Really? I guess they're just "following orders" from the AI then. What a shameful response, if Russia did this or if the roles were reversed you'd be appalled.
There are pretty clearly cases where non-combatant deaths in war are necessary -- for example if you are in a total war situation as in WWII.
People can and do argue about the morality of the Tokyo firebombings and Dresden and Hiroshima and Nagasaki where it was largely purely civilian populations in cities that were attacked, but I think it's _fairly_ non-controversial that in a total war that industrial sites and weapons manufacturing facilities and so on are valid targets in a war situation, and they are generally staffed by non-combatants.
The rule in the geneva conventions is:
"In so far as objects are concerned, military objectives are limited to those objects which by their nature, location, purpose or use make an effective contribution to military action and whose total or partial destruction, capture or neutralization, in the circumstances ruling at the time, offers a definite military advantage."
Which encompasses quite a large category of non-combatants that are likely to be in the area of those "objects".
edit: not making any kind of judgement or statement at all about this particular situation -- just clarifying in general the rules of war involving non-combatants.
That's all well and fine, except that is very much not the situation with Israel and Palestine.
Quite the opposite. Israel has the Palestinians entirely cornered and that already for the past 76 years. They have always had the upper hand and could very easily have negotiated a reasonable peace deal. Heck, where they not racist ethnonationalist bigots they would have incorporated the Palestinians in Israel as happens in normal situations when one state decides to land grab another.
If anything it is the Palestinians, you know the victims who are entirely cornered and helpless, who should use your argument to justify civilian causalities, but you would be completely horrified if were to write that.
Yitzhak Rabin did try to negotiate a reasonable peace deal (with Arafat), and was assassinated because of it. Israel left the West Bank [mostly] alone and that's what allowed the territory to get taken over by Hamas (with some degree of popular support).
I think what Israel is doing is bad; I also happen to think that putting the Palestinians in control of Israel+Palestine (which is what integrating them into Israel would do, since they form a numeric majority) would be much worse (because at least Israeli values align closer with western values than the Palestinian ones). So there are no real good options than a tentative ceasefire and everyone on edge again.
It is reminiscent of the war on terror in Afghanistan, and I imagine the outcome will be similarly somber, and likely objectives probably won't be met.
I disagree with you. There is no justification for death.
1) Where do you draw the line?
2) At what number does that one become two?
3) how long do you think until AI is justified to start killing those single digit persons?
4) What if that one person is you? (this is not that hard to imagine, suppose a fictitious near future where everyone that contributed to some extinction event is deemed killable: AI development, global warming, failed to do some recycling, etc).
Presupposing infinite resources, there wouldn't be a justification for death per se - since there would always be a better, more humane option. The world, however, does not have infinite resources, so there is always a question of optimal allocation, which will involve questions of life and death too.
(not talking about this conflict in particular, just making an abstract point)
Well the line would be at when you are causing more deaths than you are saving.
Would you rather a larger number of people die?
> What if that one person is you?
What if the people's lives that would be saved are you, and this number is much larger?
That argument actually works in favor of the option that saves the most lives.
There is no neutral decision here. If you choose to not save the much larger group of people, those people are dead.
So your only choice is to pick which groups of people will die. My prefer is to minimize that amount to be as small as possible. But if you want that number to be larger, and to have more people die, that requires some explanation.
The use of AI and the authorisation to kill civilians are unrelated parts of this story. Nowhere does it mention that the AI is being used to justify killing of civilians.
> It is also because Mr. Obama embraced a disputed method for counting civilian casualties that did little to box him in. It in effect counts all military-age males in a strike zone as combatants, according to several administration officials, unless there is explicit intelligence posthumously proving them innocent.
> Counterterrorism officials insist this approach is one of simple logic: people in an area of known terrorist activity, or found with a top Qaeda operative, are probably up to no good. “Al Qaeda is an insular, paranoid organization — innocent neighbors don’t hitchhike rides in the back of trucks headed for the border with guns and bombs,” said one official, who requested anonymity to speak about what is still a classified program.
In the case of Al Qaeda, that might actually have been true? I don't think you can really compare Hamas to Al Qaeda; almost everything meaningful is different.
That doesn't mention Al Qaeda? It just talks about drone strikes against ISIS, which is yet again quite a different organisation than Al Qaeda and Hamas.
What is your point even? All I said is that you can't compare Al Qaeda and Hamas, and how they operate, and how to combat them. I never said that US drone strikes were/are 100% perfect, or even that I liked the entire programme.
My point is "if they're near a target they're a target" is an insane standard to use for these sorts of strikes, and the article this entire HN discussion is about makes it pretty clear such a standard is in use in Gaza right now.
> This was despite knowing that the system makes what are regarded as “errors” in approximately 10 percent of cases, and is known to occasionally mark individuals who have merely a loose connection to militant groups, or no connection at all.
> Moreover, the Israeli army systematically attacked the targeted individuals while they were in their homes — usually at night while their whole families were present — rather than during the course of military activity.
> “We were not interested in killing [Hamas] operatives only when they were in a military building or engaged in a military activity,” A., an intelligence officer, told +972 and Local Call. “On the contrary, the IDF bombed them in homes without hesitation, as a first option. It’s much easier to bomb a family’s home. The system is built to look for them in these situations.”
here's another story today from France24 about the over-reliance on AI driven targetting may have been responsible for the airstrike on April 1st 2024 that killed seven aid workers in Gaza [0]
Two sources said that during the early weeks of the war they were permitted to kill 15 or 20 civilians during airstrikes on low-ranking militants. Attacks on such targets were typically carried out using unguided munitions known as “dumb bombs”, the sources said, destroying entire homes and killing all their occupants.
do I read your tone right, and you suggest that would be a reason to celebrate for someone? for whom? you believe the aim of the Israeli military action is territory?
Could you please clarify what you mean by "Hamas wanted in ghe first place"? If I'm not mistaken, you're referring to the attack on the 7th of October, right? May I perhaps add that just on the days preceding that attack, Israelis killed a Palestinian in the West Bank[0]. So it was not really peaceful before that specific date.
I wasn't necessarily trying to point fingers at a specific party. I wanted to better understand the parent's comment and while doing I wrote what I assumed was meant by them. I agree that to solve this issue that has been going on for many, many years we will have to go to the root cause and address that.
I don't see any point in rehashing the I/P infinite regress. You end up trying to figure out where bronze age tribes lived. For the purposes of this conversation I'm going to step away from I/P and look at the strategy that I believe was used in the abstract.
You've got two sides, Able and Baker, with a range of opinions on both sides, from a moderate majority to an extreme minority.
Able extremists attack Baker in a way which is big, shocking and violent.
Baker is provoked into retaliation against Able. Crucially, the retaliation is against the whole of Able, including the moderates.
When it all dies down, there are less Able moderates and more Able extremists. (Because if someone dropped an Acme piano on my family, I'd be tempted to strap on the Acme exploding underpants, too).
This "leverage your enemy's strength to radicalize your own people" approach is common. 9/11 is probably the clearest example, but you could even see the non-violent Civil Rights protests in America in this light (march, provoke violent response, gain converts and sympathy). If this wasn't one of the factors behind the October attacks, Hamas are dumber than I give them credit for.
Thus, I see "the Palestinian people will not forget this" as "the cycle of violence is locked in for another generation".
I agree with you. Let's not rehash this finger pointing argument. It doesn't get us anywhere.
I however disagree with the framing in the example. Starting from the event that Able attacked Baker without mentioning the reasons or the context clearly portrays Baker as not having done anything to provoke such an attack. Nothing ever happens in a vaccuum.
> Starting from the event that Able attacked Baker without mentioning the reasons or the context clearly portrays Baker as not having done anything to provoke such an attack.
Adding at "step zero" with that information in would not change my argument at all. The relative righteousness of the two sides has nothing to do with strategy selection. For the purposes of this abstract argument, it's unnecessary fluff.
Yes, but specifically the Palestinian impact is why it’s such a terrible policy for Israel unless you assume their goal is perpetual war. Most people do not want to kill other people but each innocent killed like this is leaving behind friends, family, and neighbors who will want vengeance and some fraction of them will decide they need to resort to violence because the other mechanisms aren’t being used. Watching this happen has been incredibly depressing as you can pretty much mathematically predict a revenge period measured in decades.
This assumes they're going to leave enough people alive to even enact vengeance. If they murder everyone, than there's no need to worry about any Gazan revenge; there will be no Gazans.
It's very plausible. Keep in mind that from the get-go, the major global powers, (including Russia!) have adopted the mindset of Israel can do no wrong, and we can't criticize them at all
Israel could glass the entire Gaza strip and the reaction would be a slap on the wrist at best.
There's millions of Palestinians living in the West Bank or as refugees abroad, expelled or descended from those expelled in previous rounds of ethnic cleansing. Even if IDF go final solution on the 2 million Palestinians living in Gaza ghetto, this will not be the end of all Palestinians or the Palestinian struggle. See: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palestinian_diaspora
It's funny because your exact logic can be used to justify the attacks you're talking about. Israel has been attacking Gaza and Hamas, and occupied Gaza even pre Hamas (and always controlled Gaza's borders even with Egypt). That means that it was fully ok because it was just Palestinians using what they can for self defense.
See how batshit insane that logic is ? Remember, Israel has never stopped colonizing the west bank even after they stopped the armed struggle. So according to you, Israel deserves everything it gets in self defense.
That type of logic works well when you only apply it to the side you favor but it completely falls apart especially in this mess of a conflict
"Our system is 90% accurate if you don't count the 15-20 innocent people taken out for each hit". I know they're measuring the accuracy of target identification but that's laughable when used in this context.
For 100 targets, 90 are 'correct', plus 20x civs per-target is 90/2100 or 4% real accuracy.
Say you use a model that's only 50% accurate and limit yourself to 10 civs per-target, you're at 50/1100 or 4.5% accuracy!
I guess my point is that no self-respecting datascient would release a 50% accurate model, let alone one used to make life or death decisions and yet, in the application of this model, decisions made by humans about its use has made it no better than doing exactly that.
These kinds of accurate numbers of acceptably killed innocents is really hurting a specific part of my sympathy brain somehow.
"we really need to missile this guy or he will kill more" vs "well we got 37 badies and also kim and yashonda, damn i really liked yashonda"
Actually after writing this my mind went farther, "since yashonda was a good person we actually have a whole bunch of hard facts about how good a person she actually was, did a lot of help for her community and was a real pillar of helping the next generation of kids be less violent...too bad we didn't add any of that info into the kill-algorithm "
They claim the system has 90% accuracy, so they would have to actually kill about 10% more people than these numbers, to offset the 10% error rate. So between 610500 and 814000. The whole Gaza strip had about 2 million people before the current siege.
The law of armed conflict acknowledges that civilian deaths are inevitable, and only prohibits attacks that are directed at civilians; rather than those which are directed at combatants with expected civilian casualties as collateral damage.
The legal question is whether the civilian casualties are proportional to the concrete military value of the target.
A question that's worth considering is whether, when considering proportionality, all civilians (as defined by law) are made equal in a moral sense.
For example, the category "civilian" includes munitions workers or those otherwise offering support to combatants on the one hand, and young children on the other. It also includes members of the civil population who are actually involved in hostilities without being a formal part of an armed force.
The law of armed conflict doesn't distinguish these; albeit that I think people might well distinguish, on a moral level, between casualties amongst young children, munitions workers, and informal combatants.
> For example, the category "civilian" includes munitions workers or those otherwise offering support to combatants on the one hand, and young children on the other. It also includes members of the civil population who are actually involved in hostilities without being a formal part of an armed force.
I wonder if you would say the same on the other side where every male or female above 18 years is required to serve in thr military and in the reserve afterwards? [1]
By your argument would you say that all of these are legitimate targets?
> I wonder if you would say the same on the other side where every male or female above 18 years is required to serve in thr military and in the reserve afterwards? [1]
I don't think anything in the grandparent post suggested that. If someone used to be a combatant and then ceased fighting, usually they then become a civilian. They don't stay a combatant for life. Reserve forces not on duty are not generally combatants. You have to be in the fight to be a combatant.
