here are the links:
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html
Regarding relevance to the community:
> What to Submit
> On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity.
> Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, or celebrities, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. Videos of pratfalls or disasters, or cute animal pictures. If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic.
And regarding comments about whether it's on- or off-topic:
> Please don't complain that a submission is inappropriate. If a story is spam or off-topic, flag it. Don't feed egregious comments by replying; flag them instead. If you flag, please don't also comment that you did.
Thanks for those links - these are the rules and norms I didn’t know before. Now that I see them, they seem pretty sensible overall. Some are of them are a bit quirky.
"All information should be free"
"Mistrust authority—promote decentralization"
("A hackers ethic" in Levy, Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution, 1984)
I think it fits.
Indeed. Discussion of this abounds. Here's one in which I participated: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45676472
This article is about the political culture in a country that supplies a lot of technology and software to other countries, including the one where I live, that they have developed through occupation, apartheid and genocide.
If I lived in the US I'd care whether the people designing cop drones are ruled by genocidal rape maniacs or puppy loving nerds.
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I think thats slightly unfair; people just tend to flag polarizing political topics because it often leads to inflamed repetitive arguments without the HN effect (which would be the Israeli lawyer chiming in, here).
The flagging is not symmetrical.
I see barely any Israel discussions on this site, so if it is not symmetrical the main reason for that has to be that the submissions favoring one side or the other are very uneven, which is nobody's fault and not a problem. Especially since even being very generous, those discussions are not a good fit for this site. It's not like you don't have enough places to go if you really want to have one, it really does not have to be a heavily tech-focused site.
Did you try to search? There are many, but they typically don't stay on the front page
For the nice people who downvoted without saying why, here's how to search:
https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
What would be the symmetry axis?
If you classify this as "critical of Israel (?)" then I can guarantee you pretty confidently that an article critical of the PA (or Hamas or whatever) would get flagged at a pretty similar rate here.
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>Leaks happen all the time, the fact is she was tasked with finding the leaker and lied to the supreme court about the investigation. Just yesterday she wrote a suicide note, made half the country look for her and dumped her phone into the sea, only after that was she arrested.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45805847
I want to just add that the alleged terrorist who was allegedly beaten was recently released back into gaza as part of the hostage deal.
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> who spoke on the condition of anonymity
> he
come on, couldn't opt for gender neutral pronouns? Just had the help identify the person huh. Of those who were involved with treatment, i imagine an already small number, leaking gender and details of what was shared and the scope of their specific involment may cut it down to a very small number of plausible people, if not the exact person.
Let's keep the political news out of HN. Way too much of this news is covered
You can keep the politics out of tech. But can you keep the tech out of government overreach, politics, and terror?
25 years back when the political news about tech companies was related to intra/industry lobbying and monopoly questions that may have been a possibility.
Tech companies are doing direct dealing with nation-states and being active participants in military policy. This is no longer possible.