Posted by novateg 9/1/2025
> Is Israel doing genocide? Probably. Does the Palestinian leadership (hamas) want them to do this? Yep.
So from the start you claim that the Palestinian leadership wants its own people genocided (and themselves killed in the process). Who knows why? They must be rabid beasts, these victims. Better put them out of their pain, eh?
> Who cares more about killing less "civilians"? The effed up thing is it's probably Israel.
And how do you even know? Most of the killing of civilians, also in percentage to the total, has been done by Israel. Is it again because the others are rabid animals? Also, thanks for those scare quotes around "civilians". Wink wink.
> The Arab world doesn't want to deal with Palestinians.
The Arab world is either corrupt by US money or has a gun pointed to its head, both by Israel and by its unwavering supporter, financer and protector, the US. This has been made extremely clear multiple times (hundreds of thousands/ millions dead).
> Palestinian leadership ... only care about maintaining Mafia level control over Gaza.
Again, because they are rabid animals, right? They do not care about freedom, their land, the oppression, being shot at, bombed...
> Palestinians have not been allowed to have an economy in 74 years, live off of international aid, and yer have increased their population by a factor of ten. The only reason you do that is to raise cannon fodder.
So these animals are guilty of multiplying, their numbers prove their intentions, is this what you mean? The fact itself that they are born proves that they're evil.
> Everyone wants the Palestinians to get their own State
Not at all, everyone says this to buy time. In fact Israel abhors the idea (threatens everyone who proposes to recognize Palestine), not because of bs security concerns but because it means putting a fixed border and an end to their expansion. The US does what Israel demands- we've seen very clearly in the past two years that their leverage with Israel is zero, while Israel basically controls most US representatives. Europe is more or less in the same position, subordinate to both Israel and the US. The "peace process" for the two states solution is just a facade. It's a process that should go on forever without reaching its goal, keeping the pretense of legality while Israel colonises the West Bank and now Gaza.
> But if the Palestinians have a state, and provoke a war, then Israel can use even more unrestrained violence against them
Uh? And why? This is a total non-sequitur. Also, why would they provoke a war after reaching their goal of having a state? Again these animals..
> If Israel had used unrestrained carpet bombing like we did to Dresden in world war II, postage stamp sized Gaza would have been completely razed in a month.
In fact Israel has dropped more bombs on Gaza than were dropped on Dresden, causing a similar level of destruction and deaths. It just did it in slow motion. The limit to Israel's actions is not its morality or its military means, it's the international opinion.
> Maybe a Palestinian state run by Hamas and populated by people that have only been raised to hate and die
Again, because differently from you and me, these people don't love life, their spouses, their children, their land.. they're rabid animals, will just bite anything that gets near them, wanting to be shot. This is what you think and you've said multiple times in different ways in your post. Horrific, shameful.
And they're trying their best to silence the Gazan voice by not letting in any international journalists, labeling every journalist as Hamas, killing them all, one camera at a time. Or five.
BOTH LEADERSHIPS WANT IT THIS WAY.
At a minimum, both keep power this way. #1 priority of crazy authoritarians: maintain power.
There is no humanitarianism. Humanitarianism is a secular idea. These are two religious extremist regimes. There are no secular priorities by either government. Only religious extremist views. Neither side will negotiate or coexist in a secular peace.
Yes, Hamas will happily throw away massive numbers of its people if it thinks its winning. That's the entire strategy. Yes, they get paid to do that by various states like Iran and the UAE. That's the only money that comes into the palestinian territories: humanitarian aid (which is funneled/controlled by the PA or Hamas) and military aid, which gets funneled to Hamas (I admittedly know less about how the PA works, I think they are the same just not as bad) and they use to maintain authoritarian control over Gaza.
The military aid enables Hamas to keep power, and it only comes if they keep poking Israel.
Is it cruel of me to point out that expanding your population by 10x when they are virtually entirely dependent on external aid is absolutely crazy? And yes, sorry, the only reason I can think of other than incredible stupidity is for cannon fodder.
Why wouldn't a two state solution work? Well it would be a three state solution if we're serious, no way the PA in West Bank shares power with Hamas in Gaza. No effing way. And yes, they would still launch rockets at Israel. Because, again, that's what Hamas leadership gets paid to do, and having a state won't change that. If you think otherwise, I'm sorry, I think you are naive.
And yes, Israel/Netanyahu will look for ANY provocation to loose the barrage. Here, I'll give you a conspiracy theory: they'll false flag if they have to. Pay some group to start the war. I think there's a conspiracy theory they rigged this provocation. I'll give you that, sure! What would having a state matter?
Look, the Palestinians are in a really really bad situation in terms of power dynamics. Only in modern (secular) international politics do the Palestinians even get to voice an opinion. Go ahead and argue about books or historical rights or atrocities. It won't change anything, Israel has a military that can wipe you out, and even if it seems like this is unrestrained: it isn't.
Egypt will never let Palestinians into Sinai. Jordan will never again take them, Kuwait kicked theirs out, no Arab state will take them. They need to figure out a way to survive in Gaza. They are grossly outgunned, and only modern (secular) international relations prevents Israel from doing what the Mongols did to Baghdad.
The oil is going to get less important with alt energy and EVs. Global warming is coming. THE MONEY WILL DRY UP. International attention will return to the apathy in line with the Tigray war and Azerbaijan-Armenia and Turkey-Kurds, and whatever else is going on in the world.
When that happens, aid stops, food stops, gun shipments stop. Either Israel annihilates the Palestinians then, or they starve. Pick one!
Hamas needs to step down and surrender and accept any peace they can get. Yes Israel builds settlements and encroaches. Beg Egypt to once again take over administration of Gaza (they won't ...) Beg someone to do it, get Hamas out of power. Only way a two state solution works is if someone Israel trusts just a bit takes over Gaza for a decade on a path to independence.
If Hamas cared about its people, its children, its wives, it would step down. Right? Because they are humanitarians? Find some Arab country that will accept their surrender and provide sanctuary? Because the united Sunni brothers would do that for humanitarianism? You and I both know that will never happen.
The people in control will risk total destruction over the surrender of any power, money, or control.
To clarify, YOU are the one doing the dehumanizing in your post, as myself and that other poster observed -- Not to mention the genocidal rhetoric. Just 1 small snippet of it from your post:
> Is it cruel of me to point out that expanding your population by 10x when they are virtually entirely dependent on external aid is absolutely crazy? And yes, sorry, the only reason I can think of other than incredible stupidity is for cannon fodder.