Things get more complicated with combatants who don't fully wear uniforms, which is why failing to wear a uniform is a war crime.
It should be noted this isn't so much the grandparent's personal opinion as they are just paraphrasing what the geneva convention says. However there is of course a lot more details to it then that and the devil is in the details.
[Edit: i think i read the post too quickly. The grandparent is incorrect when saying "[Civilians] also includes members of the civil population who are actually involved in hostilities without being a formal part of an armed force.". If you pick up a gun and start shooting the other side, you are not a civilian. It doesn't matter whether you are formally part of the armed forces. Civilians get protected because we want to protect the innocents stuck in the middle. People who are taking part in a war dont get that protection]
>If you pick up a gun and start shooting the other side, you are not a civilian.
You're not a civilian while you're holding the gun, but you are once you stop shooting again: you lose your protection as a civilian during your period of direct participation. Should have been more clear on that.
It's probably also worth saying that -- while there's a degree of subtlety and complexity when considering the legal and moral position of Israel's armed forces -- there's very little to debate when it comes to actions like the Re'im music festival attack. That kind of action is obviously illegal and morally repugnant.
Dropping the gun is not sufficient to claim civilian status. Military bases are full of soldiers that may not be armed, or even awake. That lack of a gun does not suddenly grant them civilian status.
That's not what I said: I said that civilians who engage in fighting lose protection as civilians. Members of armed forces, whether currently armed or not, are legitimate targets (with certain exceptions; like the wounded, those who have surrendered etc).
> while there's a degree of subtlety and complexity when considering the legal and moral position of Israel's armed forces
No, there is no such complexity. There are very obviously undebatable incidents of war crimes by the IDF. Like this footage from a drone who deliberately killed civilians in plain sight and trying to cover the bodies[1] and the IDF targeting aid workers in a location they knew about [2]. Also, there are widespread videos by IDF soldiers committing atrocities and crimes in Gaza and posting it on social media. That is hardly self-defense. This is obvious war crimes against civilians. Not to mention the mass starvation and carpet bombing of civilians. There is very little to debate, and denying them is immoral. You are just using a very old tactic of trying to minimize IDF crimes by claiming their position is complex. Remember the old say "Middle East is complex mess, let's just ignore what is happening there"
The aid worker one is probably the most undebatable one, but it also just happened. How to judge it depends on what happens next. Part of the assumption of war is that it involves people, some of whom are going to be bad - The expectation isn't that a country is perfect, but that it takes steps to prevent war crimes and punish the perpetrators when it happens. We don't know yet whether or not Israel will charge the people involved in the aid worker bombing.
Some of the other things you mention have a lot of grey area, because whether or not they are a war crime don't necessarily depend solely on what happened, but on what Israel's intent was and what they knew at various points in time. Which is information that's hard to know from our vantage point. Some of them could be, but there is also potential that they might not be. Its not as clear cut as you make it out to be.
> We don't know yet whether or not Israel will charge the people involved in the aid worker bombing
In 2021, Israeli forces killed an American-Palestinian journalist on duty in plain sight [1] I will quote that from Wikipedia
"Israel denied responsibility and blamed Palestinian militants. However, it gradually changed its narrative until admitted she was "accidentally" killed by Israeli fire, but refused to undertake a criminal investigation"
and
"On September 5, the IDF released the results of its own investigation, finding that there was a "high possibility" that Abu Akleh was "accidentally hit" by army fire, but that it would not begin a criminal investigation"
Another example
In 1996, IDF fired shells on UN compound near a village called Qana and caused a civilian massacre. The UN investigated, and Israel refused the results and did not punish anyone [2]. Let's give them a benefit of the doubt, maybe they will just learn and avoid doing it again. Fear not, in 2016 they give us the second Qana massacre [3] without anyone getting punished.
And there are maybe hundred of these events which can establish that Israel doesn't care and IDF don't get punished.
I also refuse the logic that Israel should investigate war crimes by its army. That is absurd, like waiting for Russia to investigate and take their words for Bucha massacre. IDF have very well documented war crimes in the past and IDF is the occupying forces of Palestine and is mass starving 2.3m to death in Gaza right now. Believing that they will carry honest investigation and punish their soldiers is laughable.
And let's not forget to add the IDF lie, and they are blatant Liars. We still remember them claiming week days in Arabic are names of Hamas operatives [4]. Why do you expect us to believe them? Of course, the Israeli officials and cabinet members calling for violence, crimes against Palestinians are well known to everyone now (Feel free to ask me for examples).
> "On September 5, the IDF released the results of its own investigation, finding that there was a "high possibility" that Abu Akleh was "accidentally hit" by army fire, but that it would not begin a criminal investigation"
I'm not sure what your point is here. Accidentally shooting someone is not a warcrime (there are details here in that it still could be if there is a certain level of negligence), and generally a criminal investigation would only be started if there was sufficient evidence in the preliminary investigation to suggest it was intentional.
Could israel be lying about it? Sure. Militaries doing cover ups would hardly be a new story. But this isn't the (metaphorical) smoking gun you think it is.
> In 1996...
1996 was quite a long time ago at this point.
> I also refuse the logic that Israel should investigate war crimes by its army
That's generally what is expected of any army under international law. If they don't then the higher ups become responsible.
In the event of a failure to prosecute, then it goes to the ICC to investigate and charge (israel isn't a member, but palestine is, so anything involving palestine nationals or territory counts, which is basically this whole war. If ICC didn't have juridsiction over something, then the procedure is the UN is supposed to create a special tribunal).
So its not like its solely up to israel to investigate/punish. That is just the first step and what is required for israel to comply with international law. If they fail to uphold their obligations there are other bodies to enforce albeit in practise powerful countries are often ignored by them.
>No, there is no such complexity. There are very obviously undebatable incidents of war crimes by the IDF. Like this footage from a drone who deliberately killed civilians in plain sight
I don't think these things are as unequivocal as you suggest. I mean, you're assuming those people are civilians. Maybe they're not. Almost certainly we will never know for sure, and if you can't acknowledge that then you're not being objective.
> I don't think these things are as unequivocal as you suggest. I mean, you're assuming those people are civilians. Maybe they're not. Almost certainly we will never know for sure, and if you can't acknowledge that then you're not being objective.
I actually expected this reply from you. And expected that you will not see the video and will not get interested in the story. [1] The video shows that they were not armed. If you're just going to define anyone you kill as, maybe he was Hamas. Then of course you will kill everyone and claim that. You don't kill unarmed people walking in plain sight. If this not obvious to you, then you are just wanted to justify the killing of each Palestinian.
> By your argument would you say that all of these are legitimate targets?
I am not your parent commenter, and do not necessarily subscribe to any of their arguments, but I can answer your question directly: yes, to some people, the conscription of all people in a certain age range does make them legitimate targets.
In particular, from my perspective, one of the primary downsides of the inclusion of women in the armed forces is specifically that it legitimizes taegetting (other) women as a military target.
So, to be explicit, if an organization I conscripts women into their military and someone else targets I women militarily, then I will hold I morally responsible for their fate. Similarly, if an organization H utilizes children as soldiers (or human shields) and other children are militarily targeted, I will consider H morally responsible for their fate. (And to be more explicit still: sucks for all the men everywhere.)
Except that Israel has no business engaging in armed conflict or "war" on a territory they occupy and control. That's the only legal issue that matters. Any armed conduct by Israel in Gaza is by international definition deemed ILLEGAL. There's no right of self defense when you're the predator.
It doesn't matter if they used dumb or smart bombs to destroy the target. When their selected target entered the building then the whole building became the target by extension. Smart bomb would have equally destroyed the building. Important comparison between dumb and smart bomb is only the probability to hit the target (the building) and IDF used precise diving maneuvers with dumb bombs and avoided hitting high rises with dumb bombs, making the probabilities close. That is not the issue here.
The main crux of the story is the automated target acquisition and the policy to engage the target in civilian homes - there are intelligence errors and collateral damage.
The questions are: is the intelligence gathering and decision making ethical and is the accepted collateral damage ratio reasonable given the scale.
This is different from for example Russian strategy to target whole neighborhoods to inflict terror in the civilian population by indiscriminate killings.
The West can stop it in a moment by imposing the same sanctions as it imposed on Russia. Or in a day, if it imposes that same sanctions that Iran or North Korea are subject to.
Instead the West keeps supplying Israel with weapons and munitions.
No, probably not. When the topic at hand is the selection criteria used to justify the killing of tens of thousands of civilians, your stance on whether the ones killing tens of thousands of civilians are justified in doing so is rather intrinsic.
I'm not sure that is possible. The nature and limitations of current AI technology means that it is almost impossible to talk about it without coming to certain conclusions about the party using it.
To put it bluntly, useing AI to decide on targets for lethal operations in unconsiounable given the current and forseable state of technology.
Come back to me when it can be trusted to make mortgage eligability questions without engaging in what would be blatantly illegal discrimination if not laundered by a computer algorithm.
The issue as I see it is that the tools available don't just determine how a given war is fought, they also determine whether it is fought at all.
If Israel wasn't able to use tools like this, then it probably wouldn't be viable for them to identify much of Hamas (that's kind of the point of guerilla warfare). Since that would make it difficult to fight a war efficiently, they would be more likely to engage in diplomacy.
Very doubtful. There is no room for any diplomacy after such an attack. It would be fought with more primitive weapons and the side with more bombs would prevail.
I suggest everyone listen to the current season of the Serial podcast.
>processing masses of data to rapidly identify potential “junior” operatives to target. Four of the sources said that, at one stage early in the war, Lavender listed as many as 37,000 Palestinian men who had been linked by the AI system to Hamas or PIJ.
This is really no different than how the world was working in 2001 and choosing who to send to Gitmo and other more secretive prisons, or bombing their location
More than anything else it feels like just like in the corporate world, the engineers in the army are overselling the AI buzzword to do exactly what they were doing before it existed
If you use your paypal account to send money to an account identified as ISIS, you're going to get a visit from a 3 letter organization really quick. This sounds exactly like that from what the users are testifying to. Any decision to bomb or not bomb a location wasn't up to the AI, but to humans
Australia, Canada, Denmark, France, Germany, and Norway were heavily involved in the war on terror. Bombing Afghanistan but also arresting "suspected" people of their own
I know many people won't read past the headline, but please try to.
This is the second paragraph:
"In addition to talking about their use of the AI system, called Lavender, the intelligence sources claim that Israeli military officials permitted large numbers of Palestinian civilians to be killed, particularly during the early weeks and months of the conflict."
> We wouldn't tolerate a SWAT team blowing up a hospital if the mafia had taken over the basement, I have no idea why you think this is acceptable.
While I agree with comparing Hamas to the mafia, both are criminal organizations, Hamas is more than that. It has rockets, it mascaraed civilians and holds the ideology of genociding its enemy. None of that is applicable to the mafia. So if its people are hiding in an hospital and refuse to surrender there is no moral objection to blow up the hospital (Also, if you are referring to Shifa Hospital, Israel didn't blow it, they entered with SWAT teams and there were fierce fighting costing also Israeli soldiers lives)
> It is exactly like the carpet bombing used by other nations.
I'll link to Wikipedia to help you spot the differences [0]
I think that no matter your view on the mafia or Hamas, it still doesn't justify the amount of death and destruction that is being done in Gaza. No matter how you spin it or sugar coat itw killing, displacing and starving civilians, killing aid workers and journalists and destroying civilian infrastructure are war crimes. As for the Al-Shifa Hospital, Israel's SWAT is either incompetent or not a SWAT team at all judging by the length of the operation, 2 weeks, and the photos of the Hospital after they left.
But Hamas is a cancer that constantly is trying to metastasize into Israel.
Seriously, what is Israel supposed to do? Anything they label as "Do not attack" just becomes an attack vector for Hamas.
I will try to answer that question. I think it's better to find the actual reason for what's happening rather than focus on the symptoms. Perhaps Israel could stop being an apartheid[0,1] and treat Palestinians equally. It could also stop imposing a blockade on Gaza[2] and allow it to blossom again and remove the need for supporting Hamas. It could as well allow Palestinians to exercise their right to return to where they or their parents lived [3].
