This is not saying anything that we don't know: wild animals are selfish and will do anything to achieve their biological imperative believing that ends justify the means. this barely constitutes a "stance" and there is virtually nothing about morality here because morality is a whole level (and a bunch of frontal cortex mass) above this. the author does not even explain why he believes what they say, so why even write the post
The author is very clear that he considers Israel being "the victim" despite the fact that it is the illegal occupier of parts of Palestine, and that the disproportion in military power between it and its supposed "tormentor" it's so huge that they have razed its entire region to the ground suffering minimal military losses (and that's only because they showed a minimal amount of restraint). That's what his whole argument hinges on.
That's pretty much what happens when you attack your stronger neighbor, go on a rape/execution/beheading/burning spree, then run away to embed in your civilian population who cannot enter your 400 miles of tunnels, which could have defended them
The Palestinians through years of Israeli reinforcements have chosen Hamas, an organization that thinks that sacrificing them all is beneficial, and it is actually partially working for them on international opinion.
Unfortunately both sides now needs to pay for their choices
I think you didn't get my comment. They didn't attack their stronger neighbour. They attacked their invader and occupier- the one that has been attacking, massacring, colonising, annexing, blockading, and generally making their life impossible for the past 80 years.
An "invader" and "occupier" that completely vacated the gaza strip of any occupation, triggering a Hamas election and take over, and constant rocket fire.
Unfortunately actual chronology shows that whenever Israel downsized its occupation, it has been attacked by the Palestinians, leading to more occupation (such as now)
> completely vacated the gaza strip of any occupation
What's Gaza? Gaza is just a region of Palestine. Gazans have the full right to fight against the occupier of Palestine. Besides, Gaza was still considered occupied due to the complete control Israel exercised in it (you confuse occupation with colonisation).
> whenever Israel downsized its occupation, it has been attacked by the Palestinians
Israel doesn't need to downsize its occupation. It needs to end it. Whatever consequences it suffers while still occupying land that it doesn't have a right to, are just consequences and it can't complain. How is this not clear?
> What's Gaza? Gaza is just a region of Palestine. Gazans have the full right to fight against the occupier of Palestine. Besides, Gaza was still considered occupied due to the complete control Israel exercised in it (you confuse occupation with colonisation).
No I do not, I don't know anywhere else in the world where occupation was defined as a blockade. Occupation is troops on the ground. Gaza was only considered occupied by Hamas and related propaganda, internationally it was not considered occupied, in fact it was the only time and place in history where Palestinians had full sovereignty
Israel previously had civilian population settled in Gaza, military bases and military government (hence occupation). It then retreated to the internationally recognized borders and removed all civilians from their homes, in a deeply expensive internal political effort.
Naively expecting the international community to give it the needed backing. However as was discovered it was never about occupation all along.
> Israel doesn't need to downsize its occupation. It needs to end it. Whatever consequences it suffers while still occupying land that it doesn't have a right to, are just consequences and it can't complain. How is this not clear?
Oslo accords was a process of progression towards Palestinian independence. This was derailed by Hamas suicide bombings in Israeli towns and PLO rejecting peace offers and initiating the second intifada. Just as the Gazan independence was removed due to Palestinian actions. It is quite clear to me that the Palestinians are ironically doing anything within their power to prevent independence.
> Gaza was only considered occupied by Hamas and related propaganda, internationally it was not considered occupied
This is false, all relevant international organisations (the UN, the ICC, the ICJ, the WHO, the Red Cross, all the human rights organisations), an overwhelming majority of legal experts considered Gaza still occupied because of the amount of control Israel exercised on it. What you think in this respect, or your ignorance of the facts, has no relevance on the matter.
> Oslo accords was a process of progression towards Palestinian independence
There is no "process of progression" (LOL). Israel has to abandon all its settlements and East Jerusalem and retreat within the 1967 borders. They are free to build a steel wall 100 metres high between them and the Palestinians, if they so desire- within their own territory of course. What is not clear about this?
> Gaza still occupied because of the amount of control Israel exercised on it. What you think in this respect, or your ignorance of the facts, has no relevance on the matter.
So can you please tell me what control Israel exerted? I see a land where Palestinians had an elected government, police, health system, army and so forth. That's exactly the definition of independence. What I do not see is Israeli troops anywhere in Gaza, which is the meaning of the English word "Occupation".
I think this is a perfect example of how Palestinian propaganda works. In order to ignore facts so egregiously you have to redefine words:
Therefore you get occupation without troops, apartheid without racism, genocide with a majority of militant casualties and colonizers who are the original population
> They are free to build a steel wall 100 metres high between them and the Palestinians, if they so desire- within their own territory of course. What is not clear about this?
As was tried word for word in Gaza and ended in a bloodbath, mass executing Israeli citizens by death squads within the 1967 borders. While the occupied part of Palestine is relatively peaceful, so why do you think Israel should try what was just tried and so hopelessly failed?
I believe that a just solution is a two state solution, but it doesn't seem like your idea of complete withdrawal tomorrow (as was done) is workable
> So can you please tell me what control Israel exerted?
Haha, no. The international community, international organisations and law experts have already established the consensus that Gaza was still under occupation. If you have a problem with this, it's a problem between you and, well, reality- I'm not wasting my time discussing it here.
> As was tried word for word in Gaza
No. I said "retreat within the 1967 borders"- did Israel retreat within the 1967 borders? No. It still occupies the West Bank and Gaza, expanding illegal settlements in the West bank, occupying East Jerusalem, implementing apartheid, periodically bombing Gaza and killing, displacing, imprisoning people in the West Bank.
> While the occupied part of Palestine is relatively peaceful
No. Dated September 2023:
"2023 marks deadliest year on record for children in the occupied West Bank"
"At least 38 Palestinian children have been killed by Israeli forces in the occupied West Bank so far in 2023, making it the deadliest year since records began, said Save the Children."
> Haha, no. The international community, international organisations and law experts have already established the consensus that Gaza was still under occupation.
I'm sorry, you can quote the UN human rights commission claiming that the sky is red as everyone perceive color differently but that doesn't change anything.
Quoted from the 1907 Hague Convention
Art. 42. Territory is considered occupied when it is actually placed under the authority of the hostile army.
> No. I said "retreat within the 1967 borders"- did Israel retreat within the 1967 borders?
And when this happens again who will prevent a massacre? Would you come help?
I know debating this conflict is worldwide entertainment by now, but seriously do you think that is acceptable to anyone living there?
> "2023 marks deadliest year on record for children in the occupied West Bank"
Surely hundreds of dead is more peaceful for both sides than the 10ks in Gaza, and you are focusing on a specific very bloody outlier year, you can compare other years (how many died in 2020?)
Like it or not, but the west bank has been far less dangerous for both Israelis and Palestinians even though both live in sometimes extreme proximity and with some very extreme elements on both sides
The reason is that because Israel has troops on the ground (occupation) it is able to prevent attacks and the extreme Palestinian organizations could never muster an army-sized force like in Gaza.