Imagine criticizing a people currently being genocided, for reproducing. Why don't they just let their entire ethnic group be exterminated, amiright? Disgusting. You know who else thought that downtrodden groups shouldn't reproduce? Pretty much every xenophobic pariah and war criminal in history, and many (including israel) are using violence to achieve that.
'Is it cruel to sympathize with, and encourage, the perpetration of a genocide? '
Is that a serious question?
So are you interested in a solution, or are you just pillorying people for sympathy?
The Palestinians want sympathy. The Israelis want sympathy. The Palestinians want money (and get) money. The Israelis want (and get) money. The Israelis pound a religious book and whine about this being their ancestral home. The Palestinians pound a religious book and whine about this being their ancestral home. The Israelis show through their actions that they would happily kill all Palestinians. The Palestinians leaders regularly declare they would happily kill all Jews. Both sides are evil terrorists/genociders/radicals/militants.
I'm so tired of naive/mendacious moralism by the proponents of both sides.
At this point, a solution that doesn't involve "final solutions" won't involve social media propaganda logic, or "I want to save all cute kittens" levels of understanding the political, sociological, and historical difficulties.
Do you want me to quantify the sympathy? Well fine. Here you go. The Holocaust killed 5-6 million Jews. The current ... intifada/assault/slaughter ... is 66,000. Displacements, forced migrations, and the like probably killed hundreds of thousands more Palestinians. So let's go for the entire 75 years and say ... 500,000. Which is 1/10th the genocide placed on Jews, leaving out the hundreds of years historical pogroms of Europe.
So should I feel 90% sympathy for Israel and 10% for Palestine? That's what the scoreboard says roughly over the last 100 years. Is that what you want? Obviously that is ridiculous logic, and most importantly, doesn't help one iota for a short or long term resolution.
The Palestinians got an unprecedented historical gift: the amount of aid they have received after the 1950s British Empire like territorial and ethnic chaos is geopolitically engineered in the creation of Israel, I can't think of anything similar. It supported a population of like 500,000 people to the point they became 5,000,000 people.
It's because of the unprecedented oil wealth, obviously, and the kindness of Arab oil states, I believe UAE in particular.
Palestinians don't seem to realize that their greatest enemy isn't Israel: this aid largess that supports them is going to dry up. Oil is going to be less valuable as transportation electrification and alternative energy develop. The great eye of sauron that watches this little postage stamp of the world will turn to deal with other things, like nascent superpower conflicts between EU-Russia and China-Taiwan.
And I haven't even gotten to global warming disruptions that probably will start to rear up in the coming decades.
The money will dry up. The attention will disappear. The sympathy will fade. Israel will gain unrestrained power over the Palestinians.
The Gazans need to eject Hamas leadership, and surrender them to the Israelis. Then accept whatever conditions to be allowed to create and economy. That swinehead Jared Kushner is indirectly correct: their only hope for some economy is as a tourist economy for their swathe of the Mediterranean Sea. I don't see any other way they can construct some economy of and degree of self-sufficiency.
If Gaza and the West Bank don't find some means of doing something like this, they die of mass starvation when the aid necessary to support 5,000,000 people disappears.
Israel doesn't have to do anything but .... wait. They'll probably lose a large amount of US military aid at some point but they have an economy and industries to support the loss of that aid, and as the most geopolitically effective "ally" the US has in the region, it won't disappear entirely.
All the bullshit sympathy mongering by pro-Palestinians is just dooming them further. It keeps the conflict going and keeps resolution intractable, something that, as I have stated, the respective controlling political powers want, but the people ... probably not.
So if you have SERIOUS insights or solutions, please... go ahead.
I'm not. Double-quotes means quoting. Single-quotes means paraphrasing.
> At this point, a solution that doesn't involve "final solutions"
Yes, that is what many are looking for here -- that is why, when we see israel executing their 'final solution', we say that it is bad.
The rest of your post, with respect, is off-topic, and is more dehumanization which does not address the issue of israel perpetrating a genocide, because there is no justification for that. It does not matter what anybody did at any time: israel's genocide of Palestinians is bad and must be stopped, no matter what. It does not matter that israel is incapable of coming up with or implementing any alternatives: israel's genocide of Palestinians is bad and must be immediately stopped, no matter what.
It is up to israel to find a solution that makes them happy and does not involve genocide or other war crimes or crimes against humanity. Pretty much everybody else manages to do it, and israel is pretty smart and capable, so they can to, but only if the genocide isn't their goal. As many here have pointed out, though: genocide is their goal. They openly announce it, they just don't explicitly say "the g word" when doing so.
If you seriously want to discuss real solutions (I'm going to take you at your word here on HN, that you'll participate in good faith), it would have to start with you recognizing and stopping your dehumanizing and genocidal rhetoric. Then, maybe we can use the following as a foundation of shared values to build upon:
All innocent civilian lives are equal to each other, they all have equal human rights that deserve to be respected, and the death of 2 innocent civilian lives is worse than the death of 1 innocent civilian life, no matter their race, nationality, or national origin. Hopefully you can agree with this.
Once we're on the same page there, you can present some serious* solutions for evaluation.
* - serious here precludes genocide, however much one may want it, and as we see here, the scholarly and global consensus is that israel is currently perpetrating a genocide upon palestinians
If you abuse punctuation to mean different things than it conventionally means, then you are not going to communicate effectively. Paraphrasing is when you describe someone’s position without using quotation marks (in English generally, single and double quotes have the same meaning, and are used to distinguish nested quotations, with regional variation in which is usually preferred for primary, unnested quotations; both are also used for use/mention distinctions for literal words of phrases, and some styles distinguish which style of quotes are used for use/mention vs. primary direct quotation, but paraphrase is neither of these.)
> If you abuse punctuation to mean different things than it conventionally means, then you are not going to communicate effectively. Paraphrasing is when you describe someone’s position without using quotation marks (in English generally, single and double quotes have the same meaning, and are used to distinguish nested quotations, with regional variation in which is usually preferred for primary, unnested quotations; both are also used for use/mention distinctions for literal words of phrases, and some styles distinguish which style of quotes are used for use/mention vs. primary direct quotation, but paraphrase is neither of these.)