It's easy to point the fingers at Hamas for the region's suffering but that is dishonest and completely omits the big role that Israel played in creating this and previous events.
Perhaps you could help me with that? I was trying to reply to the parent's question about what Israel is supposed to do and offered some alternatives to indiscriminate killings. The part about the right of return dates back to around 1948, right around the time the state of Israel was established. How far back in time should we go for it to stop being a symptom and become a cause?
Your argument is just whataboutism and barely worth even engaging with. It is possible that both sides of the military conflict are wrong. Being against Israel’s actions here don’t imply support for Hamas and vice versa. In this case, Israel is the one with most of the power, and they’ve used that power to kill far more people than Hamas. To defend that abuse of power is immoral.
It seems that you learned a new word "whataboutism" and don't really know how to use it.
Hamas is controlling Gaza for 15 years now. Did they care about the population? did they build roads, schools? or dig tunnels and accumulated weapons?
So what ideas do you have? giving them candies? Hamas must be eliminated from position of power, yes it will cost innocent lives, but if you ever wish to move toward peace that is the first step.
And Israel is blameless in all this? They’ve done nothing wrong? Colonizing the West Bank is just fine? You can’t pull the shit they have and not expect splashback. They’ve put the Palestians in a cage, poked them with a stick, and now they act surprised when some of them lash out. I’m not going to defend Hamas’s actions, but what the hell can you expect? Shake a hornets nest and you’re going to get stung.
And if the cost of eliminating Hamas is killing innocent people, don’t you think that might radicalize some of the remaining people? This kind of shit hasn’t worked in the past, so why would it work now? They’re killing innocent people for no good reason.
> They’re killing innocent people for no good reason.
They're killing innocent people as the least-bad option.
Hamas killed a bunch of innocent Israelis. Hamas has stated, clearly and repeatedly, that they intend to continue doing so until they have killed them all. Israel has decided that Hamas has to be destroyed, in order to protect innocent people.
But Hamas surrounds itself with civilians[1]. Faced with the the choice of killing Hamas (and killing innocent Palestinians in the process), or not killing Hamas (and having Hamas kill innocent Israelis), Israel has chosen to kill Hamas. This is not a choice between killing innocents and not killing innocents - that choice is not an option. This is a choice of which innocents die.
[1] Why does Hamas surround itself with civilians? Because it knows that Israel is reluctant to cause civilian casualties. They went far enough this time that Israel has overcome that reluctance.
Sure it has worked in the past, eradicating both Nazi Germany and Empire of Japan during WWII cost many innocent lives. "Few" millions. Now let us count together the wars started by these nations started afterward. I'll start: 0
Of course it will all amount to nothing if Israel will not finish the job.
> And Israel is blameless in all this...
The problem is that you assign 0 responsibility to Hamas. As if they are lesser human as if you consider them as dogs or something. Hamas took full control of Gaza, they could have done whatever they like and the choose to invest everything into attacking Israel. Evidently it wasn't much of a cage as they accumulated enough weapon to engage in 6 months war (and counting...). Fact remains that Israel decolonizied Gaza and in return they got October 7. What lesson should they learn from it?
Because this is war and not a SWAT police operation?
If soldiers in the field have reason to believe the enemy is in a building and call in air support to bomb it, no part of that is a war crime. Even if someone later goes and discovers the people in that building were actually preschoolers; what matters is what the people in the field making the decisions knew at that moment.
You realize you're actively advocating for a lack of critical thinking and investigation, to maintain plausible deniability? What could possibly go wrong?
The whole point of this article (and much of what we've learned in the last few months) is that Israel is clearly not just targeting areas with suspected Hamas activity.
They're using indiscriminate weapons (so not targeting at all!), hitting known UN and humanitarian sites, and killing so ruthlessly that they killed Israeli hostages that made the mistake of being living humans in front of IDF soldiers.
Not only are they indescriminately killing, they are purposefully targeting and murdering aid workers that coordinated WITH THE IDF before entering the area.
"…were traveling in a convoy that had been coordinated with the Israel Defense Forces and was following an IDF-approved route. The vehicles had GPS trackers and SOS beacons broadcasting their positions"
Neither Isrealis nor Hamas believe it's their duty to prevent civilian Palestinian deaths in this conflict. At this point anyone that can do anything to improve the situation are the civilians themselves by social distancing from Hamas associates by at least the typical blast radius. Athough I don't imagine this would be very effective as well.
"Democratic" is pushing it a tad too far—none of the Islamic world follows a rule of law that would be something akin to a democracy; they're monarchies, theocracies, or in many cases autocracies. The only actual democracy in the middle east is—well, Israel.
Incapable is a strong word—but much (if not most) of the Muslim world advocates for Sharia law which is essentially the opposite of a democracy. When it's practiced in it's truest form it's the most repressive system of laws against women in the modern world.
As the world becomes more modern and democratic principles become more highly prized, I think we see some glimmers of hope in the muslim world as parts of the population begin to value more democratic principles. But they have to do this in the context of the theocratic states in which they live in where these values were never first class citizens—so I think that's why we haven't seen much progress on these fronts in that part of the world.
I agree with you that there's a double standard in regards to the application of the law—I'm not privy on why Palestinians are subject to Israel's laws, and I wouldn't charitably say it's for reasons that are morally sound. I do think that allowing Palestinian's to vote in Israel's parliamentary elections is a non-starter for obvious reasons.
These racist Islamophobic talking points are so grimy to read.
The "modern and democratic" world leaders are currently trying - and failing - to whitewash an undeniable, livestreamed, openly boasted genocide and land-grab.
This is enabled by a variety of full-on unapologetic apocalyptic death-cult religious extremists and a complicit media who happily run fossil fuel greenwashing campaigns and silence anti-war voices.
Compare Muslims killed by Jews and Christians over the last few decades to the reverse. It's hard to argue for any moral high ground whatsoever when you look at the raw numbers.
If the best argument you have is that the West treats women better, maybe look at how many women we've murdered in the middle east, or the 26,000 rape-related pregnancies in Texas, or the Ethopian Jews sterilized without being informed in Israel, etc, etc, etc.
Those vastly wealthy ME leaders repressing women the hardest? They got all that money selling oil to us.
It's a lot of work unpeeling the layers and layers of Western hypocrisy and bullshit, but it has to be done. It has to. We can't keep killing millions of brown people for their natural resources and expect to have a nice society/planet to live on.
Iran had a democracy, until the CIA toppled it in 1953. In general having oil means foreign powers will keep installing useful puppets as leaders. The middle east having few democracies may have more to do with Western greed than with the preferences of Arabs or Muslims.
I think the implication is that Gaza does have semi-autonomy (it is a complicated situation - there's a blockade, but it has security autonomy within its region. Or did before October 7th).
And Gaza was pushed towards democratic elections, which they held, elected Hamas, and Hamas hasn't permitted a democracy since then.
Let's not forget that Likud and Netanyahu were instrumental in funding and arming Hamas. The PLO and Arafat were becoming increasing moderate and willing to sit down and work out a peaceful two state solution. But the ultra right wing of Israel didn't want that, and didn't want awkward questions like "If they're willing to negotiate and work through diplomacy, why isn't Israel?" so they thought it'd be better to fund the rise of the extremist Hamas.
"From the River to the Sea" (Jordan River to the Red Sea) was not just a comment by Palestinian extremists, but was Likud's actual election campaign and slogan throughout the 1970s.
And it's hard, as a Gazan, to argue with Hamas, considering Hamas are about the only ones armed, thanks to Israel's ongoing air blockade (Arafat International Airport bombed in early 2000s), and the Israeli navy blockading Port of Gaza since 2007.
> The PLO and Arafat were becoming increasing moderate and willing to sit down and work out a peaceful two state solution.
You said this in another comment. While I agree that Netanyahu has done a lot of harm over the last 15 years, specifically by on-purpose shooting down chances for peace, I think you are giving the PA and Arafat too much credit. They were offered multiple deals that they turned down, walking away from negotiations without offering alternatives.
It's totally possible that with leadership towards peace on the Israeli side, that might've changed and we would've eventually seen a true peace deal signed. And for sure Netanyahu put effort into quashing that, one of his many sins. But we don't need to pretend that the PA was better than it was. It's not at all clear that, absent Netanyahu, a deal coudl've been agreed on.
You do make a good point with this. Certainly the PLO and Arafat were responsible for many heinous acts, and I didn't mean to downplay that or unduly make them out as harbingers of peace who were just being derailed by Israel.
I don't pretend to understand their motivations for moderation - maybe it was the feeling that their "way" was never going to out stubborn Israel, maybe Arafat grew tired in his old age of the conflict. There were many failed attempts, some briefly successful, others not at all, much like the Troubles. And Arafat and the PLO should shoulder a large chunk of that responsibility.
But like you say, it's entirely possible that an accord could have been reached, and also entirely possible that it would have tripped over 1,000 other hurdles and not happened.
I just feel way too much is going into overlooking not just the early tolerance of Hamas because it was politically expedient to the Israeli right wing, but the active enablement and fostering.
> I just feel way too much is going into overlooking not just the early tolerance of Hamas because it was politically expedient to the Israeli right wing, but the active enablement and fostering.
I mean, that's true, and I think Israel has done immoral things for at least 15 years, mostly by not strongly pursuing peace, with or without a partner.
Still, I think you might be over-indexing on the idea of "Israel propped up Hamas". What would the alternative have looked like exactly? Israel fighting more wars against Hamas? Israel not letting Qatar money in (which is one of the big claims against Netanyahu)? I'm sure that had that happened, the world would've condemned this as "depriving Gazans of aid they desperately need".
After Hamas was elected in 2006, in elections deemed democratic and fair by international observers (Jimmy Carter's organisation, The Carter Center) the US government at the time armed and trained a Fatah faction to stage a coup, that backfired, leaving Hamas in control of Gaza.
Ever since that, there has been constant interference with Hamas' government, including multiple military campaigns by Israel - in "Operations" Cast Lead, Pillar of Defense, Swords of Iron and I forget which others, Wikipedia has a timeline [1].
Basically, ever since the election, Gaza has been under attack every few months or years. Hamas probably weren't in a great hurry to have elections, although it should be noted that their ideology is to take power democratically and not through power of arms [2]. In any case, they're in a constant state of war and it's hard to hold democratic elections under the circumstances. Netanyahu has used the same excuse, repeatedly, to avoid being kicked out of government in the current crisis.
Btw, all that about the interference with the democratic process in Gaza after Hamas' election is on wikipedia [3] (meaning it's easy to get a first idea of what happened; then you can check their sources).
> Ever since that, there has been constant interference with Hamas' government, including multiple military campaigns by Israel - in "Operations" Cast Lead, Pillar of Defense, Swords of Iron and I forget which others, Wikipedia has a timeline [1].
Just to state the obvious context you didn't include, these operations were usually the direct result of rocket attacks on Israel. Every time an operation ended in ceasefire, a few years later, Hamas would start up rocket attacks again, and Israel would retaliate.
That was not the case "every time" and I'm not sure it was the case "usually", or in the largest operations. For example, according to Wikipedia, Operation Cast Lead (2008, ~1400 Palestinians dead) started with an Israeli strike:
A six month long ceasefire between Israel and Hamas ended on 4 November, when the IDF made a raid into Deir al-Balah, central Gaza to destroy a tunnel, killing several Hamas militants. Israel said the raid was a preemptive strike and Hamas intended to abduct further Israeli soldiers,[37][38] while Hamas characterized it as a ceasefire violation,[37][39] and responded with rocket fire into Israel.[40][41]
Operation Breaking Dawn (2022) started with pre-emptive assassinations of Palestinian Islamic Jihad leaders:
The initial attack included the targeted killing of Tayseer al-Jabari, a military leader of the group.[21][22][23] On the second day, the PIJ commander of the Southern area of the Strip, Khaled Mansour, was also targeted and killed. Islamic Jihad stated that the Israeli bombardments were a 'declaration of war' and responded with retaliatory rocket fire towards Israel.[24]
Other "operations" and bouts of violence started without any side clearly breaking a ceasefire, but instead with violence that kept escalating during a period of calm.