When Israel started retreating in Oslo is exactly when mass-killings started in Israeli towns. A sacrifice Israelis were willing to make, until it was proven that the Palestinian leadership was hardly interested in peace (repeated rejections of peace offers and initiation of hostilities)
> Israel still maintains direct control over Gaza's air and maritime space, six of Gaza's seven land crossings, a no-go buffer zone within the territory, and the Palestinian population registry
A maritime blockade or a no-fly zones are still not an occupation, and if there is an actual state with all the apparatuses of a state including a standing army in said territory, that argument goes down the drain pretty fast
>The United Nations, international human rights organizations,[1] International Court of Justice, European Union, International Criminal Court, some of the international community and some legal academics and experts regard the Gaza Strip to still be under military occupation by Israel, as Israel still maintains direct control over Gaza's air and maritime space, six of Gaza's seven land crossings, a no-go buffer zone within the territory, and the Palestinian population registry.[2][3] Israel, the United States, and other legal,[4] military, and foreign policy experts otherwise contend that Israel "ceded the effective control needed under the legal definition of occupation" upon its disengagement in 2005.[3] Israel continues to maintain a blockade of the Gaza Strip, limiting the movement of goods and people in and out of the Gaza Strip.
None of the Wikipedia reference links support the idea that Israel has stopped occupying Palestine; they simply comment on whether that affects the conflicts international legal status and argue that it doesn’t.
The importance from Israel’s perspective of them officially “not occupying “ Palestine is that they are then justified in more ruthless offensive attacks. Are you taking this position in order to defend Israel’s continued offensive against civilians in Palestine?
Your comment talks about occupation in Gaza and then switches to Palestine, if you reread what I said above, I agree the west bank is mostly occupied (Area A isn't). What I am talking about is Gaza.
Your appeal to authority does not matter as this is a matter that was not never resolved in courts, and the reasons Israel has withdrawn in the first place was due to international support, which also included the western countries you mention.
Generally, Anyone who can read the definition of occupation in both international law and English knows it will be very hard to prove what went in Gaza previous to the war was occupation.
The fact that this, similar to other axioms in the conflict are considered truism while no one stops to thinks on whether they even make sense, is a good example of prejudices at play.
Another recent example, the UN having to redefine famine in order to declare famine in Gaza. Do you see the pattern?
The Wikipedia article you quoted is misconstruing things. For example the actual ICJ finding was
> the Court is of the view that Israel’s withdrawal from the Gaza Strip has not entirely released it of its obligations under the law of occupation. Israel’s obligations have remained commensurate with the degree of its effective control over the Gaza Strip.
Clearly "regard[ing] the Gaza Strip to still be under military occupation by Israel" is not an accurate characterization of the court's finding. Marko Milanovic had a nice post [1] about possible interpretations of the court's ambiguous wording.
There's no way the court would have had a consensus for a finding that Gaza was plainly occupied; even this advisory opinion was opposed by 3 of 15 judges.
There have been plenty of attempts to correct inaccurate info like this on Wikipedia, but in the last few years it's become rather futile since editors with an anti-Israeli agenda are a strong majority. (See e.g. the updated definition of Zionism they pushed through: "as much land, as many Jews, and as few Palestinian Arabs as possible".)
> Suppose a man has already murdered most of your family, including several of your children, for no other reason than
...the fact that you have walled him and everyone he knows into an open-air prison, where nothing goes in or out without your approval, systematically keeping him, his family, his friends, his children, and everyone around him just this side of starvation, with no hope of release, for decades on end?
If I were him, I'd hurt you as hard as I possibly could, at every opportunity, with any means I could come by.
That is an interesting statistic, but India is a subcontinent while Gaza is one marathon long. I would anticipate need to travel to vary inversely with area. Wouldn't it be queer if, at most, 6% of Manhattanites stepped foot off the island each year?
Two clarifications. First, I’m talking about exits, not unique people. Pre-war Gaza logged ~500k documented exits/year (via Israel and Egypt) out of ~2 M residents; India logged ~21.6 M departures out of ~1.4 B. Both are trip counts, so repeat travelers are included.
Second, area is a red herring. Cross-border mobility is driven by policy, permits, visas, income, and border agency capacity—not square kilometers. Manhattan is integrated into a national customs/transport network; Gaza isn’t. Despite severe restrictions, Gaza still had hundreds of thousands of recorded border crossings annually.
That’s why the literal “open-air prison” claim fails. Prisons don’t run departure counters. If the term is metaphorical for harsh movement controls, say that. But if it’s meant literally, the exit data contradicts it.
I think we disagree on a great many things and it probably will not be resolved through an accounting of facts or reasoned argument. I will mention that as far as 'red-herrings' go, the OP did not mention 10/7 when they called Gaza an open air prison.
Indeed, I can see facts won't sway you, or most people in the pro-Palestine camp.
Also, I didn't mention the 10/7 attack either. The narrative that gaza is an open-air prison has existed for years, and it has been manifestly wrong for years; that hasn't stopped anyone from claiming it.
Additionally, when Israel gave Gaza to the Gazans in 2005, it wasn't fenced in yet the Gazans still attacked Israel, demonstrating the attacks weren't being about fenced in, but rather a visceral hate towards the yahood. The fences were built after the second intifada.
This is an accusation without meaning. You don't know what information I see, so you don't know whether I see propaganda at all. The reverse is true as well; I don't know what information (or propaganda) you see. But no, I don't see how Israel giving Gaza to the Gazans (something Egypt never did) demonstrates "the entire issue," whatever you happen to mean by that.
You are not commenting in good faith. The author, a respected computer scientist with deep knowledge of this issue, is not a propagandist; you just don't like what he says. I have been on Hacker News for well over a decade, I'm not some fresh two year old account like yours. And I didn't say I don't consume any propaganda (I'm sure I do), it's you who said I'm "deep into propaganda" which is a false and evidence-free statement.
"In 2022, the Egyptian authorities allowed more exits of people through their border. The 144,899 exits recorded during the year are 44 per cent more than in 2021, representing the highest figure since 2014."
That's 6.6% of the gaza population travelling out of gaza per year, higher than the percent of Indians who travel abroad each year. This statistic also doesn't reflect the hundreds of thousands of exits from Gaza to Israel each year.
The "open air prison" is a lie. You can impute whatever motive you want to them leaving. I'm sure escaping Hamas persecution was a part of it for many of them. Israeli prosecution wasn't really a thing and the "mowing the lawn" narrative is propaganda.
> In 2022, more people were let out of Gaza; however, their movement remained the exception rather than the rule, with the vast majority of residents, over 2 million people, virtually ‘locked in.’
That's an editorial sentence; I was quoting a fact. The same fact appears in numerous other sources and gives lie to the open-air prison idea. Sorry you don't like that fact.
You keep insisting on that 6.6% figure, but you have yet to provide a single source that supports it. You made that calculation yourself, based on a statistic that you already admitted doesn't mean what you thought it meant, and doesn't correspond to the relevant statistic for India. Given how many times I've raised this issue to your attention, I would say you are now intentionally misleading people.
It's interesting that the article directly contradicts your own takeaway:
"In 2022, more people were let out of Gaza; however, their movement remained the exception rather than the rule, with the vast majority of residents, over 2 million people, virtually ‘locked in.’"
Additionally, that's 144,899 exits, not 144,899 distinct people exiting, nor is it even 144,899 exits made by Palestinians. So your interpretation is multiply incorrect.