I hope this reply (focusing on 1 stylistic detail of the first sentence of the post rather than the substance) is not indicative of your usual posting. Try to focus on the substance. After all, I said I was assuming good faith and trusting that you were genuinely interested in the substantive discussion you started. Don't make me look dumb for trusting you. Feel free to edit your post to include more than just a stylistic nitpick.
Wait! Wait! I fear you heard might've heard me say something like, 'double down on the semantic thing, argue about its importance', but I didn't. Because what you or I think about stylistic preferences around paraphrasing (or as you put it, "abusing punctuation") is less important than stopping a genocide.
Not that I am overly concerned with your hopes in this area, but you could just check that with less effort than posting speculation.
https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=dragonwriter
> Because what you or I think about stylistic preferences around paraphrasing (or as you put it, "abusing punctuation") is less important than stopping a genocide.
That might be a point worth discussing, if what you were doing was, in fact, actually stopping a genocide, or even communicating effectively.
> if what you were doing was, in fact, actually stopping a genocide, or even communicating effectively.
It is! That's why I'm trying to discuss it in spite of deflections to purely stylistic differences. If you are interested in stopping the ongoing genocide too, please go back to the post you ignored the substance of and give a substantive, good-faith reply, if you are indeed interested in continuing the discussion you started and claim to want. Here is that post you ignored, for ease of navigation:
Because having their own state isnt their goal, the destruction of zionism is.
> The limit to Israel's actions is not its morality or its military means, it's the international opinion.
Israel has nukes and is self sufficient. International opinion only limits them until they decide dealing with the palestinians is more important, at which point they can team up with china. Really the only limit to Israels actions are what the israeli people will vote for.
I dont really get your obsession with the rabid animal theme. We know that israel cares more about civilians than the palestinian government because israel was content to let the palestinians chill until oct 7th while hamas spent the previous two decades bombarding tel aviv. Hamas has mafia level control over gaza. Thats just a fact, why does that make us racist for pointing out? They use human shields, it is obvious that they do not care about their populace. We dont have to be racist to point out that hamas fucking sucks and has done nothing but make life worse for everyone in gaza. That doesnt make the israeli government good, its just a reminder that things will probably continue to be terrible in the region
Israel's definition of human shields is placing military infrastructure adjacent to civilian infrastructure. Literally no international body agrees with this, but ignoring that, the IDF is itself guilty of this because many of its installations, including Hakirya, are surrounded by residential buildings. The Lehi also fired rockets from and cached ammo within schools and synagogues - this is commemorated by plaques in the affected buildings. There is also copious video evidence of them taking human shields by the much narrower, much more widely accepted definition of human shielding wherein civilians are coerced into entering combat zones under the thread of violence.
2. The IDF doesnt need to use human shields because hamas/iran dont have accurate missles. Even if the IDF did operate out of apartment buildings like hamas it wouldnt be evidence that the gov doesnt care about the populace because their enemies cant hit them anyway
Seriously, how many israeli civilians have been killed by military strikes aimed at legitimate targets?
And yet they still do, by their own definition and the one that is actually in wide use.
>Seriously, how many israeli civilians have been killed by military strikes aimed at legitimate targets?
Far fewer than the number of Palestinians killed by the IDF 'mistakenly' turning a hospital to rubble with journalists in the vicinity. What are you even trying to argue?
The israeli govenrment is far less cavalier with their civilians lives than hamas is. As you pointed out they are not just sticking them in the line of fire like hamas is
Oh of course, these are not people- they don't want their own good, they want to destroy others. Is this what you mean?
> israel was content to let the palestinians chill until oct 7th while hamas spent the previous two decades bombarding tel aviv
You obviously don't know that Israel bombarded Gaza killing 1800 people in 2008/9, 430 people between 2010 and 2104, 2270 people in 2015, plus 800 more between 2016 to 2023? This 4 times the victims of October 7- and we don't count the blockade and the wrecked economy.
> We dont have to be racist to point out that hamas fucking sucks and has done nothing but make life worse for everyone in gaza
Yes of course, blame the victims. No, Israel has imprisoned 2 million people inside Gaza for 20 years and periodically bombed them, and this is an unimaginable crime, orders of magnitude worse than Hamas ever did. Frankly, October 7 was horrible but nothing in comparison, plus it was obviously needed to bring the necessary attention to the situation. Fucking sucks, but hey, that's something Israel brought upon itself thanks to its criminal behaviour and the complicity of the West.
What is the point of acting like Israel doesn't have the means of wiping Hamas 100 times over? You know, even if you don't like the goals of Hamas (which is not monolithic, it has even accepted Palestine in the 1967 borders, offered 10-year truces, etc)- if you give people what is fair, and cooperate, and let them have a life with hopes and future- you will get peace in return- with or without Hamas.
And the bottom off this idea of "Hamas wants to destroy Israel" there is always the idea that Palestinians are rabid animals, more interested in destroying the others than in their own happiness. This is stupid and racist.
> You dont get to constantly launch rockets at their biggest city and then claim you want peace.
Well, you don't get to take someone's land, enforce apartheid, close 2 million people in a cage and claim you want peace either. You take the rockets, ffs, in fact you deserve much bigger ones.
The palestinains started pretty much every war. Israel won them. If the palestinians didnt want to be stuck in gaza they shouldnt have started and lost all those wars. Now they have to live with the consequences. To be clear I dont think gazans are wrong for being pissed about their situation. I do think theyre wrong for doing absolutely nothing to improve it though. I think theyre wrong for starting wars they cant win and then complaining when they dont win them.
> the idea that Palestinians are rabid animals, more interested in destroying the others than in their own happiness.
Maybe if they stopped devoting all their resources to destroying israel and invested in themselves people wouldnt think this(to be clear I dont, although I do think Hamas leadership largely does thinks this). The bottom of the idea that hamas wants to destroy israel is hamas, repeatedly saying they want to destroy israel. Why shouldnt I trust what they constantly say?
> What is the point of acting like Israel doesn't have the means of wiping Hamas 100 times over?
Who is acting like this? Israel shown restraint which hamas has never done. You are right, they could kill every single person in gaza quite easily, they dont want to. The same cant be said for hamas and how they feel about israelis.
> Well, you don't get to take someone's land, enforce apartheid, close 2 million people in a cage and claim you want peace either.