The 2021 violence (not a named "operation") e.g. started with violence against, and suppression of the religious rights, of Palestinians in East Jerusalem, and subsequent riots:
The crisis was triggered[34] on 6 May, when Palestinians in East Jerusalem began protesting over an anticipated decision of the Supreme Court of Israel on the eviction of six Palestinian families in the East Jerusalem neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah.[35] Under international law, the area, effectively annexed by Israel in 1980, is a part of the Israeli-occupied West Bank;[36][37] On 7 May, according to Israel's Channel 12, Palestinians threw stones at Israeli police forces,[38] who then stormed the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound[39] using tear gas, rubber bullets, and stun grenades.[40][39][41] The crisis prompted protests around the world as well as official reactions from world leaders.
But you're right, let's not omit any context. In particular, let's not forget that the Palestinians made several attempts to make progress in the relations with Israel that did not include any rockets whatsoever, after Hamas' election, for example The Great March of Return (2018):
At least 189 Palestinians were killed between 30 March and 31 December 2018.[28]: 6 [29][30] An independent United Nations commission set the number of known militants killed at 29 out of the 189.[5] Other sources claim a higher figure, of at least 40.[31][20][32] Israeli soldiers fired tear gas and live ammunition.[33] According to Robert Mardini, head of Middle East for the International Committee of the Red Cross...
Stop occupying and brutalizing them, and agree to two states along the 1967 borders, as called for by both international law and every other country in the world.
In 2005? Nope. So the point still stand. And in later 2020+, Armed? Nope. only allowing Qatar money to pass was choosing between 2 evils which doesn't mean you support them. I mean, what is the option you try to refer to which would not lead to this point with a Dictatorship Terroristic Religious government of Gaza, which only backed by Iran?
Please check your facts. Nobody woke up to a Hamas takeover. Quite the opposite: there was a takeover attempt by a Fatah faction (a coup) armed by the US. The coup backfired, there was a civil war, Hamas won and it came to control Gaza.
You can find this on wikipedia, so it's not like it's some conspiracy theory brewing in the dark corners of the internets. Even Vanity Fair has written about it:
In April 2008 Vanity Fair published "The Gaza Bombshell":
There is no one more hated among Hamas members than Muhammad Dahlan, long Fatah's resident strongman in Gaza. Dahlan, who most recently served as Abbas's national-security adviser, has spent more than a decade battling Hamas. ... Bush has met Dahlan on at least three occasions. After talks at the White House in July 2003, Bush publicly praised Dahlan as "a good, solid leader." In private, say multiple Israeli and American officials, the U.S. president described him as "our guy."
Vanity Fair has obtained confidential documents, since corroborated by sources in the U.S. and Palestine, which lay bare a covert initiative, approved by Bush and implemented by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Deputy National Security Adviser Elliott Abrams, to provoke a Palestinian civil war. The plan was for forces led by Dahlan, and armed with new weapons supplied at America's behest, to give Fatah the muscle it needed to remove the democratically elected Hamas-led government from power. (The State Department declined to comment.)
Some sources call the scheme "Iran-contra 2.0," recalling that Abrams was convicted (and later pardoned) for withholding information from Congress during the original Iran-contra scandal under President Reagan. There are echoes of other past misadventures as well: the C.I.A.'s 1953 ouster of an elected prime minister in Iran, which set the stage for the 1979 Islamic revolution there; the aborted 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion, which gave Fidel Castro an excuse to solidify his hold on Cuba; and the contemporary tragedy in Iraq.[66]
There is no material proof that Hamas has put bases in any hospital, and if you think human shields are fair game, then that speaks to your willingness to dehumanize Palestinians.
They permitted larger numbers of civilians being killed in the pursuit of terrorist barbarics who raped and murdered and dragged babies with their mothers into underground dungeons, and praised themselves for that while hiding between civilians.
Rapes have been officially recognized as having happened by the UN, i don’t see how that is hard to believe given Hamas filmed most of their atrocities on GoPros. Oct 7 was a brutal terror campaign regardless of your position on the conflict, denying that is absurd
> Following a mission lasting just over two weeks, the UN team found 'reasonable grounds to believe' that 'rape and gang rape' took place during the attack on October 7, 2023, while acknowledging the limitations of its own investigation
Read the report - there is zero evidence of rape that hasn't been thoroughly debunked. That "reasonable grounds" line was apparently added to placate Israel by the report's author (who has a history with Israel).
Even the NYT now admits (albeit quietly) that their "expose" contains no evidence.
And, as I'm sure you know, there are exactly zero videos showing rape. Quite frankly, I find it incredible that some people still believe the atrocity propaganda, even when it's so obvious and of such poor quality.
in the article they say it's explicit and it's 20 to 1 and goes to 100 to 1 for some targets. which makes it obvious it's not a rule but an order of magnitude to estimate the importance of a target. you know like when we use the Fibonacci suite as a measure for the difficulty of a backlog item during the planning game
As bad as this story makes the Israelis sound, it still reads like ass-covering to make it sound like they were at least trying to kill militants. It's been clear from the start that they've been targeting journalists, medical staff and anyone involved in aid distribution, with the goal of rendering life in Gaza impossible.
Remember the first hospital Israel bombed and then claimed it wasn't them? Since that didn't result in any consequences, now Israel bombs hospitals nearly every day. Same story with the flour massacre.
That one actually legitimately may not have been them. Which then creates a smokescreen of plausible deniability for atrocities which they are the clear authors of.
The reason we all rushed to point fingers at them for that one is... they'd done it before.
Geez. Simply the trajectory changing twice in flight rules out rockets and makes is pretty clear it was a directed Interceptor. But the fog of war is thick so we'll probably never really know. So sad.
Yea this really seems like more of a weapon of propaganda directed at Israelis. If they didn't want people to know about it, we probably wouldn't know about it. The fact that we're talking about it is probably not an accident, and I guess the play here would be to convince Israelis that the army is technologically advanced and they know what they're doing, so don't question it. But AI or not they were going to commit genocide and violate every international humanitarian law on the book. But for the people that still believe the genocide is justified I think this probably improves the optics.
I don't know if this was really planned. With my best will, I cannot imagine the Israeli military & Netanyahu's government releasing this to cover their ass. This could be potentially something which worsens their actions and not lessen them.
Obviously, nobody in an international court will be able to say "... but the AI did it!" - This is just far too easy as a way out. There are rules to AI Usage and one of them is not a usage like that - as already said somewhere else: The AI is only as ethical/moral as the humans behind them.
> It's been clear from the start that they've been targeting journalists, medical staff and anyone involved in aid distribution
I really doubt that's the case, seems more like a "fire first if any suspicion at all and ask questions later" policy. If there was an intentional policy to kills journalists, aid workers and medical staff you'd see a lot more dead.
And you have to be extremely naive or one sided to not realize that Hamas does use those type of roles as cover for their operations.
Not trying to justify Israel's actions because they are fucked up, but based on all the evidence we have you are clearly wrong.
> I really doubt that's the case, seems more like a "fire first if any suspicion at all and ask questions later" policy.
I will try to solve your doubt. Gaza is a closed area. You can't just cross freely the frontier unless Israel allows it. Before that, humanitarian organisations are required to inform directly to Israeli army about everything that they want to do, where they want to go, how many, an when. They are clearly identified by a logo at all times. Israel had every single piece of info necessary to avoid bombing aid workers and had it for weeks
Despite that, Israel can't avoid to keep killing this workers; and they were doing the same repeatedly, systematically, for the last six months, in multiple attacks that last tens of minutes (maybe even hours?), while singing "oops!, I did it again".
The theory of the honest mistake is getting really difficult to swallow.
I think you're proving the opposite - like you said they have all the information so if they really wanted to kill all aid workers they could easily do that, so the fact that they haven't makes it pretty clear that isn't their goal.
You really think Israel coordinated with WCK for weeks now only to suddenly decide to kill a few aid workers intentionally? It makes zero sense.
And if you wanna go all conspiracy theory, why not just make it to look like Hamas killed the aid workers? It would be extremely easy for Israel to do so.
Well, they had assassinated yet "a few" (hundreds of) physicians, and nurses, and ambulance drivers in the area, so maybe are getting more bold about it.
> why not just make it to look like Hamas killed the aid workers?
Because they simply don't care, obviously. They even feel safe enough to film their own crimes.
So again, why not make it look like it was Hamas who killed the aid workers? I mean if it was all planned ahead seems like an obvious thing to do given that it wouldn't taint the "good behaviour" while also stopping aid.
1) Israel doesn't have to - they can do essentially anything, and their US/GB/DE/FR backers will continue to support and enable their genocidal behaviour
2) The Israeli army comes across as extremely unprofessional - I honestly believe Israel doesn't have full control over them. It's a car-crash of "soldiers" who believe Palestinians are inhuman beasts, combined with commanders who don't give a shit and probably couldn't control their squad in any case
1) I don't agree since international pressure is escalating, but regardless it would be a win-win for Israel to blame it on Hamas so I just don't buy it.
2) So what is it? Does the idf targets aid worker intentionally as part of a idf/Israel policy or is it some rogue soldier/commander that decided to do it? Those are two very different claims.
1) Thanks largely to social media, you have a point. However, it's still abundantly clear that Israeli can act how it wants. At best, western politicians (many of whom are bought and paid for by Israel!) will make platitudes and try to distance themselves while the latest US-back Israeli attrocity/massacre "blows over"
2) could be both; Israeli commanders made clear that grunts can do what they want - "all restrictions are removed", and we now know that commanders designated "kill zones" where anyone was to be murdered. I believe it's both US-backed Israeli policy, and they haven't got full control of their "soldiers"
And what consequences did Israel face after destroying almost all of Gaza and killing over 32000 humans, mostly women and children, and blocking aid and starving the rest of the population, and killing aid workers, journalists, and doctors?
Nothing. Literally zero consequences. Yet someone like you is not convinced.
The WCK withdrew from Gaza after being killed by Israel.
Now Israel can say that they didn't stop aid, they just "accidentally" killed an entire envoy of aid, which unfortunately led to the WCK withdrawing from Gaza.
It is. The IDF shot once, then when a vehicle came to rescue survivors, they shot again. Then the third attempt at rescueing survivors, they shot a third time. Purposefully murdering aid workers that coordinated with the IDF before entering the area.
“…were traveling in a convoy that had been coordinated with the Israel Defense Forces and was following an IDF-approved route. The vehicles had GPS trackers and SOS beacons broadcasting their positions”
That's not really a rebuttal - the entire convoy was (incorrectly) identified as a target. If they were actually military it certainly would make sense to kill the targets one by one as it's hard to target simultaneously.
Probably going to be flame city in this thread, but I think it’s worth asking: is it possible that even with collateral damage (killing women and children because of hallucinations) that AI based killing technology is actually more ethical and safer than warfare that doesn’t use AI. But AI is really just another name for math, so maybe it’s not a useful conversation. Militaries use advanced tech and that’s nothing new.
> AI based killing technology is actually more ethical and safer than warfare that doesn’t use AI
No. It's just a tool. People still configure the parameters and ultimately make decisions. Likewise modern missile do not make conflicts more or less ethical just because they require advanced physics.
The people mentioned in the article say that they spent about 20 seconds on each target and basically just rubber stamped them. In that case, I don't think people are ultimately making the decisions in a traditional sense.
Netanyahu has always been saying that they will kill every single last Hamas member, no matter the cost.
I mean, is anyone who paid attention surprised by this Lavender system? It's doing exactly what they said they were doing: kill everyone suspected of Hamas affiliation, no matter the cost.
We can have interesting ethical discussions about the AI aspect, but I feel that's not really what this is about.
I think that depends on what the alternative is. It seems to me that the problem is that there's no way for Israel to wipe out Hamas without massive collateral damage. However, instead of giving up on wiping out Hamas, they just decided that they are OK with the collateral damage.
No the AI was the scapegoat for IDF deciding to "target" low-level enemies, then bombing them with bunker-buster 2000lb bombs that leveled entire buildings and city blocks around those targets.
The AI did something, but the IDF used it to justify effectively committing a genocide.
I think the concern is that the AI is making life or death judgements against people. Some may of course be lawful combatants under the rules that govern such things, but the fact that an AI is drawing these conclusions that humans act on is the shocking part.