Would you like to clarify what you mean by "Israeli prosecution wasn't really a thing"?
Presumably, up to a few minutes ago you were unfamiliar with the accurate statistic I quoted. Noting your reaction to this new information: to double down and cast shade. Sorry you dont like it. And yes, with roughly 6.6 percent of gazans population traveling abroad each year, it's the exceptional gazans that travels abroad, much like it's the exceptional rural alabaman that travels abroad each year.
(The statistic I quoted also doesn't include the hundreds of thousands of exits from Gaza to Israel each year, or the undocumented exits through tunnels under rafah, so the exits were indeed much higher, not lower, than the official ocha figures.)
What I mean when I say that Israel persecution wasn't really a thing is that the men with guns in Gaza were Hamas, not the idf. If you were shot in the knee or thrown off a building for being queer, it was Hamas that was persecuting you, not the idf.
I'm not trying to cast shade, just trying to critically analyze information.
Again, could you provide a source for that figure of 6.6% of Gazans "travelling abroad" each year? As I previously mentioned, that article does not actually support that figure at all, so I'm not sure why you insist upon it. We could obtain a better estimate for the number of distinct exiting Gazans by counting the number of exit permits issued, since those are ostensibly required to leave. The article does say 18,000 permits were issued to workers and traders in 2022, but since it doesn't include permits to other civilians, nor does it mention the expiration period for these permits, I won't commit the intellectually dishonest act of trying to turn that into a percentage.
As for your claim about Israeli persecution, that's trivially false. There are too many instances of Palestinians being shot by IDF forces to list here, but there are casualty databases freely available online. Yes, Hamas persecutes Palestinians as well, I'm not defending them.
Thanks for this comment. I'd like to acknowledge that as you point out the 6.6% figure refers to exits from Gaza via Egypt using documented means, and may include people who exited multiple times, so the actual people exiting would be slightly lower. Similarly, it'd be nice for you to acknowledge that this figure doesn't include undocumented exits via tunnels in Rafah, or the 424,000 documented exits from Gaza via Israel.
In those conditions, it's hard to pinpoint an exact figure, but whatever the precise figure is--5%, 6.6%, 10%--it's clearly higher than zero, which is what one would expect in an "open air prison," the central point I was arguing against.
Aside from the exit rate, the "open air prison" claim is a lie for many other reasons, not least of which is that the guards patrolling the so-called prison (Hamas) are also the people who were claimed to be inmates, something one doesn't see in prisons.
The claim for Israeli persecution is not false (or "trivially false" as you put it). The odds of a gazan dying from an israeli weapon in 2022 was essentially zero: hamas claims 49 were killed that year, of which 22 are verifiable. The odds of a gazan dying from Hamas on the other hand was appreciable, in the thousands. After hamas's genocidal massacre on october 7, obviously this changed.
Yes, it's hard to pinpoint an exact figure, but you have provided no evidence with which to obtain even a ballpark estimate. I don't think the real figure would be "slightly lower" than 6.6%, I think it would be much lower, since many of those exiting Gaza would be e.g. truck drivers who make the trip constantly. As for the "secret Gazan escape tunnels", while some Hamas tunnels may exist connecting Rafah and Egypt, I can find no evidence that these are trafficked by civilians. Of course, I don't know how much lower than 6.6% the real figure is, and neither do you, that's the point. The real problem here is that you presented that figure as an absolute certainty, without any evidence to back it up.
Secondly, when people refer to Gaza as an "open air prison" they are employing metaphor. I have never understood it to mean that literally no one leaves, and I don't think any reasonable person understands it that way.
Finally, you have provided more figures about Gazan deaths. Would you care to provide a source for those figures? Even if they are accurate (and so far, none of your figures have been accurate) they still contradict your previous post, that the "only men with guns in Gaza are Hamas". The point of my questioning was to arrive upon a common definition for the word "persecution". Your offered definition was indeed trivially false, since you just admitted that the IDF shot innocent civilians in that time frame. Perhaps you would like to amend your statement and pick a definition more suitable for your arguments, such as Amnesty International's definition. In that case, I offer this report detailing the many ways Palestinians were persecuted under Israel's rule prior to October 7: <https://www.amnesty.org/en/documents/mde15/5141/2022/en/>
We were debating whether Gaza was an open-air prison. My claim is that it wasn't because people could get in and out. I have already acknowledged that the 6.6% figure refers to documented exits via the official Rafah crossing rather than indivudual people, and that this includes people who cross multiple times. You have not yet acknowledged the >400,000 crossings from Gaza to Israel, and you put in scare quotes the "secret Gazan escape tunnels."
But these tunnels weren't secret and they did exist.
"To mitigate the impact of the blockade on Gaza, a tunnel economy evolved and
peaked between 2007 and 2013, with more than 1,532 underground tunnels running under the 12 km border between Gaza and Egypt. "
That's just one source and likely an underestimate on the number of tunnels. You claim you were unable to find the easily-findable stats on the birth-rate in Gaza; this should be an easy one for you as there are multiple documentaries about these tunnels you can find freely on youtube, and you can see video evidence of the tunnels.
I am glad you now say that when people refer to Gaza as an open-air prison, they don't actually mean what they say, but are instead referring to a situation where there were hundreds of thousands (indeed more than half a million) documented exits each year between Egypt and Israel; to a place where the men with guns patrolling the prison were Hamas, not the IDF; to a place where if you were going to get killed, your killers were most likely to be Hamas, not the IDF.
Likewise, I appreciate you acknowledging that this is a special kind of genocide where the population hasn't really been reduced much.
And I also appreciate your deep skepticism of everything I say, despite the many credible sources I provide, and your complete failure to provide any primary evidence for your claims of tons of nameless, faceless, odorless corpses under rubble; your evidence-free claims that people born in Gaza today have a low chance of living; and your prediction that if you give Israel 10 more years, it will eradicate the population of Gaza. I look at population charts; this will be an interesting one to watch - care to make a bet on polymarket with me?
You forgot the rest of the quote:
“ While the tunnels prevented the complete collapse of Gaza's economy, they were unsustainable, informal, uncontrolled and unregulated by governments on either side of the border. They were closed by mid-2013.”
I did not forget the rest of the quote; I omitted it because it turns out that was wrong. Tunnels existed from Rafah to Egypt right up to 10/7. There are videos of Egyptian and israeli authorities destroying them post 10/7.
Israel has successfully conflated “being Jewish” with “embracing Israeli politics.” What a PR coup! I wonder, though, what they expect to happen when they lose their last remaining allies, as the world gapes in horror at the situation in Gaza. After all, most people have an intuitive sense that blasting a terrorist through their hostages is a morally indefensible action, unless you don’t really see the hostages as people.
The domestic situation in the US is also a real issue. Israel gets unreasonably favorable political treatment compared to every single other country, it's a real issue from the isolationist right as well.
From the article:
Given the ever more obvious case that genocide is going on in Gaza, I had been thinking that Scott Aaronson’s going quiet on the issue meant that he was starting to realize that this had become indefensible. Turns out I was very wrong.