Why not? Why should Israel, with the power to wipe palestine off the map, settle for anything less? The problem with hamas launching rockets is that they cant back it up when israel correctly sees that as a declaration of war.
> You take the rockets, ffs, in fact you deserve much bigger ones.
And this mentality is why the israelis have decided a genocide is their best option
The Palestinians didn't start the 'war of Independence' in which the precursors of the most moral army in human existence prosecuted what widely fit the rubric war crimes on a massive scale. They didn't start the 1967 war, that was Israel. They didn't occupy South Lebanon or the Golan Heights. They didn't assassinate multiple government officials in Lebanon and Iran and the prime minister of Yemen. They weren't the party who broke dozens of internationally brokered ceazefires by raiding cities in Palestinian territories. This is such an egregious misunderstanding it's hard to blame it on simple ignorance.
yes they did. The jews were ready to accept the UN plan.
> They didn't start the 1967 war, that was Israel.
Youre right about this one
> They didn't occupy South Lebanon
This was in direct response to attacks from hezbollah
> or the Golan Heights.
Agreed israel did syria very dirty
> They didn't assassinate multiple government officials in Lebanon and Iran
By government officials you mean terrorists who directly contributed to ki9lling israeli civilians
> They weren't the party who broke dozens of internationally brokered ceasefires
Yes the palestinians absolutely did this
Only exception was when the west bank was part of the Palestinian state and ghaza part of Egypt for 30 years. They where "peaceful" under islamic rule, though still warring against Israel.
Peace = Colonializing the world for the faith. Its very medieval and very real .
Well, my personal opinion is obviously that both situations are abhorrent, but what I'm trying to point out the PR damage that Israel is doing to itself. I see two reasons why Israel might be okay with that:
1. They focus on short-term gains and they're acting irrationally
2. They know they'll always have US support because US needs them to do shady stuff in Middle East while at the same time they know that Arabs will always hate them anyway, so there's not much point trying to be the good guys. They don't care what Europe thinks because Europe won't be politically influential in foreseeable future anyway. By committing the genocide they confirm they're ready to do real dirty jobs, which is the core reason behind the US support in the first place.
I have a feeling that the part of Israel's wrath is that this whole war pretty much voided painstaking process of normalizing relations with Arabs. Therefore they thought "you know what, fuck this shit, if we can't have you like us we'll have you fear us". And that's how we ended up with a democratic country committing genocide.
The saddest thing is that the whole idea "it's 21st century, we won't do comically evil shit anymore" turned out to be a mirage, and as a species collectively we're not that far from ancient rulers massacring entire cities just for shits and giggles.
If the international community will barely lift a finger to resolve the I/P issue, then it is predictable and rational for Israel to take matters in their own hands and use violence (implemented as a "preemptive war") to "solve" their national security threat problem. It's a type of political realism argument to support this outcome. No appeal to a country being enlightened or democratic, etc., will work.
The jews in nazi germany were not threatening to annihilate the state and all the aryans. The palestinian leadership is threatening to do that to the zionists. The jews were not a perceived danger to the germans. Whether that makes genocide justified is certainly up for debate but it is very different from the justification for the holocaust.
And the answer is: no, there is not any situation where israel's genocide of Palestinians is justified.
Of course, those violating international law and committing genocide would like you to believe that is up for debate, but it isn't, according to the majority of the people who would engage in such a debate.
Indeed, a tiny fraction of all countries debating a thing doesn't make it debatable, but it does tell you which 2 or 3 countries out of 190+ equal ones are particularly argumentative.
At the end of the day everything is up for debate. I tend to agree with you that the answer is "yes, israel has to live terrorist attacks until the end of time", but to say that it isnt even up for debate is crazy.
Of course, those violating international law and committing genocide (along with their supporters) would like you to believe that 'at the end of the day, anything is up for debate', including whether literal *genocide* is ok, but of course, it isn't, according to the majority of the people who would engage in such a debate (and are thus the judge of whether it is debatable). Indeed, a tiny fraction of all countries debating a thing doesn't make it debatable, but it does tell you which 2 or 3 countries out of 190+ equal ones are particularly argumentative. Like, that tiny minority with a vested interest in it being up for debate *would* claim that it's up for debate, wouldn't they? But at the end of the day, the debates were already had, and the outcome is the international laws against war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide, all of which israel is perpetrating. Thus, there is no plausible justification.
If there was, then as mentioned above, Germany would have had the same right of action in perpetrating the holocaust. Of course, that is despicable to imagine, just as it is despicable to hear israel echo nazi rhetoric: when explaining how their genocide is righteous because they are the chosen people; and their victims deserve it because they're lesser, they're not even people, they're "animals"; and certainly they must protect themselves from animals, and of course that means cleansing the land of the animals and availing themselves of their god-given right to rule over it in ethno-religious supremacy forever.
Yeah, it was gross when nazi germany asserted it and it's gross that israel asserts the exact same thing. Never again means never again.
Palestine is not a country.
> it assumes that israel deserves security from Palestine in greater measure than Palestine deserves security from israel
I dont think anyone deserves anything. Natural rights are as real as religion. Everything we have we had to fight tirelessly for. All the rights we have we created. So questions of who deserves what are absurd. The question is, is it is moral for me to force israel to put up for terrorism. I certainly dont think its moral to force the palestinians to put up with terrorism, but Im not doing that. I have no problem with them trying to stop israel from oppressing them, the issue is they cant, and every time they try they make things worse for themselves. It is hard for me to say people arent justified in defending themselves.
The holocaust had nothing to do with the nazis defending themselves. I agree a lot of the israeli electorate is just racist but a considerable part of it just wants to feel safe and, probably correctly, thinks the only way to accomplish that is not letting the palestinians live close to them. The palestinians feel the same way for what its worth, they are just unable to act on those feelings.
Of course it is: "As of March 2025, the State of Palestine is recognized as a sovereign state by 147 of the 193 member states of the United Nations, or just over 76% of all UN members" [0]. Yes, the world has decided that Palestine is a country, just like it did for israel, and the few countries that don't like it can sit and stew, because their feelings on the matter have been voiced, heard, and outvoted. Indeed, any argument that Palestine is not a country applies equally to israel, and disclaiming the existence of Palestine as a country is at least as vile as disclaiming the existence of israel as a country. What does israel call people who do that?