I doubt an artillery system using machine learning to correct its trajectory and get better accuracy would be controversial, since the AI in that case is just controlling the path of a shell that an operator has determined needs to hit a target decided upon by humans.
We need to consider what are the other options in that situation, my thinking is that due to Hamas being fully embedded in the civilian population, the only other "reasonable" method is to carpet bomb... After reading the article I much prefer the AI method.
Both of these options are war crimes. I think only talking about these two options presents a false dichotomy. There are many more options that could have been considered. For example, Israel could have accepted the hostage swap and then picked Hamas operatives slowly but surely given their superior military and intelligence. Israel however prefered killing lots of civilians as "collateral damage" in order to kill a few Hamas operatives and they didn't even manage to rescue hostages. The crime lies in the blatant disregard for civilian life in Gaza.
This is a bizarre take. I've seen it multiple times, in multiple threads now. Somehow your only options are "kill women and children" in large amounts or carpet bomb. I feel like there are dozens, if not hundreds of other options if anyone gave a damn.
Ultimately, it's a calculus of "us vs them" and which lives are valued or devalued.
Relatedly, are police justified when they shoot at a house with 500 rounds, killing the suspect and their entire family that happened to be in the general vicinity? Is the math "one law enforcement > n lives as long as one was a (potential) badguy"?
If you wanted to do this with minimal civilian casualties, then you bring the ground forces in, block by block, and you clear things the old-fashioned way. You take casualties, but those are casualties who signed up to be "warfighters".
Now this IS inflamatory: I think we have a lot of warfighters and cops who are just plain cowards, that's the mentality. Why have a class of trained and armed people who are so afraid of dying that they'd rather kill anything and everything in their path than potentially be injured or killed?
I thought the ethos of the warfighter and law enforcement was "act as a shield, act as a bulwark, save lives, give my life so that others may be free, etc etc". Nowadays its "nah I'm not going in that school, there's badguys with guns and I might die, just stay outside".
That leads to a failure of imagination where somehow "blow up a building with innocent people as long as you got your target" seems somehow justified because you didn't risk a 'good guy' life. Cowardice.
In thinking through my response (as rational people do), I think I was a bit too inflammatory. I still agree with myself in principle but it's not quite fair to label people who want to live while doing their job as cowards. It's one of those two wrongs don't make a right. The innocents deserve to live, as do the warfighters. Being a warfighter (conscription aside) is a choice though - being 'collateral' is not. It would be great if those with the power to take a life put even this much thought into it.
Two can play that game: if the Israeli government didn't want their civilians to be killed, then they wouldn't occupy Palestine. As they don't care for israeli lives, they conscript every adult into their military, making them all valid targets.
Killing these civilians is one way to ensure that these people will be reliable Hamas supporters for years to come. Absolutely crooked that Israel is treating Hamas as though it was a legitimate representative of the Palestinian people and fully responsible for them. This isn't some kind of democracy we're talking about.
The IDF is headquartered in the middle of Tel Aviv. Unlike them, the Palestinian resistance groups in Gaza don't have a lot of options. It's effectively a concentration camp and it's one of the most densely populated areas on earth. So you're effectively saying you don't accept Palestinians have a right to resist their colonization. Just say that, rather than trying to hide behind "human shield" tropes.
> “This is unparalleled, in my memory,” said one intelligence officer who used Lavender, adding that they had more faith in a “statistical mechanism” than a grieving soldier. “Everyone there, including me, lost people on October 7. The machine did it coldly. And that made it easier.”
It's not as much about the comments as it is about Israel. Anything putting them in bad light gets insta-flagged and HN moderation is ok with this. For example, I give my own comment 5 minutes max.
IDF flag everything. You just need to watch the live comments on any YT video about what they are doing in Gaza to see they have a mommoth operation going on of silencing everything and putting up lots of Anti Muslim vile.
Why do you blame Americans? From my personal point of view, we Europeans are much more supportive of Israel. The streets in western Europe are misleading because western Europe is full of Muslim immigrants and champagne socialists.
It’s slightly more complicated a.) looks like male b.) lives here c.) send unguided munition if less than 15 or 100 other non targets depending upon value of target.
@dang Please consider that this is an important and well sourced article regarding military use of AI and machine learning and shouldn't disappear because some users find it upsetting.
I agree with you, this conversations should be had. But unfortunately a small, but comitted, minority can (and often will) turn the comments on sensitive topics into a toxic cesspool.
Why not just treat it as a way for undesirable guests to reveal themselves? Sounds like HN never wanted these guests and doesn't have the administrative attention to be watching all the time.
Civilized conversation is limited by the emotional stability of those having it.
People have it so easy now they've grown up and spent their entire lives in total comfort and without even the slightest hint of adversarial interaction. So when they encounter it, they overreact and panic at the slightest bit of scrutiny rather than behave like reasonable adults.
It’s the most important thing going on in the world. And geeks shouldn’t be thought of as people who will sit and think how cool the death machine AI that Israel has developed which chooses how and when 30K children die… geeks make this tech, profitise from it, and lurk about HN and when it comes to facing the reality of their creations they want to close the conversation down, flag comments, and evade the hurty real world reality of it. Sad. And pathetic. I’m not saying you are personally.
> They tend to remove posts causing flame in comments
It can be fun to consider the precise and comprehensive truth value of such statements (or, the very nature of "reality" for extra fun) using strict, set theory based non-binary logic.
It can also be not fun. Or sometimes even dangerous.
> Well, this post is surely going to get removed because of flaming in comments
This is one prediction of many possible outcomes.
Independent of the probability of a negative downstream outcome:
1. It is preferable to correct the unwelcome behavior itself, not the acceptable events simply preceding it (that are non-causal). For example, we denounce when a bully punches a kid, not that the kid stood his ground.*
2. We don't want to create a self-fulfilling prophecy in the form of self-censorship.
* I'm not dogmatic on this. There are interesting situations with blurry lines. For example, consider defensive driving, where it is rational to anticipate risky behavior from other drivers and proactively guard against it, rather than waiting for an accident to happen.
> I know the following question sounds absurd, but they say there’s no such thing as a silly question…
People say a lot of things.
Some questions are ill-posed; some bake-in false assumptions.
What you do _after_ you concoct a question is important. Is it worth our time answering?
> Does the AI use regular power to run, or does it run on the tears and blood of combatant 3 year old children - I mean terrorists?
From where I sit, the question above appears to be driven mostly by rhetoric or confusion. I'm interested in reasoning, evidence, and philosophy. I don't see much of that in the question above. There are better questions, such as:
To what degree does a particular AI system have values? To what degree are these values aligned with people's values? And which people are we talking about? How are the values of many people aggregated? And how do we know with confidence that this is so?
If you believe your question is worth pursuing, then do so. From where I sit, it was ill-posed at best, most likely just heated rhetoric, and maybe even pure confusion. But I was willing to spend some time in the hopes of pointing you in a better* direction.
You can burn tremendous time on poorly-framed questions, but why do that? Perhaps you don't want to answer the question, though, because you didn't ask it. You get to ask questions of us, but don't reply to follow-up questions that push back on your point of view?
* Subjectively better, of course, from my point of view. But not just some wing-nut point of view. What I'm saying is aligned with many (if not most) deep thinkers you'll come across. In short, if you ask poorly-framed questions, you'll get nonsense out the other end.
P.S. Your profile says "I’m too honest. Deal with it." which invites reciprocity.
>The HN crowd is overly enthusiastic to see Jews die, if anything.
I wouldn't be so quick to say that. I would guess that 99.99999% of us at a bare minimum don't want to see any innocent people die, regardless of ethnicity, religious creed, nationality, etc. In fact, I'd wager my life savings and my company on the guess that most rational adults don't want to see innocent people die regardless of where in the world they are. HN is no different.
Israel is not 100% scot-free and innocent here, and that needs to be stressed. I don't condone Hamas's behavior at all (it's abhorrent), nor do I condone bombing a clearly-marked vehicle delivering humanitarian aid (also abhorrent).
Also, Israel =! all jewish people world wide. You'll find some of Israel's largest criticisms come from non-Israeli Jews.
There are more comments like this from him, you can find them using Algolia.
HN is not acting in bad faith whatsoever.
This story in particular “qualifies” for what would be interesting to HN readers while taking into account the sensitivity of the subject.
I fully expect the discussion to be allowed and the flag lifted, but HN mod team is very small and it might take a while - it quite literally always does.
Agreed. Also take into account how this and a few mirror discussions are rapidly degrading into “x are bad” political discussions which are just not that intere here.
People believing admins when they claim moderation and censorship is out of their hands and the result of a faulty system they have no control over, has to take the cake for this years distortion of reality.
Fact is very specific topics are routinely being suppressed systematically.
I wrote about this here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39920732. If you take a look at that and the links there, and still have a question that isn't answered, I'd be happy to hear it.
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[ 2.7 ms ] story [ 181 ms ] threadThe future is now.
People can and do argue about the morality of the Tokyo firebombings and Dresden and Hiroshima and Nagasaki where it was largely purely civilian populations in cities that were attacked, but I think it's _fairly_ non-controversial that in a total war that industrial sites and weapons manufacturing facilities and so on are valid targets in a war situation, and they are generally staffed by non-combatants.
The rule in the geneva conventions is: "In so far as objects are concerned, military objectives are limited to those objects which by their nature, location, purpose or use make an effective contribution to military action and whose total or partial destruction, capture or neutralization, in the circumstances ruling at the time, offers a definite military advantage."
Which encompasses quite a large category of non-combatants that are likely to be in the area of those "objects".
edit: not making any kind of judgement or statement at all about this particular situation -- just clarifying in general the rules of war involving non-combatants.
Quite the opposite. Israel has the Palestinians entirely cornered and that already for the past 76 years. They have always had the upper hand and could very easily have negotiated a reasonable peace deal. Heck, where they not racist ethnonationalist bigots they would have incorporated the Palestinians in Israel as happens in normal situations when one state decides to land grab another. If anything it is the Palestinians, you know the victims who are entirely cornered and helpless, who should use your argument to justify civilian causalities, but you would be completely horrified if were to write that.
I think what Israel is doing is bad; I also happen to think that putting the Palestinians in control of Israel+Palestine (which is what integrating them into Israel would do, since they form a numeric majority) would be much worse (because at least Israeli values align closer with western values than the Palestinian ones). So there are no real good options than a tentative ceasefire and everyone on edge again.
It is reminiscent of the war on terror in Afghanistan, and I imagine the outcome will be similarly somber, and likely objectives probably won't be met.
https://edition.cnn.com/2023/10/04/middleeast/jerusalem-chri...
1) Where do you draw the line? 2) At what number does that one become two? 3) how long do you think until AI is justified to start killing those single digit persons?
4) What if that one person is you? (this is not that hard to imagine, suppose a fictitious near future where everyone that contributed to some extinction event is deemed killable: AI development, global warming, failed to do some recycling, etc).
(not talking about this conflict in particular, just making an abstract point)
Well the line would be at when you are causing more deaths than you are saving.
Would you rather a larger number of people die?
> What if that one person is you?
What if the people's lives that would be saved are you, and this number is much larger?
That argument actually works in favor of the option that saves the most lives.
There is no neutral decision here. If you choose to not save the much larger group of people, those people are dead.
So your only choice is to pick which groups of people will die. My prefer is to minimize that amount to be as small as possible. But if you want that number to be larger, and to have more people die, that requires some explanation.
No I don’t think so.
I didn’t get the impression that is the intent.
[0] https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/what-we-know-so-fa...
> It is also because Mr. Obama embraced a disputed method for counting civilian casualties that did little to box him in. It in effect counts all military-age males in a strike zone as combatants, according to several administration officials, unless there is explicit intelligence posthumously proving them innocent.
> Counterterrorism officials insist this approach is one of simple logic: people in an area of known terrorist activity, or found with a top Qaeda operative, are probably up to no good. “Al Qaeda is an insular, paranoid organization — innocent neighbors don’t hitchhike rides in the back of trucks headed for the border with guns and bombs,” said one official, who requested anonymity to speak about what is still a classified program.