In his latest blog posting, he explains that the current situation in Gaza is analogous to an evil murderer kidnapping your child and strapping her to train tracks before an oncoming train. If you pull a lever to divert the train it will instead kill five of the murderer’s children. This situation provides for him a definition of Zionism:
> Zionism, to define it in one sentence, is the proposition that, in the situation described, you have not merely a right but a moral obligation to pull the lever—and that you can do so with your middle finger raised high to the hateful mob…
> Zionism, so defined, is the deepest moral belief that I have.
Scott formulates this as an abstract moral dilemma, but of course it’s about the very concrete question of what the state of Israel should do about the two million people in Gaza. Scott’s answer to this is clear: they want to kill us and our children, so we have to kill them all, children included. This is completely crazy, as is defining Zionism as this sort of genocidal madness.
The population of Gaza has increased during the war. Roughly 60k deaths and roughly 103k births, using the UN statistics of 150 births per day in Gaza.
The statistics of 150 births/day in Gaza are from 2023- is it clear to you that the population now is undernourished, forced to flee from place to place, their homes demolished and their relatives dead or injured? Life expectancy in Gaza plummeted from 75 years to around 40.
And how do you even know that there have been 60k deaths in Gaza? That number is likely a vast underestimate.
Source? Also, even if this is true, it doesn't actually negate claims of genocide. That is still a colossal number of deaths, and conditions in Gaza are rapidly worsening to the point that few of those born will survive.
No, I really can't find any documents like that. Could you post a URL to the document you're referring to? Additionally, your claim of 60,000 deaths is an extreme underestimate. The dataset provided by data.techforpalestine.org lists more than 60,000 deaths, despite only including people whose corpses could be identified and directly linked to an Israeli attack. In other words, this does not include deaths from starvation, exposure, or illness. It also does not include unconfirmed deaths, and, of course, cannot include unreported deaths.
You may think data.techforpalestine.org is a biased source, but their total identified death count roughly agrees with every other source I could find.
It's hard to get good data on current birth rates in Gaza, but the recently published preprint of a demographic study of the death toll in Gaza (https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.06.19.25329797v...) provides some evidence that the death toll in Gaza is approximately balanced by births. Specifically, the project directed in-person interviews of Gazan citizens representing ~2k households and ~9k people in them, and recorded ~390 violent deaths and ~360 births in that cohort, both from 10/7 and until January 2025.
Thank you for providing a source! That data certainly contradicts @richardfeynman's claim, in that it suggests a shrinking population. Additionally, since total deaths will be greatly in excess of violent deaths, I would say it suggests a rapidly shrinking population. I would not call the birth and death rates "approximately balanced" in this case, but I suppose that's a matter of opinion.
No, this data in fact suggests growing population, for the following three reasons:
- the survey recorded a surprisingly small excess of nonviolent deaths (in excess of what's demographically expected), this is discussed in the preprint. The much larger number of violent deaths is almost matched by births, so the total balance is somewhat towards shrinking, in that cohort
- however, it is well known that the violent deaths occurred overwhelmingly early in the war (so far) - according to the official Hamas statistics, something like 50% of all casualties are in the first 4 months of the war, out of 22 so far. Whether these statistics are over- or under-counted is not likely to make a dent in this huge imbalance. So as the war is ongoing - and it's already been another 8 months since the 14 covered by the survey - the death rate is still "collapsing" compared to average rate so far.
- at the same time, the birth rate has evidently not seen such a huge collapse since the first 4 months of the war; this can't be gleaned from the survey, but enough plausible reports (e.g. what @richardfeynman quoted) exist that point in that direction.
So if we consider the survey relatively representative of the entire population, the imbalance towards shrinking population after 14 months is already almost certainly repaired towards growing after another 8 months, because so few civilians are violently killed (again, compared to the first 4 months of the war) in 2025.
Once again: do you have sources for any of this? Yes, there were more violent deaths at the start of the war, but how much more? @richardfeynman did provide quotes for his birth rate claims, but as I already mentioned, those quotes appear to be estimates of birth rates for a single month. Extrapolating that data across all 22 months is nonsense.
Additionally, your argument hinges on a single preprint paper that has yet to be peer-reviewed.
And finally, we don't even need to play these games counting up death tolls in different, increasingly creative ways. There are already reports from the UN and others directly confirming that Gaza's population has decreased: <https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2024/dec/06/instagram-...>
The time-wise imbalance of deaths is a very basic fact about the ongoing war, I didn't realize you were ignorant of it and needed a verification. The Hamas-provided statistics are timestamped, you can look e.g. at https://data.techforpalestine.org/docs/casualties-daily/, download the CSV file, look in the cumulative deaths column, see that it's just over 60k for the entire period, and note that 30k occurs around 2024-03-01. So I was slightly off and it's a little less than 5 months (oct 07 to mar 01) out of a little less than 23 months (oct 07 to 2025-08-31) that account for 50% of the deaths.
There isn't any report that actually counts Gaza's population, the UN provided an "estimate" with no methodology, births are not mentioned, and it's built on figures including number of people who exited Gaza (irrelevant to the claimed decrease due to violent deaths). That's not serious.
There's no coherent notion of genocide that fails to reduce the population significantly. Yes, you can argue (and people have) that the legal definition, by using the "part of" wording, can conceivably apply to virtually any number of deaths, but again, that's not serious.
"On 18 January 2024, Natalia Kanem, the executive director of the UN Population Fund, spoke at the World Economic Forum at Davos, stating the situation was the "worst nightmare" the UNPF representative had ever witnessed, as there were 180 women giving birth daily, sometimes on the streets of Gaza, as the territory's health system collapsed"
The 60k death count is likely an overcount, not an undercount, but this one I won't google for you. However you cut the numbers, and even if you believe in nameless ghosts under the rubble, there's been no population collapse.
Thanks for providing sources! They estimate 180 giving birth every day, but over what time frame? Without a time frame, it's not really possible to estimate the total born.
As for the 60k count, every single source I have found suggests that 60k is a massive underestimate. You'll need to provide some very strong evidence to back up your claim to the contrary.
Regardless of the balance of birth and death rates, multiple sources have reported a significant decline in Gaza's population this year. So far, all evidence you have provided contradicts your own initial claim.
Excuse me, but my initial claim is that there is no genocide in gaza because there is no massive population collapse. During the holocaust, 66% of european jewry was murdered in a systematic effort -- all civilians, with no Jews attacking European cities. The figures during the rwandan and armenian genocide were similar: massive population collapses.
Whether you believe there have been 100 births a day or 140 or 150 or 180, I have demonstrated that there were tens of thousands of births during the war in gaza, using credible sources like the UNOCHA and WHO. But even if you assume ZERO births, the gazan population will have only collapsed by roughly 60k people. I may be wrong about this, but I think this is an OVERESTIMATE, not an underestimate. While you don't have to believe me, I at least can make this claim without appealing to nameless ghosts under the rubble and can provide credible sources.
- The hamas figures are not an independent registry. The numbers are produced by a Hamas-run Ministry of Health—i.e., a belligerent party—without external audit. The UN, etc. do not independently verify these numbers; they simply repeat them. Even sympathetic explainers acknowledge the ministry is governed by Hamas and its routine updates aren’t independently verified.
- The system accepts public self-reports (initially via Google Forms, later an MoH web portal). That alone invites duplicates, misclassification, and bad data. Washington Institute documents the Google Form; it also cites the current MoH “report a death/missing” portal.