> I dont think anyone deserves anything.
Nihilism is a valid opinion to hold, but while I'm sure you're a good person, what any 1 person in the world thinks, is a fraction of a billionth as relevant as what the majority of countries think, and the latter is clearly codified in international law. In short, the debate of "does anyone deserve anything?" was already held, the side of "no" lost, and the world doesn't currently seem interested in israel's desire to re-debate the matter.
> The question is, is it is moral for me to force israel to put up for terrorism
That is a question, sure. An equal question that must be addressed simultaneously is, is it moral for us to force Palestine to put up with israel's terrorism? They are, after all, 2 co-equal countries with equal rights.
> The holocaust had nothing to do with the nazis defending themselves.
Likewise, israel's holocaust of innocent Palestininan civilians has nothing to do with protecting itself. The unconvincing claims of self-defense israel has made, exactly mirror the unconvincing claims of self-defense that nazi germany made: In both cases, the genociders have claimed their genocide is righteous because they are the chosen people; and their victims deserve it because they're lesser, they're not even people, they're "animals" (quoting both israel and nazi germany here); and certainly the chosen people must defend themselves from animals, and of course that means cleansing the land of the animals and availing themselves of their god-given right to rule over it in ethno-religious supremacy forever.
That doesn't sound like "self-defense" to me. Never again means never again.
0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_recognition_of_P...
It says they used a 1948 definition of genocide, so I’m a bit confused by your sentiment that this is due to shifting definitions.
Article 2 of the Convention defines genocide as:
... any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:
(a) Killing members of the group;
(b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
(c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;
(d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;
(e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.
Israel is doing (a), (b), (c), (e) and arguably (d).
It is genocide. By definition. A definition written by a Jew and a Zionist, too, if that matters.
The wording "in part" was intended to capture situations where the group is attacked within the area where the perpetrator exercises power or control. For example, the Nazis couldn't exterminate Jews everywhere, but they targeted those within occupied Europe, where they exercised control.
Israel is specifically targeting Gaza in response to acts of war perpetrated by the Gazan government, Hamas. Hamas has refused to surrender, continued to fight, and the war continues. Palestinians who are citizens of Israel or part of the West Bank are not being targeted thus the war is clearly not targeting Palestinians because of their identity.
You can't start a war and then hide behind your identity and claim it's a genocide.
And, yes, I will absolutely give you that Israel had a right to respond to October 7. But they have gone beyond all proportionality and that's why people have gone from talking about this as a just war, to talking about it being a genocide.
When all the leading scholars of Genocide call it a Genocide, when the UN declares it's a Genocide, it's a Genocide.
And BTW, GAZA did not declare war on Israel. Hamas committed a terrorist act against Israel but Israel's response kills all Gazans indiscriminately. Which is collective punishment, also a war crime.
At the same time, I just think we have this habit as a society of creating a charged label, and then using these charged labels to argue against our political opponents as a way to brand them as illegitimate, dangerous or beyond the bounds of acceptable debate.
Some examples of this is how the terrorism label became a charged label after 9/11 and was used to delegimatize all kinds or protest or political organizing, or how we have expanded the definition of racism beyond overt racism to systemic racism, which many democrats used to label every major republican a racist and casts arguments about policy as a form of personally being a bigot.
By recognizing that people we disagree with are not the second coming of hitler or bin Laden, we make space for constructive debate and real solutions instead of shutting down debate, viewing people we disagree with as pure evil and not addressing the root causes.
The intent needs to be there too. Otherwise it's just a war.
Russia has hit plenty of life-supporting infrastructure in the affected areas of Ukraine and millions have been displaced. Will you therefore admit a genocide committed by Russia?
[1] https://water.fanack.com/water-situation-in-gaza-current-ove...
> over 85% of water and sanitation facilities are now completely or partially out of service
I don't even think I have to add anything to that. Either they incidentally destroyed that much, which means they are not discriminating between civilian and military facilities, which means they are deliberately commiting massive war crimes against civilians, or they deliberately destroyed that much, which means deliberate genocide.
> Will you therefore admit a genocide committed by Russia?
Russia is without a doubt commiting genocide, trying to destroy the Ukrainian nation. This is openly admitted by Putin in that he says there is no such nation. Luckily it is not entirely successful yet, but in annexed territories it is absolutely exterminating any mention of Ukrainian nationhood and ethnicity.
Israel is much more successful, both now and in the long term.
At least you're consistent in regards to Ukraine. Now let's take it one step further: Most of the infrastructure of Raqqa was destroyed in the war against ISIS[1]. Did the coalition therefore commit a genocide and/or massive war crimes?
[1] https://time.com/5563553/mosul-raqqa-ruins-after-the-war-of-...
> If there are militants near a piece of civilian infrastructure
1) Of course we would have to believe the attackers it's the case. But we can't believe them, can we? I could search for facts supporing my view, but these are not isolated incidents, it's a sustained campaign.
2) There seem to be militants everywhere, according to the total devastation: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/jan/18/a-visual-guide...
3) You still should not destroy the civilian infrastructure. I mean it's not that hard to understand: you should not kill civilians. Most people do understand that. Israeli army certainly understands that, it just chose to kill civilians and destroy their infrastructure.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/And_you_are_lynching_Negroes
I have no trouble believing that there are militants using every piece of available civilian infrastructure so that people like you get to shout "war crime" whenever the IDF calls them on their tactic. This is the only effective weapon that Hamas has.
Without ascribing further motivations, I don't see a difference to what's happening in Gaza and to what happened in Raqqa. If the motivation of Netanyahu is to "depopulate" Gaza, one must also ask why Hamas is doing everything to allow this to continue.
There is no question that civilians will die if they're caught up in urban warfare. Israel issues evacuation orders and designates zones where strikes are rare exceptions, with the knowledge that the enemy will take full advantage of this. If you're gonna set a standard beyond that, who can be expected to follow it?
I would have Israel deal with the situation by, I think you can guess by now. And I'm pretty sure if Israel had a better leader, it would be in a better position too. But it is what it is, the trauma caused by pogroms and the holocaust is now propagated further upon the Palestinians and will cause much suffering now and in the future. And then the Israelis can look back and see clearly they chose the wrong leaders and the wrong way to deal with the situation, and it can't be undone now.