Very clearly not, as admitted by the man himself. https://www.pbs.org/newshour/world/obama-says-u-s-drone-stri...
If you want Al Qaeda-specific cases, they take about three seconds to find. https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2023/05/18/pentagon-dro..., for example.
edit: The Yemen case cited in my link above was AQ; https://www.hrw.org/report/2014/02/19/wedding-became-funeral...
"They were an adult male near a target" is not a safe way of determining guilt for capital crimes. We should not accept it.
> This was despite knowing that the system makes what are regarded as “errors” in approximately 10 percent of cases, and is known to occasionally mark individuals who have merely a loose connection to militant groups, or no connection at all.
> Moreover, the Israeli army systematically attacked the targeted individuals while they were in their homes — usually at night while their whole families were present — rather than during the course of military activity.
> “We were not interested in killing [Hamas] operatives only when they were in a military building or engaged in a military activity,” A., an intelligence officer, told +972 and Local Call. “On the contrary, the IDF bombed them in homes without hesitation, as a first option. It’s much easier to bomb a family’s home. The system is built to look for them in these situations.”
[0] https://www.france24.com/en/middle-east/20240403-gaza-aid-wo...
The world should not forget this.
Sure would be convenient if Hamas is 6% of the population
Which is what I kinda assume Hamas wanted in the first place.
[0] https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/palestinian-killed...
You've got two sides, Able and Baker, with a range of opinions on both sides, from a moderate majority to an extreme minority.
Able extremists attack Baker in a way which is big, shocking and violent.
Baker is provoked into retaliation against Able. Crucially, the retaliation is against the whole of Able, including the moderates.
When it all dies down, there are less Able moderates and more Able extremists. (Because if someone dropped an Acme piano on my family, I'd be tempted to strap on the Acme exploding underpants, too).
This "leverage your enemy's strength to radicalize your own people" approach is common. 9/11 is probably the clearest example, but you could even see the non-violent Civil Rights protests in America in this light (march, provoke violent response, gain converts and sympathy). If this wasn't one of the factors behind the October attacks, Hamas are dumber than I give them credit for.
Thus, I see "the Palestinian people will not forget this" as "the cycle of violence is locked in for another generation".
I however disagree with the framing in the example. Starting from the event that Able attacked Baker without mentioning the reasons or the context clearly portrays Baker as not having done anything to provoke such an attack. Nothing ever happens in a vaccuum.
Adding at "step zero" with that information in would not change my argument at all. The relative righteousness of the two sides has nothing to do with strategy selection. For the purposes of this abstract argument, it's unnecessary fluff.
Israel could glass the entire Gaza strip and the reaction would be a slap on the wrist at best.
I wish I could agree, but foreign aid is being forced to leave Gaza as a result of the IDF's actions: https://www.inquirer.com/news/nation-world/israel-strike-kil...
> I don't see it as having overtaken the response towards an attack towards Israel.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dahiya_doctrine
Good luck with the neighbors
See how batshit insane that logic is ? Remember, Israel has never stopped colonizing the west bank even after they stopped the armed struggle. So according to you, Israel deserves everything it gets in self defense.
That type of logic works well when you only apply it to the side you favor but it completely falls apart especially in this mess of a conflict
For 100 targets, 90 are 'correct', plus 20x civs per-target is 90/2100 or 4% real accuracy.
Say you use a model that's only 50% accurate and limit yourself to 10 civs per-target, you're at 50/1100 or 4.5% accuracy!
I guess my point is that no self-respecting datascient would release a 50% accurate model, let alone one used to make life or death decisions and yet, in the application of this model, decisions made by humans about its use has made it no better than doing exactly that.
"we really need to missile this guy or he will kill more" vs "well we got 37 badies and also kim and yashonda, damn i really liked yashonda"
Actually after writing this my mind went farther, "since yashonda was a good person we actually have a whole bunch of hard facts about how good a person she actually was, did a lot of help for her community and was a real pillar of helping the next generation of kids be less violent...too bad we didn't add any of that info into the kill-algorithm "
> Lavender listed as many as 37,000 Palestinian men
> they were permitted to kill 15 or 20 civilians during airstrikes
37000 * 15 = 555000 37000 * 20 = 740000
The legal question is whether the civilian casualties are proportional to the concrete military value of the target.
A question that's worth considering is whether, when considering proportionality, all civilians (as defined by law) are made equal in a moral sense.
For example, the category "civilian" includes munitions workers or those otherwise offering support to combatants on the one hand, and young children on the other. It also includes members of the civil population who are actually involved in hostilities without being a formal part of an armed force.
The law of armed conflict doesn't distinguish these; albeit that I think people might well distinguish, on a moral level, between casualties amongst young children, munitions workers, and informal combatants.
I wonder if you would say the same on the other side where every male or female above 18 years is required to serve in thr military and in the reserve afterwards? [1]
By your argument would you say that all of these are legitimate targets?
[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conscription_in_Israel
I don't think anything in the grandparent post suggested that. If someone used to be a combatant and then ceased fighting, usually they then become a civilian. They don't stay a combatant for life. Reserve forces not on duty are not generally combatants. You have to be in the fight to be a combatant.
Things get more complicated with combatants who don't fully wear uniforms, which is why failing to wear a uniform is a war crime.
It should be noted this isn't so much the grandparent's personal opinion as they are just paraphrasing what the geneva convention says. However there is of course a lot more details to it then that and the devil is in the details.
[Edit: i think i read the post too quickly. The grandparent is incorrect when saying "[Civilians] also includes members of the civil population who are actually involved in hostilities without being a formal part of an armed force.". If you pick up a gun and start shooting the other side, you are not a civilian. It doesn't matter whether you are formally part of the armed forces. Civilians get protected because we want to protect the innocents stuck in the middle. People who are taking part in a war dont get that protection]
You're not a civilian while you're holding the gun, but you are once you stop shooting again: you lose your protection as a civilian during your period of direct participation. Should have been more clear on that.
It's probably also worth saying that -- while there's a degree of subtlety and complexity when considering the legal and moral position of Israel's armed forces -- there's very little to debate when it comes to actions like the Re'im music festival attack. That kind of action is obviously illegal and morally repugnant.
No, there is no such complexity. There are very obviously undebatable incidents of war crimes by the IDF. Like this footage from a drone who deliberately killed civilians in plain sight and trying to cover the bodies[1] and the IDF targeting aid workers in a location they knew about [2]. Also, there are widespread videos by IDF soldiers committing atrocities and crimes in Gaza and posting it on social media. That is hardly self-defense. This is obvious war crimes against civilians. Not to mention the mass starvation and carpet bombing of civilians. There is very little to debate, and denying them is immoral. You are just using a very old tactic of trying to minimize IDF crimes by claiming their position is complex. Remember the old say "Middle East is complex mess, let's just ignore what is happening there"
[1] https://www.aljazeera.com/program/newsfeed/2024/3/22/gaza-dr...
[2] https://www.cbsnews.com/news/central-world-kitchen-aid-worke...
Some of the other things you mention have a lot of grey area, because whether or not they are a war crime don't necessarily depend solely on what happened, but on what Israel's intent was and what they knew at various points in time. Which is information that's hard to know from our vantage point. Some of them could be, but there is also potential that they might not be. Its not as clear cut as you make it out to be.
In 2021, Israeli forces killed an American-Palestinian journalist on duty in plain sight [1] I will quote that from Wikipedia
"Israel denied responsibility and blamed Palestinian militants. However, it gradually changed its narrative until admitted she was "accidentally" killed by Israeli fire, but refused to undertake a criminal investigation"
and
"On September 5, the IDF released the results of its own investigation, finding that there was a "high possibility" that Abu Akleh was "accidentally hit" by army fire, but that it would not begin a criminal investigation"
Another example
In 1996, IDF fired shells on UN compound near a village called Qana and caused a civilian massacre. The UN investigated, and Israel refused the results and did not punish anyone [2]. Let's give them a benefit of the doubt, maybe they will just learn and avoid doing it again. Fear not, in 2016 they give us the second Qana massacre [3] without anyone getting punished.
And there are maybe hundred of these events which can establish that Israel doesn't care and IDF don't get punished.
I also refuse the logic that Israel should investigate war crimes by its army. That is absurd, like waiting for Russia to investigate and take their words for Bucha massacre. IDF have very well documented war crimes in the past and IDF is the occupying forces of Palestine and is mass starving 2.3m to death in Gaza right now. Believing that they will carry honest investigation and punish their soldiers is laughable.
And let's not forget to add the IDF lie, and they are blatant Liars. We still remember them claiming week days in Arabic are names of Hamas operatives [4]. Why do you expect us to believe them? Of course, the Israeli officials and cabinet members calling for violence, crimes against Palestinians are well known to everyone now (Feel free to ask me for examples).
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shireen_Abu_Akleh
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qana_massacre
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2006_Qana_airstrike
[4] https://www.france24.com/en/tv-shows/truth-or-fake/20231116-...
I'm not sure what your point is here. Accidentally shooting someone is not a warcrime (there are details here in that it still could be if there is a certain level of negligence), and generally a criminal investigation would only be started if there was sufficient evidence in the preliminary investigation to suggest it was intentional.
Could israel be lying about it? Sure. Militaries doing cover ups would hardly be a new story. But this isn't the (metaphorical) smoking gun you think it is.
> In 1996...
1996 was quite a long time ago at this point.
> I also refuse the logic that Israel should investigate war crimes by its army
That's generally what is expected of any army under international law. If they don't then the higher ups become responsible.
In the event of a failure to prosecute, then it goes to the ICC to investigate and charge (israel isn't a member, but palestine is, so anything involving palestine nationals or territory counts, which is basically this whole war. If ICC didn't have juridsiction over something, then the procedure is the UN is supposed to create a special tribunal).
So its not like its solely up to israel to investigate/punish. That is just the first step and what is required for israel to comply with international law. If they fail to uphold their obligations there are other bodies to enforce albeit in practise powerful countries are often ignored by them.
> We don't know yet whether or not Israel will charge the people involved in the aid worker bombing
To
> Could israel be lying about it? Sure. Militaries doing cover ups would hardly be a new story
> So its not like its solely up to israel to investigate/punish
Thanks for showing that this discussion is not useful.
PS:
> 1996 was quite a long time ago at this point.
So what? Holocaust was more than 80 years at this point? Does this make us forget this horrible history?
I don't think these things are as unequivocal as you suggest. I mean, you're assuming those people are civilians. Maybe they're not. Almost certainly we will never know for sure, and if you can't acknowledge that then you're not being objective.
I actually expected this reply from you. And expected that you will not see the video and will not get interested in the story. [1] The video shows that they were not armed. If you're just going to define anyone you kill as, maybe he was Hamas. Then of course you will kill everyone and claim that. You don't kill unarmed people walking in plain sight. If this not obvious to you, then you are just wanted to justify the killing of each Palestinian.
[1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2024/03/19/gaza-journal...
I am not your parent commenter, and do not necessarily subscribe to any of their arguments, but I can answer your question directly: yes, to some people, the conscription of all people in a certain age range does make them legitimate targets.
In particular, from my perspective, one of the primary downsides of the inclusion of women in the armed forces is specifically that it legitimizes taegetting (other) women as a military target.
So, to be explicit, if an organization I conscripts women into their military and someone else targets I women militarily, then I will hold I morally responsible for their fate. Similarly, if an organization H utilizes children as soldiers (or human shields) and other children are militarily targeted, I will consider H morally responsible for their fate. (And to be more explicit still: sucks for all the men everywhere.)
The main crux of the story is the automated target acquisition and the policy to engage the target in civilian homes - there are intelligence errors and collateral damage.
The questions are: is the intelligence gathering and decision making ethical and is the accepted collateral damage ratio reasonable given the scale.
This is different from for example Russian strategy to target whole neighborhoods to inflict terror in the civilian population by indiscriminate killings.
Instead the West keeps supplying Israel with weapons and munitions.
To put it bluntly, useing AI to decide on targets for lethal operations in unconsiounable given the current and forseable state of technology.
Come back to me when it can be trusted to make mortgage eligability questions without engaging in what would be blatantly illegal discrimination if not laundered by a computer algorithm.