- The public reporting portal explicitly allows “natural death” submissions. When the same pipeline feeds the headline tally, non-combat, non-IDF deaths can (and did) get swept in. The live MoH form literally offers “martyr,” “missing,” or “natural death.” Mainstream reporting later noted removals where entries turned out to be natural deaths.
- the gaza ministry of health uses opaque and unreliable methods to count deaths (“media reports” + family notifications) with weak validation. Beyond hospital records, the MoH has relied on poorly specified “media reports” and family submissions; AP also notes names often come via the Hamas government media office—not hospital documentation. That’s not a chain of custody you can audit. It included the known false figures from the al ahli hospital incident.
- Totals and demographics are unstable and there have big retroactive corrections. The UN/OCHA famously halved its women/children figures in May 2024, and months later the MoH removed thousands of previously listed “victims,” with officials conceding some were natural deaths or living detainees. That volatility is incompatible with “hard” totals.
- The overall figure doesn’t separate civilians from combatants or assign cause of death. By design it bundles Hamas fighters, civilians, misfire casualties, indirect war deaths, and (as above) even natural deaths—so it cannot answer the key question “how many Gazans were killed by Israel.”
Thank you for providing sources. I do find it interesting that the Washington Institute report concludes by saying that the Gaza Health Ministry's list of deaths is generally considered accurate, and that list currently includes more than 60,000 names.
But maybe you're right! Maybe the very sources you're relying on are wrong, and only 50,000 or so Gazans have died. That still doesn't mean this isn't a genocide.
The argument is that Gaza is currently undergoing a genocide, not that the genocide is already complete. If we were to have this argument about the Holocaust in 1942 or so, you could similarly say that only a small percentage of European Jews have died so far, therefore it can't be a genocide. In the case of Palestine, give Israel another decade of unchecked brutality and I'm sure they can attain your high standards for human extermination.
The sources I provided show that there are severe problems with the Gaza Health Ministry list. You may find particular sentences that show the top-line number is correct, and indeed that may be true. I provided those sources not to show that 60k is the wrong number of dead--a figure I myself used in my initial comment--but rather to show that the list itself has issues and that arguments can be made that it's an overestimate rather than an underestimate. I agree the actual figure is difficult to pin down. There's no need for snarkiness ("Maybe you're right and your sources are wrong.") in a discussion like this, where the goal is to discover truth on a complex, emotional issue.
The bottom line is that whether you believe 60k people died or 100k people died, and whether you believe 60k people were born or 100k people were born, there has been nothing close to a population collapse in Gaza. Indeed, the population appears to have risen. Therefore, if you're going to make the argument that there is an ongoing genocide, you're going to have to also admit (as it appears you now do) that Gaza's population has either risen during this alleged genocide, or decreased by a small amount.
There are additional hurdles for those claming a genocide: (1) why has Israel dropped millions of leaflets to warn of impending attacks?; (2) why has israel sent millions of text messages warning of impending attacks?; (3) why has israel ordered evacuations of combat zones prior to attacking; (4) why has israel set up refugee camps/ safe zones; (5) why has Israel supplied so much aid to a civilian population you claim it's trying to kill; (6) why has its genocide been so incompetent and long-lasting if it could accomplish its alleged genocidal goal in a week; (7) what % of those killed are terrorists?; (8) why is the civilian:combatant death ratio so low; and I can go on forever. You may have respones to some of these questions, and we can debate these, but perhaps it's not necessary. The argument for genocide is one of those "emperor has no clothes" issues. People say it with such confidence, as though it's common knowledge (and indeed it is widely believed), but that doesn't mean it's true, or that the emperor has clothing.
Finally, by the end of 1942, the Nazis had killed 30% of european jewry, 3 million innocent civilians. There was already a clear genocide, which the world ignored. The inverse is true today: there is no clear genocide, but most of the world maintains it is.
> (1) why has Israel dropped millions of leaflets to warn of impending attacks?; (2) why has israel sent millions of text messages warning of impending attacks?;
"The world map will not change if all the people of Gaza cease to exist. No one will feel for you, and no one will ask about you. You have been left alone to face your inevitable fate. Iran cannot even protect itself, let alone protect you, and you have seen with your own eyes what has happened. Neither America nor Europe care about Gaza in any way. Even your Arab countries, which are now our allies, provide us with money and weapons while sending you only shrouds.
"There is little time left — the game is almost over."
So, to your question, the primary purpose of these leaflets is to terrorize and threaten the population. The secondary purpose is to have hasbarists like yourself pretend that they are evidence of humanitarian magnanimity.
> (3) why has israel ordered evacuations of combat zones prior to attacking; (4) why has israel set up refugee camps/ safe zones;
"[Forensic Architecture] has documented a pattern in which civilians have been directed to move to certain areas by official evacuation orders, only for the Israeli military to attack those same areas shortly afterwards, either on the same day as the evacuation order, or the day after.
> (5) why has Israel supplied so much aid to a civilian population you claim it's trying to kill;
Even rhetorically this question makes no sense, considering that it is very well-documented that Israel has been and is actively preventing real humanitarian aid. The Israeli-sanctioned "aid" via the GHF is a "killing field" of desperate Palestinians: https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2025-06-27/ty-article-ma...
> (6) why has its genocide been so incompetent and long-lasting if it could accomplish its alleged genocidal goal in a week;
Because then there would be even fewer of those alongside you willing to defend the indefensible.
> (7) what % of those killed are terrorists?; (8) why is the civilian:combatant death ratio so low;
The postulate required for this pair of questions to not be self-defeating is to expand the meaning of "terrorist" to encompass, at the least, every male in Gaza. In other words, "Gaza deserves death. The 2.6 million terrorists in Gaza deserve death! … Men, women, and children – in every way possible, we must simply carry out a Holocaust on them – yes, read that again – H-O-L-O-C-A-U-S-T! For me, gas chambers. Train cars. And other cruel forms of death for these Nazis. Without fear, without hesitation – simply crush, eradicate, slaughter, flatten, dismantle, smash, shatter …. Gaza deserves death. Let there be a Holocaust in Gaza." - https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/jun/27/israel...
I think this answer partially misses the point, because at the core of Aaronson's argument is the idea that they are the victims, that some crazy murderer moved by a hatred as deep as it's nonsensical has forced them to this horrible choice.
And yet it's Israel that is illegally occupying parts of Palestine, not the other way around; it's Israel that has closed Gaza in a total blockade for twenty years and bombarded it any time it liked, claiming many more civilian lives that Oct 7 did; it's Israel that imposes apartheid on Palestinians in the West Bank. It's Israel that constantly builds new illegal settlements in other people's territory. It's Jewish colonists that invaded a land to build an ethno-religious state that excludes the natives.
It's the whole victimhood narrative that justifies the apparently immoral solution to the ethical dilemma: "fuck it, I'm done being a victim, I will not uphold high moral principles when I'm constantly being beaten by others"- except that Israel is a nuclear power that has enjoyed for the past 50 years at least the complete economic, military and diplomatic support of the US and the West, is illegally occupying other people's land, implementing apartheid and building new settlements with the obvious long-term goal of ethnically cleansing the whole land. And has obviously no trouble whatsoever reducing to rubble all of Palestine and the capitals of a few neighbouring countries- at the same time.