Moreover, I would withdraw from the occupied territories and respect Palestinian statehood both de iure and de facto, not as a consequence of the Hamas attack, but well before that. In other words, implement the two-state solution. This makes lasting peace possible.
Of course Israel is doing and will be doing the exact opposite of that, because they want the whole Palestinian territory for themselves, so there will be no peace until they achieve that. And possibly not even then, because expansive nationalism knows no bounds and always fights for enlarging the lebensraum.
Even before the whole GHF setup, which is just organized cruelty to starve a population.
Especially easy to find among Hamas, or PA, or a whole bunch of other Palestinian organisations even when it comes to their own people.
Palestinian organizations have committed genocide, no need to change definitions or laws, in Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Jordan, Egypt, Kuwait, Israel and maybe Saudi Arabia too. In most of those places they have a reputation for disgusting cruelty (e.g. using snipers against school children in Lebanon)
In other words: they are not the good guys.
Or more to the point, why do we always judge Israel and Palestine with 2 different measures? Either Israel as a people and as a country are innocent and "it's only the government", hence boycotts are immoral. XOR people and government are both the same and boycotting every Palestinian everywhere on the planet is normal. Oh and accept that half the people just attack/boycott/refuse to serve or sell anything to all muslims, not just Palestinians, focusing especially on kids and other weak muslims, "because of the situation in Israel". Perhaps even have crowds chanting "gas all muslims" near mosques. And, of course, any kind of public success for Muslims must be brutally attacked, people, spectators, business partners, ... [1] After all, par for the course for Jews ...
Not that anyone on the planet will be surprised that arguments only apply when making Jews evil, not to anyone else (more general any group we don't like, gypsies, the mentally ill, especially against mentally ill children, ...)
[1] https://www.algemeiner.com/2025/09/01/pro-palestinian-protes...
You might notice that everyone condemned Hamas's Oct 7 attack.
Did they boycott Palestinians after that? Did they boycott Palestinians when they were using aid to execute constant rocket attacks against Israeli civilians?
Coincidentally, regarding that: I think that argument fails . Israel and Palestine are not comparable. Israel is the oppressor. The Goliath. Israel is, just like apartheid south Africa was, a settler colonial project. Considering the amount of time Israel has spent thwarting democratic process in Palestine, resistance movements are not very surprising. Heck, even Hamas was helped from the start by Israel as a means to split the struggle for Palestinian independence. The divide has been very practical for Israel indeed: every time discussions have come up, the official response has been "who should we even negotiate with?".
Support from Hamas has only grown because Fatah has been looked upon as weak because of their many concessions towards Israel that never went anywhere (Fatah being corrupt and incompetent has also played a role, of course)
A large chunk of the world officially boycotted SA apartheid. Sadly our governments do not take their responsibility today, which means people take it into their own hands. That makes for an arbitrary and very uneven form of mob justice.
Because none of this explains how you decide on boycotts, and how you intend to achieve peace. If there's one thing all muslim countries have in common, it's oppression. None respect human rights (even Morocco and Turkey, both in some ways more liberal than many European countries, have laws against freedom of religion). Half of them are attacking others. Morocco oppresses Western Sahara, as well as it's own religious minorities. Turkey oppresses Kurds, both inside and outside Turkey. Turkey oppresses religious minorities, also inside and outside Turkey. Both countries, of course, are the "goliaths" in those conflicts. Palestine oppresses religious minorities. Of course, hamas goes further and apparently oppresses most families mafia-style, massacres gay people, oppresses religious minorities (though both PA and hamas have exterminated Palestinian Jews, Shi'a and Druze (yes, they existed), and 90%+ of Palestian Christians)
Obviously this argument cannot justify a boycott against Israel and not against, frankly, every muslim state on the planet.
And those are the very mildest of muslim countries.
Plus, I feel you're not arguing in good faith. I feel like this is like those old cold-war "You have freedom in the Soviet Union" discussions where every discussion goes into total absurdity in an attempt to talk up socialism despite everyone in the room knowing full well that in reality, first, that nobody's free in a socialist country, two, that those discussion have one, and only one, purpose: to prevent reactions to Soviet invasions.
This discussion for you seems to have ONE purpose only: to justify and amplify muslim violence against Israel. Otherwise: answer this question: HOW do we force Palestinians to accept peace with Israel.
A good start would be Israel respecting the borders of the Palestinian state, for example, Israeli settlers and occupation forces leaving Area C:
You see, hamas' reaction was to immediately commit a massacre on Palestinian civilians, and then to start building a rocket arsenal and attacking Israeli civilians with them. So recent history teaches: if Israel were to take your advice, the conflict would become worse. A LOT worse. Immediately.
I'd ask you why this won't just occur again? But hamas has already publicly declared (shouted, in fact) they will go on another massacre and rebuild rockets "the second" this conflict ends. So I feel like that clears up the question.
The fact of the matter is that Palestinians, especially their billionaire "leaders" get a LOT of money, but only if this conflict continues. Until you change that, best of luck. Oh and changing that has a slight problem: neither Gaza nor WB have the slightest chance of making it economically on their own. Despite hamas and PA stealing over 90% of aid, the average income in Gaza and WB is a LOT higher than in Jordan or (especially) Egypt. This is because of aid. Unemployment benefits in Gaza are higher than hospital director wages in Egypt. War pays well for Palestinians, and for "Palestinians" (both hamas and PA give Palestinian passports to whoever asks, in fact, regularly to people who never asked. Last year, suddenly, everyone with an address in the old city in Jerusalem got a Palestinian passport in the mail. And even the muslims (who are pre-civil-war Syrians, whose families got massacred by Palestinians) didn't want them). In fact it pays orders of magnitude more than what they'd make otherwise. And before you say "but people die". Yes, people die. But if you go and actually look at even the claimed hamas-sourced numbers, you'll quickly conclude that less people die in this conflict than in traffic accidents, on average.
To make matters worse, Palestine, both Gaza and WB, are a gateway to immigrating to Europe. You live in, say, Jordan or you're poor in Saudi Arabia. That's a terrible life. So you "immigrate" to WB (Gaza if you're Egyptian). Once you're physically there you get a (bad) apartment and a passport, and in Gaza a job offer to work for Hamas (as cannon fodder, of course, but still). Once you have that passport even the Israeli government will help you get into Europe, assuming you don't go too far in your hamas job. That's how they constantly replenish their population (same way Russia does it: attract immigrants from even worse places, send them to die fighting their "enemy").