If Israel wasn't able to use tools like this, then it probably wouldn't be viable for them to identify much of Hamas (that's kind of the point of guerilla warfare). Since that would make it difficult to fight a war efficiently, they would be more likely to engage in diplomacy.
>processing masses of data to rapidly identify potential “junior” operatives to target. Four of the sources said that, at one stage early in the war, Lavender listed as many as 37,000 Palestinian men who had been linked by the AI system to Hamas or PIJ.
This is really no different than how the world was working in 2001 and choosing who to send to Gitmo and other more secretive prisons, or bombing their location
More than anything else it feels like just like in the corporate world, the engineers in the army are overselling the AI buzzword to do exactly what they were doing before it existed
If you use your paypal account to send money to an account identified as ISIS, you're going to get a visit from a 3 letter organization really quick. This sounds exactly like that from what the users are testifying to. Any decision to bomb or not bomb a location wasn't up to the AI, but to humans
By the world you mean the US, but yes you are correct.
"NSA targets SIM cards for drone strikes, ‘Death by unreliable metadata’"
https://www.computerworld.com/article/2475921/whistleblower-...
"Gitmo" didn't open until 2002
This is the second paragraph:
"In addition to talking about their use of the AI system, called Lavender, the intelligence sources claim that Israeli military officials permitted large numbers of Palestinian civilians to be killed, particularly during the early weeks and months of the conflict."
We wouldn't tolerate a SWAT team blowing up a hospital if the mafia had taken over the basement, I have no idea why you think this is acceptable.
> It is much better than the carpet bombing used by other nations.
It is exactly like the carpet bombing used by other nations.
While I agree with comparing Hamas to the mafia, both are criminal organizations, Hamas is more than that. It has rockets, it mascaraed civilians and holds the ideology of genociding its enemy. None of that is applicable to the mafia. So if its people are hiding in an hospital and refuse to surrender there is no moral objection to blow up the hospital (Also, if you are referring to Shifa Hospital, Israel didn't blow it, they entered with SWAT teams and there were fierce fighting costing also Israeli soldiers lives)
> It is exactly like the carpet bombing used by other nations. I'll link to Wikipedia to help you spot the differences [0]
[0] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carpet_bombing
It's easy to point the fingers at Hamas for the region's suffering but that is dishonest and completely omits the big role that Israel played in creating this and previous events.
[0] https://www.hrw.org/news/2023/12/05/does-israels-treatment-p...
[1] https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/apartheid
[2] https://www.unicef.org/mena/documents/gaza-strip-humanitaria...
[3] https://www.hrw.org/news/2024/01/27/gaza-two-rights-return
You should take your own advice. You didn't cite any reasons. You just cited earlier symptoms.
Hamas is controlling Gaza for 15 years now. Did they care about the population? did they build roads, schools? or dig tunnels and accumulated weapons? So what ideas do you have? giving them candies? Hamas must be eliminated from position of power, yes it will cost innocent lives, but if you ever wish to move toward peace that is the first step.
And if the cost of eliminating Hamas is killing innocent people, don’t you think that might radicalize some of the remaining people? This kind of shit hasn’t worked in the past, so why would it work now? They’re killing innocent people for no good reason.
They're killing innocent people as the least-bad option.
Hamas killed a bunch of innocent Israelis. Hamas has stated, clearly and repeatedly, that they intend to continue doing so until they have killed them all. Israel has decided that Hamas has to be destroyed, in order to protect innocent people.
But Hamas surrounds itself with civilians[1]. Faced with the the choice of killing Hamas (and killing innocent Palestinians in the process), or not killing Hamas (and having Hamas kill innocent Israelis), Israel has chosen to kill Hamas. This is not a choice between killing innocents and not killing innocents - that choice is not an option. This is a choice of which innocents die.
[1] Why does Hamas surround itself with civilians? Because it knows that Israel is reluctant to cause civilian casualties. They went far enough this time that Israel has overcome that reluctance.
> And Israel is blameless in all this... The problem is that you assign 0 responsibility to Hamas. As if they are lesser human as if you consider them as dogs or something. Hamas took full control of Gaza, they could have done whatever they like and the choose to invest everything into attacking Israel. Evidently it wasn't much of a cage as they accumulated enough weapon to engage in 6 months war (and counting...). Fact remains that Israel decolonizied Gaza and in return they got October 7. What lesson should they learn from it?
If soldiers in the field have reason to believe the enemy is in a building and call in air support to bomb it, no part of that is a war crime. Even if someone later goes and discovers the people in that building were actually preschoolers; what matters is what the people in the field making the decisions knew at that moment.
This is insane. What matters is the objective truth, whether or not dozens of preschoolers were killed due to an operational mistake.
They're using indiscriminate weapons (so not targeting at all!), hitting known UN and humanitarian sites, and killing so ruthlessly that they killed Israeli hostages that made the mistake of being living humans in front of IDF soldiers.
"…were traveling in a convoy that had been coordinated with the Israel Defense Forces and was following an IDF-approved route. The vehicles had GPS trackers and SOS beacons broadcasting their positions"
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/idf-strike-on-gaza-aid-...
Say that to the parents of the aid workers whose vehicle was used as a bullseye: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-68711282
An apartheid is no democracy. Calling an apartheid regime 'democracy' debases the concept of democracy, and gives it bad reputation.
Also, Israel is absolutely not a democracy. Gazans were/are ultimately subject to Israeli law and could not vote in Israel's elections.
As the world becomes more modern and democratic principles become more highly prized, I think we see some glimmers of hope in the muslim world as parts of the population begin to value more democratic principles. But they have to do this in the context of the theocratic states in which they live in where these values were never first class citizens—so I think that's why we haven't seen much progress on these fronts in that part of the world.
I agree with you that there's a double standard in regards to the application of the law—I'm not privy on why Palestinians are subject to Israel's laws, and I wouldn't charitably say it's for reasons that are morally sound. I do think that allowing Palestinian's to vote in Israel's parliamentary elections is a non-starter for obvious reasons.
The "modern and democratic" world leaders are currently trying - and failing - to whitewash an undeniable, livestreamed, openly boasted genocide and land-grab.
This is enabled by a variety of full-on unapologetic apocalyptic death-cult religious extremists and a complicit media who happily run fossil fuel greenwashing campaigns and silence anti-war voices.
Compare Muslims killed by Jews and Christians over the last few decades to the reverse. It's hard to argue for any moral high ground whatsoever when you look at the raw numbers.
If the best argument you have is that the West treats women better, maybe look at how many women we've murdered in the middle east, or the 26,000 rape-related pregnancies in Texas, or the Ethopian Jews sterilized without being informed in Israel, etc, etc, etc.
Those vastly wealthy ME leaders repressing women the hardest? They got all that money selling oil to us.
It's a lot of work unpeeling the layers and layers of Western hypocrisy and bullshit, but it has to be done. It has to. We can't keep killing millions of brown people for their natural resources and expect to have a nice society/planet to live on.
And Gaza was pushed towards democratic elections, which they held, elected Hamas, and Hamas hasn't permitted a democracy since then.
"From the River to the Sea" (Jordan River to the Red Sea) was not just a comment by Palestinian extremists, but was Likud's actual election campaign and slogan throughout the 1970s.
And it's hard, as a Gazan, to argue with Hamas, considering Hamas are about the only ones armed, thanks to Israel's ongoing air blockade (Arafat International Airport bombed in early 2000s), and the Israeli navy blockading Port of Gaza since 2007.
You said this in another comment. While I agree that Netanyahu has done a lot of harm over the last 15 years, specifically by on-purpose shooting down chances for peace, I think you are giving the PA and Arafat too much credit. They were offered multiple deals that they turned down, walking away from negotiations without offering alternatives.
It's totally possible that with leadership towards peace on the Israeli side, that might've changed and we would've eventually seen a true peace deal signed. And for sure Netanyahu put effort into quashing that, one of his many sins. But we don't need to pretend that the PA was better than it was. It's not at all clear that, absent Netanyahu, a deal coudl've been agreed on.
I don't pretend to understand their motivations for moderation - maybe it was the feeling that their "way" was never going to out stubborn Israel, maybe Arafat grew tired in his old age of the conflict. There were many failed attempts, some briefly successful, others not at all, much like the Troubles. And Arafat and the PLO should shoulder a large chunk of that responsibility.
But like you say, it's entirely possible that an accord could have been reached, and also entirely possible that it would have tripped over 1,000 other hurdles and not happened.
I just feel way too much is going into overlooking not just the early tolerance of Hamas because it was politically expedient to the Israeli right wing, but the active enablement and fostering.
I mean, that's true, and I think Israel has done immoral things for at least 15 years, mostly by not strongly pursuing peace, with or without a partner.
Still, I think you might be over-indexing on the idea of "Israel propped up Hamas". What would the alternative have looked like exactly? Israel fighting more wars against Hamas? Israel not letting Qatar money in (which is one of the big claims against Netanyahu)? I'm sure that had that happened, the world would've condemned this as "depriving Gazans of aid they desperately need".
Ever since that, there has been constant interference with Hamas' government, including multiple military campaigns by Israel - in "Operations" Cast Lead, Pillar of Defense, Swords of Iron and I forget which others, Wikipedia has a timeline [1].
Basically, ever since the election, Gaza has been under attack every few months or years. Hamas probably weren't in a great hurry to have elections, although it should be noted that their ideology is to take power democratically and not through power of arms [2]. In any case, they're in a constant state of war and it's hard to hold democratic elections under the circumstances. Netanyahu has used the same excuse, repeatedly, to avoid being kicked out of government in the current crisis.
Btw, all that about the interference with the democratic process in Gaza after Hamas' election is on wikipedia [3] (meaning it's easy to get a first idea of what happened; then you can check their sources).
_________________
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaza%E2%80%93Israel_conflict#2...
[2] I don't have a reference for that handy. Ask and ye shall be given but I'll have to dig a bit.
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2006_Palestinian_legislative_e...
Just to state the obvious context you didn't include, these operations were usually the direct result of rocket attacks on Israel. Every time an operation ended in ceasefire, a few years later, Hamas would start up rocket attacks again, and Israel would retaliate.
A six month long ceasefire between Israel and Hamas ended on 4 November, when the IDF made a raid into Deir al-Balah, central Gaza to destroy a tunnel, killing several Hamas militants. Israel said the raid was a preemptive strike and Hamas intended to abduct further Israeli soldiers,[37][38] while Hamas characterized it as a ceasefire violation,[37][39] and responded with rocket fire into Israel.[40][41]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaza_War_(2008%E2%80%932009)
Operation Hot Winter (2010) started with the assassination of a Hamas commander and an incursion into Gaza by IDF:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/March_2010_Israel%E2%80%93Gaza...
Operation Breaking Dawn (2022) started with pre-emptive assassinations of Palestinian Islamic Jihad leaders:
The initial attack included the targeted killing of Tayseer al-Jabari, a military leader of the group.[21][22][23] On the second day, the PIJ commander of the Southern area of the Strip, Khaled Mansour, was also targeted and killed. Islamic Jihad stated that the Israeli bombardments were a 'declaration of war' and responded with retaliatory rocket fire towards Israel.[24]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2022_Gaza%E2%80%93Israel_clash...
Other "operations" and bouts of violence started without any side clearly breaking a ceasefire, but instead with violence that kept escalating during a period of calm.
The 2021 violence (not a named "operation") e.g. started with violence against, and suppression of the religious rights, of Palestinians in East Jerusalem, and subsequent riots:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2021_Israel%E2%80%93Palestine_...
The crisis was triggered[34] on 6 May, when Palestinians in East Jerusalem began protesting over an anticipated decision of the Supreme Court of Israel on the eviction of six Palestinian families in the East Jerusalem neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah.[35] Under international law, the area, effectively annexed by Israel in 1980, is a part of the Israeli-occupied West Bank;[36][37] On 7 May, according to Israel's Channel 12, Palestinians threw stones at Israeli police forces,[38] who then stormed the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound[39] using tear gas, rubber bullets, and stun grenades.[40][39][41] The crisis prompted protests around the world as well as official reactions from world leaders.