Whenever someone says "I'm done being a victim, I will only look after my own interest from now on" remember- that's exactly how Nazism justified itself.
Did the Nazi homocaust of Jews seek to destroy all Jewish people, no. The UN has a working definition of genocide. The whole world, outside of the US (thanks AIPAC!) and maybe the UK is convinced that Israeli atrocities on Palestinians is clearly genocide.
"Never Again!" - really, Israelis? It's only okay if it's you doing the killing?
> Did the Nazi homocaust of Jews seek to destroy all Jewish people, no.
The entire goal of the holocaust was destroying all Jewish people (and many who weren't). This was exactly why this was dubbed "The final solution to the jewish problem". You might want to educate yourself a bit more on the subject
> The whole world, outside of the US (thanks AIPAC!) and maybe the UK is convinced that Israeli atrocities on Palestinians is clearly genocide.
The whole world was convinced that the Germans were mere victims who only need one more concession, Hitler was merely trying to fix the injustice of Versailles. Further, there was wide support for the German efforts to solve their "Jewish problem", As Jews of course have caused World War 1 through bond trading and caused millions of deaths, famine in Germany as well as Communism and its subsequent millions.
That may sound funny to you now, but that was a popular opinion in elite universities. When words lose meaning and truth become second, all kind of stories seem true
That's demonstrably false. A large part of the founding population of Israel came from Hitler paying the jews to move there specifically so they didn't have to have domestic conflict.
Well what are your thoughts on reducing Gaza to rubble? On forced starvation and repeated forced relocation of Palestinians? On killing called "mowing the lawn" by Israelis? On expanding Israeli terrority to include the property of neighboring countries and calling it "Greater Israel" ???? Where do the Zionists (many who are athiests) plan to stop, if ever? Does Netanyahu refrain from peace agreements simply to remain in power? Why does much the Israeli population reject all of this spilling of innocents' blood?
This post got flagged and hidden, but I vouched for it because I think it's more interesting than just another political take. It's a historical record of a brilliant academic (one who I once followed and respected) slowly being pushed into accepting, and then embracing, a genocide.
This is not saying anything that we don't know: wild animals are selfish and will do anything to achieve their biological imperative believing that ends justify the means. this barely constitutes a "stance" and there is virtually nothing about morality here because morality is a whole level (and a bunch of frontal cortex mass) above this. the author does not even explain why he believes what they say, so why even write the post
The author is very clear that he considers Israel being "the victim" despite the fact that it is the illegal occupier of parts of Palestine, and that the disproportion in military power between it and its supposed "tormentor" it's so huge that they have razed its entire region to the ground suffering minimal military losses (and that's only because they showed a minimal amount of restraint). That's what his whole argument hinges on.
That's pretty much what happens when you attack your stronger neighbor, go on a rape/execution/beheading/burning spree, then run away to embed in your civilian population who cannot enter your 400 miles of tunnels, which could have defended them
The Palestinians through years of Israeli reinforcements have chosen Hamas, an organization that thinks that sacrificing them all is beneficial, and it is actually partially working for them on international opinion.
Unfortunately both sides now needs to pay for their choices
I think you didn't get my comment. They didn't attack their stronger neighbour. They attacked their invader and occupier- the one that has been attacking, massacring, colonising, annexing, blockading, and generally making their life impossible for the past 80 years.
An "invader" and "occupier" that completely vacated the gaza strip of any occupation, triggering a Hamas election and take over, and constant rocket fire.
Unfortunately actual chronology shows that whenever Israel downsized its occupation, it has been attacked by the Palestinians, leading to more occupation (such as now)
> completely vacated the gaza strip of any occupation
What's Gaza? Gaza is just a region of Palestine. Gazans have the full right to fight against the occupier of Palestine. Besides, Gaza was still considered occupied due to the complete control Israel exercised in it (you confuse occupation with colonisation).
> whenever Israel downsized its occupation, it has been attacked by the Palestinians
Israel doesn't need to downsize its occupation. It needs to end it. Whatever consequences it suffers while still occupying land that it doesn't have a right to, are just consequences and it can't complain. How is this not clear?
> What's Gaza? Gaza is just a region of Palestine. Gazans have the full right to fight against the occupier of Palestine. Besides, Gaza was still considered occupied due to the complete control Israel exercised in it (you confuse occupation with colonisation).
No I do not, I don't know anywhere else in the world where occupation was defined as a blockade. Occupation is troops on the ground. Gaza was only considered occupied by Hamas and related propaganda, internationally it was not considered occupied, in fact it was the only time and place in history where Palestinians had full sovereignty
Israel previously had civilian population settled in Gaza, military bases and military government (hence occupation). It then retreated to the internationally recognized borders and removed all civilians from their homes, in a deeply expensive internal political effort.
Naively expecting the international community to give it the needed backing. However as was discovered it was never about occupation all along.
> Israel doesn't need to downsize its occupation. It needs to end it. Whatever consequences it suffers while still occupying land that it doesn't have a right to, are just consequences and it can't complain. How is this not clear?
Oslo accords was a process of progression towards Palestinian independence. This was derailed by Hamas suicide bombings in Israeli towns and PLO rejecting peace offers and initiating the second intifada. Just as the Gazan independence was removed due to Palestinian actions. It is quite clear to me that the Palestinians are ironically doing anything within their power to prevent independence.
> Gaza was only considered occupied by Hamas and related propaganda, internationally it was not considered occupied
This is false, all relevant international organisations (the UN, the ICC, the ICJ, the WHO, the Red Cross, all the human rights organisations), an overwhelming majority of legal experts considered Gaza still occupied because of the amount of control Israel exercised on it. What you think in this respect, or your ignorance of the facts, has no relevance on the matter.
> Oslo accords was a process of progression towards Palestinian independence
There is no "process of progression" (LOL). Israel has to abandon all its settlements and East Jerusalem and retreat within the 1967 borders. They are free to build a steel wall 100 metres high between them and the Palestinians, if they so desire- within their own territory of course. What is not clear about this?
> Gaza still occupied because of the amount of control Israel exercised on it. What you think in this respect, or your ignorance of the facts, has no relevance on the matter.
So can you please tell me what control Israel exerted? I see a land where Palestinians had an elected government, police, health system, army and so forth. That's exactly the definition of independence. What I do not see is Israeli troops anywhere in Gaza, which is the meaning of the English word "Occupation".
I think this is a perfect example of how Palestinian propaganda works. In order to ignore facts so egregiously you have to redefine words: Therefore you get occupation without troops, apartheid without racism, genocide with a majority of militant casualties and colonizers who are the original population
> They are free to build a steel wall 100 metres high between them and the Palestinians, if they so desire- within their own territory of course. What is not clear about this?
As was tried word for word in Gaza and ended in a bloodbath, mass executing Israeli citizens by death squads within the 1967 borders. While the occupied part of Palestine is relatively peaceful, so why do you think Israel should try what was just tried and so hopelessly failed?
I believe that a just solution is a two state solution, but it doesn't seem like your idea of complete withdrawal tomorrow (as was done) is workable
> So can you please tell me what control Israel exerted?