That is quite simply complete bullshit. What is worse is that you are arguing in bad faith.
The facts are as follows:
1) There is an ongoing long-term occupation of Palestinian territories by Israel.
2) Occupation is an act of war. Israel is waging war on Palestine. It is breaking agreements it is a part of.
3) Of course the aim of Israel is to absorb more-or-less all Palestinian territory into Israel proper.
I don't really care about your deflections to Hamas or corruption or whatever, not only because those are the usual talking points of Israeli propaganda and I have seen them repeated about million times, but also because if Israel respected the territorial integrity of Palestine, these would be matters of internal Palestinian politics, and any aggression out of Palestine towards Israel would correctly mean Israel is the victim and Palestine is the aggressor.
But when Israel is occupying most of the Palestinian territory, with the intent to keep it and settle their population there, and all of this are acts of violence, you can't in good faith argue the Palestinians don't have the right to retaliate with force. Note that I don't support Hamas or any form of violence against civilians in any way (I have to mentions this because otherwise I will be wrongly accused of being a Hamas supporter), but until you face the fact that Israel is mass murdering and displacing civilians and taking their real estate and occupying it, we can't really move on.
But let's examine your conditions, because they are SO badly chosen that EVEN Palestine satisfies all 3 of your conditions:
> 1) There is an ongoing long-term occupation of Palestinian territories by Israel.
Yep, Gaza is militarily occupied by hamas. They supposedly "won" an election, but then massacred everyone in the state. Even today hamas makes no attempt, other than with guns, to justify their position in Gaza. That's occupation.
> 2) Occupation is an act of war. Israel is waging war on Palestine. It is breaking agreements it is a part of.
Well, I don't think any sane person will argue hamas' purpose is anything other than self-enrichment through war.
> 3) Of course the aim of Israel is to absorb more-or-less all Palestinian territory into Israel proper.
Actually, it still isn't. Or at least, they haven't publicly declared this, and even the most right-wing members of parliament haven't gone there. So I don't even think this is actually true. Again, however, hamas has not only declared they intend to conquer all of Israel, they've publicly declared they will hunt down and kill every last Israeli (they of course used a certain religious word), anywhere on the planet. So they go quite a bit further than merely this.
I would like to remind you that these arguments are supposedly what you use to justify isolating Israeli civilians, even outside of Israel, even non-Israeli Jewish organizations are getting attacked by these demonstrations (e.g. a WW2 memorial in the Netherlands). So let's now see you agree to boycott Palestinians. After all, you're not a racist, and these reasons really are why you're suggesting a boycott, right? Since the very same facts certainly apply to Palestinians boycotting them is justified, right?
In fact they trivially apply to Turkey, Azerbaijan, Syria, Iran, Egypt, Sudan, Libya, Tunisia, Algeria and even Morocco (to name one conflict zone: Western Sahara), and let's just be honest: it applies to essentially all muslim countries. All are militarily occupying territory.
So let's just boycott all muslims! After all, reasons 1, 2 AND 3 justify it!
Frankly, if you know any amount of history you must know that the Ottoman empire is not called an empire because of the favorite headdress of the caliph. It was a central group, in a single central city that militarily occupied anything they possibly could, like the Romans did. They even "exported" slaves from all their conquered territories, which was a ridiculous 80%-90% of their economy. That territory is what makes up muslim countries today, so of course everything is still mostly militarily occupied.
This is what I find so baffling about the whole Palestinian conflict. You are complaining "in the name of freedom" that a region in an empire revolted ... and that it won! Because in reality it is of course Israel that freed itself from muslim occupation (islam, the country, "not" the religion, between quotes because every muslim insists there's no difference) , not any kind of conquest. And you are doing this in the name of freedom? Seriously?
This really reminds me of the arguments everyone kept making defending Soviet Union behavior during the cold war. There were supposed rules and moral principles and "rational arguments" and ... proving the Soviet Union was good and an unfair victim ... and then their tanks rolled into Vienna (and 100 other places), DESPITE things like gulags and the holodomor and ... being well known to the people making these arguments.
And here we are. Some excuse, with accusation, to do exactly what I predicted.
> Your GP post says 3 conditions justify reacting against civilians
You also seem to either misunderstand or disregard what I wrote. That is plainly rude. Go back and read it again.
So clearly we should boycott just all muslims, since your claim is that that justifies boycotting civilians from those countries.
The whole of "islam" was not a religion until at least 1930, but an empire, which is another name for an organization that ONLY occupies other countries and populations and mass murders and exploits them. The hadith state that all of islam, country and people are the personal property of the caliph (who is allowed to, for example, kill anyone, muslim, dhimmi or slave, for any reason, making islam even more inhumane than the Romans were. This explains what current muslims pretend not to comprehend: that their grandparents were overwhelmingly very happy to see islam, the empire, end). Muslim empires have always done this exploiting through slavery, until at least 1970. There are regular accusations to middle eastern muslims that they still do so. So this is not exactly a surprise. So that's a further justification to boycott all muslims, no?
In fact Israel is an example of a region and a local population that WAS occupied by the Ottoman empire and fought itself free. In that view the conflict is entirely the reverse of what you claim it is.
But you're a racist, so none of this matters. What I'm misunderstanding is that arguments can only be used against Jews, and how much the same arguments apply to anyone else doesn't matter.
Not once did I mention "Jews", I only mentioned actions of the State of Israel. I don't care how the groups of people call themselves. What I care about is that a group of people is killing another group people. I care about the fact that one group is a well-equipped army and most of the killed are civilians. It is wrong that this happens. You don't care about that, in fact it very much looks like you are the racist here, obsessed about "muslims" and some nonsensical interpretation of history and cheering that they are being mass murdered. This is shameful behavior from your side.
Comparing the economies of Egypt and the west bank is pointless and you know it. The Egypt pound has been devalued to hell and back. It has lost something like 6x in value to the US dollar in 20 years.
The WTO has consistently highlighted the Israeli control over the west bank as the main roadblock to Palestinian economic development and independence.
Regarding the Gazan health ministry, those numbers are confirmed deaths from armed conflict. It does NOT include starved children, or cancer patients who died from the lack of care. Nor does it include people under rubble. It should be considered as the lower bound of deaths.
What we will have to look at afterwards is excess deaths.