But you're right, let's not omit any context. In particular, let's not forget that the Palestinians made several attempts to make progress in the relations with Israel that did not include any rockets whatsoever, after Hamas' election, for example The Great March of Return (2018):
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2018%E2%80%932019_Gaza_border_...
At least 189 Palestinians were killed between 30 March and 31 December 2018.[28]: 6 [29][30] An independent United Nations commission set the number of known militants killed at 29 out of the 189.[5] Other sources claim a higher figure, of at least 40.[31][20][32] Israeli soldiers fired tear gas and live ammunition.[33] According to Robert Mardini, head of Middle East for the International Committee of the Red Cross...
Or maybe the world can give some new suggestion that was not disproven by history?
You can find this on wikipedia, so it's not like it's some conspiracy theory brewing in the dark corners of the internets. Even Vanity Fair has written about it:
In April 2008 Vanity Fair published "The Gaza Bombshell":
There is no one more hated among Hamas members than Muhammad Dahlan, long Fatah's resident strongman in Gaza. Dahlan, who most recently served as Abbas's national-security adviser, has spent more than a decade battling Hamas. ... Bush has met Dahlan on at least three occasions. After talks at the White House in July 2003, Bush publicly praised Dahlan as "a good, solid leader." In private, say multiple Israeli and American officials, the U.S. president described him as "our guy."
Vanity Fair has obtained confidential documents, since corroborated by sources in the U.S. and Palestine, which lay bare a covert initiative, approved by Bush and implemented by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Deputy National Security Adviser Elliott Abrams, to provoke a Palestinian civil war. The plan was for forces led by Dahlan, and armed with new weapons supplied at America's behest, to give Fatah the muscle it needed to remove the democratically elected Hamas-led government from power. (The State Department declined to comment.)
Some sources call the scheme "Iran-contra 2.0," recalling that Abrams was convicted (and later pardoned) for withholding information from Congress during the original Iran-contra scandal under President Reagan. There are echoes of other past misadventures as well: the C.I.A.'s 1953 ouster of an elected prime minister in Iran, which set the stage for the 1979 Islamic revolution there; the aborted 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion, which gave Fidel Castro an excuse to solidify his hold on Cuba; and the contemporary tragedy in Iraq.[66]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2006_Palestinian_legislative_e...
Not be an genocidal apartheid state? It's actually quite simple.
The fact that you try to dismiss the genocide means you're not acting in good faith. Stop with the disingenuous questions and own zionism.
The ethnic cleansing happens anyway, followed up by settlers.
If this is about the hostages, why hasn't Israel agreed to more ceasefires to save them?
> Following a mission lasting just over two weeks, the UN team found 'reasonable grounds to believe' that 'rape and gang rape' took place during the attack on October 7, 2023, while acknowledging the limitations of its own investigation
https://www.lemonde.fr/en/international/article/2024/03/07/u....
Even the NYT now admits (albeit quietly) that their "expose" contains no evidence.
And, as I'm sure you know, there are exactly zero videos showing rape. Quite frankly, I find it incredible that some people still believe the atrocity propaganda, even when it's so obvious and of such poor quality.
The reason we all rushed to point fingers at them for that one is... they'd done it before.
https://forensic-architecture.org/investigation/israeli-disi...
https://www.wsj.com/world/middle-east/israel-tries-to-back-u...
Not to mention the BBC started with "500 dead" title that was literally Hamas propoganda.
Obviously, nobody in an international court will be able to say "... but the AI did it!" - This is just far too easy as a way out. There are rules to AI Usage and one of them is not a usage like that - as already said somewhere else: The AI is only as ethical/moral as the humans behind them.
Maybe the international court will judge them in 20 years, but the damage will have been done and netanyahu's objectives will be achieved.
The only major power that can stop it is the US and they refuse to do so.
I really doubt that's the case, seems more like a "fire first if any suspicion at all and ask questions later" policy. If there was an intentional policy to kills journalists, aid workers and medical staff you'd see a lot more dead.
And you have to be extremely naive or one sided to not realize that Hamas does use those type of roles as cover for their operations.
Not trying to justify Israel's actions because they are fucked up, but based on all the evidence we have you are clearly wrong.
Why would Hamas use anything other than clearly uniformed soldiers, marked military vehicles, and civilian distanced military installations?
I will try to solve your doubt. Gaza is a closed area. You can't just cross freely the frontier unless Israel allows it. Before that, humanitarian organisations are required to inform directly to Israeli army about everything that they want to do, where they want to go, how many, an when. They are clearly identified by a logo at all times. Israel had every single piece of info necessary to avoid bombing aid workers and had it for weeks
Despite that, Israel can't avoid to keep killing this workers; and they were doing the same repeatedly, systematically, for the last six months, in multiple attacks that last tens of minutes (maybe even hours?), while singing "oops!, I did it again".
The theory of the honest mistake is getting really difficult to swallow.
You really think Israel coordinated with WCK for weeks now only to suddenly decide to kill a few aid workers intentionally? It makes zero sense.
And if you wanna go all conspiracy theory, why not just make it to look like Hamas killed the aid workers? It would be extremely easy for Israel to do so.
> why not just make it to look like Hamas killed the aid workers?
Because they simply don't care, obviously. They even feel safe enough to film their own crimes.
Seems like negligence and not caring for collateral damage is much more straightforward reason compared to intentionally targeting them.
2) The Israeli army comes across as extremely unprofessional - I honestly believe Israel doesn't have full control over them. It's a car-crash of "soldiers" who believe Palestinians are inhuman beasts, combined with commanders who don't give a shit and probably couldn't control their squad in any case
2) So what is it? Does the idf targets aid worker intentionally as part of a idf/Israel policy or is it some rogue soldier/commander that decided to do it? Those are two very different claims.
2) could be both; Israeli commanders made clear that grunts can do what they want - "all restrictions are removed", and we now know that commanders designated "kill zones" where anyone was to be murdered. I believe it's both US-backed Israeli policy, and they haven't got full control of their "soldiers"
Nothing. Literally zero consequences. Yet someone like you is not convinced.
Now Israel can say that they didn't stop aid, they just "accidentally" killed an entire envoy of aid, which unfortunately led to the WCK withdrawing from Gaza.
It is. The IDF shot once, then when a vehicle came to rescue survivors, they shot again. Then the third attempt at rescueing survivors, they shot a third time. Purposefully murdering aid workers that coordinated with the IDF before entering the area.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/idf-strike-on-gaza-aid-...
“…were traveling in a convoy that had been coordinated with the Israel Defense Forces and was following an IDF-approved route. The vehicles had GPS trackers and SOS beacons broadcasting their positions”
No. It's just a tool. People still configure the parameters and ultimately make decisions. Likewise modern missile do not make conflicts more or less ethical just because they require advanced physics.
I mean, is anyone who paid attention surprised by this Lavender system? It's doing exactly what they said they were doing: kill everyone suspected of Hamas affiliation, no matter the cost.
We can have interesting ethical discussions about the AI aspect, but I feel that's not really what this is about.
The AI did something, but the IDF used it to justify effectively committing a genocide.
I doubt an artillery system using machine learning to correct its trajectory and get better accuracy would be controversial, since the AI in that case is just controlling the path of a shell that an operator has determined needs to hit a target decided upon by humans.
Ultimately, it's a calculus of "us vs them" and which lives are valued or devalued.
Relatedly, are police justified when they shoot at a house with 500 rounds, killing the suspect and their entire family that happened to be in the general vicinity? Is the math "one law enforcement > n lives as long as one was a (potential) badguy"?
If you wanted to do this with minimal civilian casualties, then you bring the ground forces in, block by block, and you clear things the old-fashioned way. You take casualties, but those are casualties who signed up to be "warfighters".
Now this IS inflamatory: I think we have a lot of warfighters and cops who are just plain cowards, that's the mentality. Why have a class of trained and armed people who are so afraid of dying that they'd rather kill anything and everything in their path than potentially be injured or killed?
I thought the ethos of the warfighter and law enforcement was "act as a shield, act as a bulwark, save lives, give my life so that others may be free, etc etc". Nowadays its "nah I'm not going in that school, there's badguys with guns and I might die, just stay outside".
That leads to a failure of imagination where somehow "blow up a building with innocent people as long as you got your target" seems somehow justified because you didn't risk a 'good guy' life. Cowardice.
https://edition.cnn.com/2024/03/08/middleeast/gaza-israelis-...
I find the AI angle fascinating, but I suppose the comments become inflammatory fast.
AI
Yeah, yeah guidelines and all.
If you can't, you should be banned. The problem will work itself out over time.
I agree with you, this conversations should be had. But unfortunately a small, but comitted, minority can (and often will) turn the comments on sensitive topics into a toxic cesspool.
People have it so easy now they've grown up and spent their entire lives in total comfort and without even the slightest hint of adversarial interaction. So when they encounter it, they overreact and panic at the slightest bit of scrutiny rather than behave like reasonable adults.
It can be fun to consider the precise and comprehensive truth value of such statements (or, the very nature of "reality" for extra fun) using strict, set theory based non-binary logic.
It can also be not fun. Or sometimes even dangerous.
Turning off comments makes as much sense as just posting the heading and no link or attribution.
This is one prediction of many possible outcomes.
Independent of the probability of a negative downstream outcome:
1. It is preferable to correct the unwelcome behavior itself, not the acceptable events simply preceding it (that are non-causal). For example, we denounce when a bully punches a kid, not that the kid stood his ground.*
2. We don't want to create a self-fulfilling prophecy in the form of self-censorship.
* I'm not dogmatic on this. There are interesting situations with blurry lines. For example, consider defensive driving, where it is rational to anticipate risky behavior from other drivers and proactively guard against it, rather than waiting for an accident to happen.
The false choice dilemma is dead. Long live the false choice dilemma!
It’s a serious question, because the article mentions how AI plays such a crucial role… but where does it end?
I know the following question sounds absurd, but they say there’s no such thing as a silly question…
Does the AI use regular power to run, or does it run on the tears and blood of combatant 3 year old children - I mean terrorists?
People say a lot of things.
Some questions are ill-posed; some bake-in false assumptions.
What you do _after_ you concoct a question is important. Is it worth our time answering?
> Does the AI use regular power to run, or does it run on the tears and blood of combatant 3 year old children - I mean terrorists?
From where I sit, the question above appears to be driven mostly by rhetoric or confusion. I'm interested in reasoning, evidence, and philosophy. I don't see much of that in the question above. There are better questions, such as:
To what degree does a particular AI system have values? To what degree are these values aligned with people's values? And which people are we talking about? How are the values of many people aggregated? And how do we know with confidence that this is so?
You can burn tremendous time on poorly-framed questions, but why do that? Perhaps you don't want to answer the question, though, because you didn't ask it. You get to ask questions of us, but don't reply to follow-up questions that push back on your point of view?
* Subjectively better, of course, from my point of view. But not just some wing-nut point of view. What I'm saying is aligned with many (if not most) deep thinkers you'll come across. In short, if you ask poorly-framed questions, you'll get nonsense out the other end.
P.S. Your profile says "I’m too honest. Deal with it." which invites reciprocity.
I wouldn't be so quick to say that. I would guess that 99.99999% of us at a bare minimum don't want to see any innocent people die, regardless of ethnicity, religious creed, nationality, etc. In fact, I'd wager my life savings and my company on the guess that most rational adults don't want to see innocent people die regardless of where in the world they are. HN is no different.
Israel is not 100% scot-free and innocent here, and that needs to be stressed. I don't condone Hamas's behavior at all (it's abhorrent), nor do I condone bombing a clearly-marked vehicle delivering humanitarian aid (also abhorrent).
Also, Israel =! all jewish people world wide. You'll find some of Israel's largest criticisms come from non-Israeli Jews.
See this comment from dang:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39435024
There are more comments like this from him, you can find them using Algolia.
HN is not acting in bad faith whatsoever.
This story in particular “qualifies” for what would be interesting to HN readers while taking into account the sensitivity of the subject.
I fully expect the discussion to be allowed and the flag lifted, but HN mod team is very small and it might take a while - it quite literally always does.
Fact is very specific topics are routinely being suppressed systematically.