Haha, no. The international community, international organisations and law experts have already established the consensus that Gaza was still under occupation. If you have a problem with this, it's a problem between you and, well, reality- I'm not wasting my time discussing it here.
> As was tried word for word in Gaza
No. I said "retreat within the 1967 borders"- did Israel retreat within the 1967 borders? No. It still occupies the West Bank and Gaza, expanding illegal settlements in the West bank, occupying East Jerusalem, implementing apartheid, periodically bombing Gaza and killing, displacing, imprisoning people in the West Bank.
> While the occupied part of Palestine is relatively peaceful
No. Dated September 2023:
"2023 marks deadliest year on record for children in the occupied West Bank"
"At least 38 Palestinian children have been killed by Israeli forces in the occupied West Bank so far in 2023, making it the deadliest year since records began, said Save the Children."
https://reliefweb.int/report/occupied-palestinian-territory/...
And this is- the murder of children- just the tip of the iceberg.
> Haha, no. The international community, international organisations and law experts have already established the consensus that Gaza was still under occupation.
I'm sorry, you can quote the UN human rights commission claiming that the sky is red as everyone perceive color differently but that doesn't change anything.
Quoted from the 1907 Hague Convention
Art. 42. Territory is considered occupied when it is actually placed under the authority of the hostile army.
> No. I said "retreat within the 1967 borders"- did Israel retreat within the 1967 borders?
And when this happens again who will prevent a massacre? Would you come help?
I know debating this conflict is worldwide entertainment by now, but seriously do you think that is acceptable to anyone living there?
> "2023 marks deadliest year on record for children in the occupied West Bank"
Surely hundreds of dead is more peaceful for both sides than the 10ks in Gaza, and you are focusing on a specific very bloody outlier year, you can compare other years (how many died in 2020?)
Like it or not, but the west bank has been far less dangerous for both Israelis and Palestinians even though both live in sometimes extreme proximity and with some very extreme elements on both sides
The reason is that because Israel has troops on the ground (occupation) it is able to prevent attacks and the extreme Palestinian organizations could never muster an army-sized force like in Gaza.
When Israel started retreating in Oslo is exactly when mass-killings started in Israeli towns. A sacrifice Israelis were willing to make, until it was proven that the Palestinian leadership was hardly interested in peace (repeated rejections of peace offers and initiation of hostilities)
> Israel still maintains direct control over Gaza's air and maritime space, six of Gaza's seven land crossings, a no-go buffer zone within the territory, and the Palestinian population registry
A maritime blockade or a no-fly zones are still not an occupation, and if there is an actual state with all the apparatuses of a state including a standing army in said territory, that argument goes down the drain pretty fast
>are still not an occupation
>if
Please provide evidence for your conclusion that it’s not an occupation;
My source was https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israeli_occupation_of_the_Gaza...
Full quote being:
>The United Nations, international human rights organizations,[1] International Court of Justice, European Union, International Criminal Court, some of the international community and some legal academics and experts regard the Gaza Strip to still be under military occupation by Israel, as Israel still maintains direct control over Gaza's air and maritime space, six of Gaza's seven land crossings, a no-go buffer zone within the territory, and the Palestinian population registry.[2][3] Israel, the United States, and other legal,[4] military, and foreign policy experts otherwise contend that Israel "ceded the effective control needed under the legal definition of occupation" upon its disengagement in 2005.[3] Israel continues to maintain a blockade of the Gaza Strip, limiting the movement of goods and people in and out of the Gaza Strip.
None of the Wikipedia reference links support the idea that Israel has stopped occupying Palestine; they simply comment on whether that affects the conflicts international legal status and argue that it doesn’t.
The importance from Israel’s perspective of them officially “not occupying “ Palestine is that they are then justified in more ruthless offensive attacks. Are you taking this position in order to defend Israel’s continued offensive against civilians in Palestine?
Your comment talks about occupation in Gaza and then switches to Palestine, if you reread what I said above, I agree the west bank is mostly occupied (Area A isn't). What I am talking about is Gaza.
Your appeal to authority does not matter as this is a matter that was not never resolved in courts, and the reasons Israel has withdrawn in the first place was due to international support, which also included the western countries you mention.
Generally, Anyone who can read the definition of occupation in both international law and English knows it will be very hard to prove what went in Gaza previous to the war was occupation.
The fact that this, similar to other axioms in the conflict are considered truism while no one stops to thinks on whether they even make sense, is a good example of prejudices at play.
Another recent example, the UN having to redefine famine in order to declare famine in Gaza. Do you see the pattern?
The Wikipedia article you quoted is misconstruing things. For example the actual ICJ finding was
> the Court is of the view that Israel’s withdrawal from the Gaza Strip has not entirely released it of its obligations under the law of occupation. Israel’s obligations have remained commensurate with the degree of its effective control over the Gaza Strip.
Clearly "regard[ing] the Gaza Strip to still be under military occupation by Israel" is not an accurate characterization of the court's finding. Marko Milanovic had a nice post [1] about possible interpretations of the court's ambiguous wording.
There's no way the court would have had a consensus for a finding that Gaza was plainly occupied; even this advisory opinion was opposed by 3 of 15 judges.
There have been plenty of attempts to correct inaccurate info like this on Wikipedia, but in the last few years it's become rather futile since editors with an anti-Israeli agenda are a strong majority. (See e.g. the updated definition of Zionism they pushed through: "as much land, as many Jews, and as few Palestinian Arabs as possible".)
[1] https://www.ejiltalk.org/the-occupation-of-gaza-in-the-icj-p...
> Suppose a man has already murdered most of your family, including several of your children, for no other reason than
...the fact that you have walled him and everyone he knows into an open-air prison, where nothing goes in or out without your approval, systematically keeping him, his family, his friends, his children, and everyone around him just this side of starvation, with no hope of release, for decades on end?
If I were him, I'd hurt you as hard as I possibly could, at every opportunity, with any means I could come by.
Prior to 10/7, more gazans travelled abroad each year than Indians on a relative basis. There was no open-air prison.
That is an interesting statistic, but India is a subcontinent while Gaza is one marathon long. I would anticipate need to travel to vary inversely with area. Wouldn't it be queer if, at most, 6% of Manhattanites stepped foot off the island each year?
Two clarifications. First, I’m talking about exits, not unique people. Pre-war Gaza logged ~500k documented exits/year (via Israel and Egypt) out of ~2 M residents; India logged ~21.6 M departures out of ~1.4 B. Both are trip counts, so repeat travelers are included.
Second, area is a red herring. Cross-border mobility is driven by policy, permits, visas, income, and border agency capacity—not square kilometers. Manhattan is integrated into a national customs/transport network; Gaza isn’t. Despite severe restrictions, Gaza still had hundreds of thousands of recorded border crossings annually.
That’s why the literal “open-air prison” claim fails. Prisons don’t run departure counters. If the term is metaphorical for harsh movement controls, say that. But if it’s meant literally, the exit data contradicts it.
I think we disagree on a great many things and it probably will not be resolved through an accounting of facts or reasoned argument. I will mention that as far as 'red-herrings' go, the OP did not mention 10/7 when they called Gaza an open air prison.
Indeed, I can see facts won't sway you, or most people in the pro-Palestine camp.