Force is the root of the problem. Israel will only accept a peace that it defines and that is why it will never have peace. You can't make peace in bad faith
See this is what I mean. The whole discussion is about ONE thing: allowing Palestinians to use whatever violence they want, including mass murder, to "win" (between quotes because the worst thing that could happen to Palestinians is that they win this conflict, as that will immediately cause all their allies to turn to enemies)
Because the other interpretation of this statement is obviously not what you mean. Or do you accept there will be war, and it looks like Palestinians will lose, with whatever consequences that brings, probably leaving?
Palestinians and their allies want war, nothing else. Hell, Palestinian allies, including "supporters" in the west, want war with Israel even more than the Palestinians themselves want it. Btw: allies, not just idiots in the west, but allies like Russia, Iran, China and Qatar, each of them oppressive hellholes that massacre their own population. That alone should tell you that the Palestinians are the wrong side to support.
And that Hamas are the good guys because they have a right to kill the foreign invaders trying to steal their land?
Is that the correct summary of Israel's genocidal intent?
The text is " a national, ethnical, racial or religious group"
Ukraine is not killing Russians because they are Russian, Ukraine is killing Russians because Ukraine is being invaded.
Israel:Palestine :: Russia:Ukraine
This is emphasized by the fact that both Israel and Russia are accused of genocide in their attacks, and both bibi and vlad are wanted for war crimes, which tracks, because both have an "ends justify means" attitude.
The relevant case law is Prosecutor v. Bagilishema (2001).
Genocide therefore invites analysis under two headings: the prohibited underlying acts and the specific genocidal intent or dolus specialis.
Meanwhile there’s an undenied genocide happening in Ukraine that Russia boasts about committing. And on-going in Darfur 15 years after the international community declared one there.
I care more about what's happening in Israel/Palestine (the West Bank is basically another war zone) because I'm irish and what's happening in Israel/Palestine is incredibly reminiscent of what happened to irish catholics from about 1600-1900, and also because I know a _lot_ of Israeli citizens (and many of them hang out here) so I'm hopeful that speaking out will make a difference.
But honestly, this has been getting worse since the 90s and at this point, I can't see any peace process ever happening. Like, either all the Israelis kill the Palestinians or vice versa (or climate change makes the region uninhabitable). It's profoundly depressing, particularly given that the reason there are laws against genocide is because of what happened to Jewish people (and slavs and gay people etc) during WW2.
Is the Gaza genocide on the same level as what happened in the Warsaw Ghetto, certainly not. However, it is already surpassing Kosovo/Bosnian War genocide by a huge margin.
The Warsaw Ghetto specifically targeted Jews and not other Polish people. Kosovo/Bosnia sought to create ethnically pure territories.
You can’t start a war from a homogenous country on a country that will crush you militarily, start losing brutally, refuse to surrender or give up, continue to fight, and then hide behind the word genocide as though the other country doesn’t have the right to continue fighting until you lose.
Yet, now that they've decided to stop this game and finally deal with hamas once and for all, i'm certainly not going to blame them.
European Jews do not have the right to steal Palestinian land.
Why can't Israel simply surrender and admit defeat in the war that they started? They never got the Palestinians to surrender. I don't see any signed surrender documents? Israelis have always existed in a war zone of their own creation, with every home required to have a bomb shelter.
Right now it appears that Israel is headed towards defeat, with more nations recognizing the existence of Palestine.
Current promises are more about domestic politics than anything else.
Jews have spent 2000 years running away from people who wanted to kill them, and now they've decided to stop.
> Genocide generally means to try and eliminate a group. It’s not about the total quantity of people killed.
To be exact, it's an effort to destroy a group as a whole, or a _part_ of it:
"The 1948 Genocide Convention defines genocide as any of five 'acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group'".
https://web.archive.org/web/20230927024940/https://www.un.or... (Legal definition of genocide by United Nations)
You can commit genocide even if you don't intend to eliminate the whole group as it was the case with Nazi Germany 'final solution' or 'Vernichtung' policies towards the Jews. Nanjing Massacre by Japanese is a textbook example of genocide, but the Japanese didn't intend to eliminate the Chinese population as a whole - they targeted a part of it and it is still genocide.
Out of 2 million population of Gaza Strip 62,000 were already killed, of these 80% civilians and 30% children (18,500 children!). Add to this intentional starving of Gaza, banning and murdering journalists. If this doesn't conform to the definition of genocide then I don't know what does.
Edit: typos
Editorial bias towards Qatar, yes. But generally considered to be factual (2 uncorrected factual errors in the last 9 years).
In fact "hiding among civilians" is an excuse for collateral civilian damage, international law allows attacks that harm civilians in order to achieve military goals.
By the way, did you know that Geneva convention don't apply if you're fighting someone who haven't signed it and also doesn't "accepts and applies the provisions" [1]
Green account with random set of letters for a name calling someone a bot, how ironic
[1] https://ihl-databases.icrc.org/en/ihl-treaties/gci-1949/arti...
4000 deliveries in march of this year. 50000 pregnant woman [1]
50,000 births by july of last year [2]
latest official (by hamas) death toll is 63000 [3]
so, if you go by numbers, population probably grown last year. or over last 2 years
[0] https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2025/1/1/gaza-population-fall...
[1] https://www.savethechildren.net/news/about-130-children-born...
[2] https://www.savethechildren.net/news/women-self-inducing-lab...
[3] https://www.pbs.org/newshour/world/gaza-health-ministry-says...
One does not have to kill the entire group for it to become a genocide. What happened in Srebrenica, where "only" 8,000 men were killed, was recognized as a genocide by the ICT for former Yugoslavia. The United States acknowledged in March 2023 that what Myanmar does to the Rohingyas is a genocide, even if most of them were "only" expelled and even if "only" 10,000 were killed according to the State Department. Those examples are very different from the Holocaust or the Armenian genocide, when there was an attempt to kill all or almost all of the group's members, but they are still a genocide. Israelis and many others mistakenly think that all genocides have to look like the Holocaust but this is not true.
b) according to news, they accept anybody into "group" and not only academics who study genocide
While I do wish the mainstream media in Israel dedicated more time to the human rights situation in Gaza, their coverage is far from how you presented it.
Seriously, do the people doing this think they're doing Israel any favours? Everyone knows about the Hasbara farms by now.