Also, I didn't mention the 10/7 attack either. The narrative that gaza is an open-air prison has existed for years, and it has been manifestly wrong for years; that hasn't stopped anyone from claiming it.
You did in your first comment of this thread on August 31, 2025 at 5:51:18 AM GMT.
https://hacker-news.firebaseio.com/v0/item/45080674.json
Is your reading comprehension off? I said it wasn't an open air prison, which it isn't.
The only thing that I'm responding to is the first three space-delimited tokens in your post, which was "Prior to 10/7,".
Webster's dictionary defines "mention" as:
So yes, you did mention "10/7".Additionally, when Israel gave Gaza to the Gazans in 2005, it wasn't fenced in yet the Gazans still attacked Israel, demonstrating the attacks weren't being about fenced in, but rather a visceral hate towards the yahood. The fences were built after the second intifada.
> when Israel gave Gaza to the Gazans
You’re so deep in propaganda you don’t even see how this sentence demonstrates the entire issue huh?
This is an accusation without meaning. You don't know what information I see, so you don't know whether I see propaganda at all. The reverse is true as well; I don't know what information (or propaganda) you see. But no, I don't see how Israel giving Gaza to the Gazans (something Egypt never did) demonstrates "the entire issue," whatever you happen to mean by that.
You are commenting on a propaganda article.
You have posted the same authors links before.
You consume hacker news at all.
Your implicit assertion that you consume no propaganda itself belies your naïveté to politics as a subject.
You are not commenting in good faith. The author, a respected computer scientist with deep knowledge of this issue, is not a propagandist; you just don't like what he says. I have been on Hacker News for well over a decade, I'm not some fresh two year old account like yours. And I didn't say I don't consume any propaganda (I'm sure I do), it's you who said I'm "deep into propaganda" which is a false and evidence-free statement.
Source? Also, is that "travelled abroad" or "decided escaping persecution was worth losing their home, never to return"?
Source: https://www.ochaopt.org/content/movement-and-out-gaza-2022
"In 2022, the Egyptian authorities allowed more exits of people through their border. The 144,899 exits recorded during the year are 44 per cent more than in 2021, representing the highest figure since 2014."
That's 6.6% of the gaza population travelling out of gaza per year, higher than the percent of Indians who travel abroad each year. This statistic also doesn't reflect the hundreds of thousands of exits from Gaza to Israel each year.
The "open air prison" is a lie. You can impute whatever motive you want to them leaving. I'm sure escaping Hamas persecution was a part of it for many of them. Israeli prosecution wasn't really a thing and the "mowing the lawn" narrative is propaganda.
> In 2022, more people were let out of Gaza; however, their movement remained the exception rather than the rule, with the vast majority of residents, over 2 million people, virtually ‘locked in.’
Nice selective quoting.
That's an editorial sentence; I was quoting a fact. The same fact appears in numerous other sources and gives lie to the open-air prison idea. Sorry you don't like that fact.
You keep insisting on that 6.6% figure, but you have yet to provide a single source that supports it. You made that calculation yourself, based on a statistic that you already admitted doesn't mean what you thought it meant, and doesn't correspond to the relevant statistic for India. Given how many times I've raised this issue to your attention, I would say you are now intentionally misleading people.
It's interesting that the article directly contradicts your own takeaway:
"In 2022, more people were let out of Gaza; however, their movement remained the exception rather than the rule, with the vast majority of residents, over 2 million people, virtually ‘locked in.’"
Additionally, that's 144,899 exits, not 144,899 distinct people exiting, nor is it even 144,899 exits made by Palestinians. So your interpretation is multiply incorrect.
Would you like to clarify what you mean by "Israeli prosecution wasn't really a thing"?
Presumably, up to a few minutes ago you were unfamiliar with the accurate statistic I quoted. Noting your reaction to this new information: to double down and cast shade. Sorry you dont like it. And yes, with roughly 6.6 percent of gazans population traveling abroad each year, it's the exceptional gazans that travels abroad, much like it's the exceptional rural alabaman that travels abroad each year.
(The statistic I quoted also doesn't include the hundreds of thousands of exits from Gaza to Israel each year, or the undocumented exits through tunnels under rafah, so the exits were indeed much higher, not lower, than the official ocha figures.)
What I mean when I say that Israel persecution wasn't really a thing is that the men with guns in Gaza were Hamas, not the idf. If you were shot in the knee or thrown off a building for being queer, it was Hamas that was persecuting you, not the idf.
I'm not trying to cast shade, just trying to critically analyze information.
Again, could you provide a source for that figure of 6.6% of Gazans "travelling abroad" each year? As I previously mentioned, that article does not actually support that figure at all, so I'm not sure why you insist upon it. We could obtain a better estimate for the number of distinct exiting Gazans by counting the number of exit permits issued, since those are ostensibly required to leave. The article does say 18,000 permits were issued to workers and traders in 2022, but since it doesn't include permits to other civilians, nor does it mention the expiration period for these permits, I won't commit the intellectually dishonest act of trying to turn that into a percentage.
As for your claim about Israeli persecution, that's trivially false. There are too many instances of Palestinians being shot by IDF forces to list here, but there are casualty databases freely available online. Yes, Hamas persecutes Palestinians as well, I'm not defending them.
Thanks for this comment. I'd like to acknowledge that as you point out the 6.6% figure refers to exits from Gaza via Egypt using documented means, and may include people who exited multiple times, so the actual people exiting would be slightly lower. Similarly, it'd be nice for you to acknowledge that this figure doesn't include undocumented exits via tunnels in Rafah, or the 424,000 documented exits from Gaza via Israel.
In those conditions, it's hard to pinpoint an exact figure, but whatever the precise figure is--5%, 6.6%, 10%--it's clearly higher than zero, which is what one would expect in an "open air prison," the central point I was arguing against.
Aside from the exit rate, the "open air prison" claim is a lie for many other reasons, not least of which is that the guards patrolling the so-called prison (Hamas) are also the people who were claimed to be inmates, something one doesn't see in prisons.
The claim for Israeli persecution is not false (or "trivially false" as you put it). The odds of a gazan dying from an israeli weapon in 2022 was essentially zero: hamas claims 49 were killed that year, of which 22 are verifiable. The odds of a gazan dying from Hamas on the other hand was appreciable, in the thousands. After hamas's genocidal massacre on october 7, obviously this changed.
Yes, it's hard to pinpoint an exact figure, but you have provided no evidence with which to obtain even a ballpark estimate. I don't think the real figure would be "slightly lower" than 6.6%, I think it would be much lower, since many of those exiting Gaza would be e.g. truck drivers who make the trip constantly. As for the "secret Gazan escape tunnels", while some Hamas tunnels may exist connecting Rafah and Egypt, I can find no evidence that these are trafficked by civilians. Of course, I don't know how much lower than 6.6% the real figure is, and neither do you, that's the point. The real problem here is that you presented that figure as an absolute certainty, without any evidence to back it up.
Secondly, when people refer to Gaza as an "open air prison" they are employing metaphor. I have never understood it to mean that literally no one leaves, and I don't think any reasonable person understands it that way.
Finally, you have provided more figures about Gazan deaths. Would you care to provide a source for those figures? Even if they are accurate (and so far, none of your figures have been accurate) they still contradict your previous post, that the "only men with guns in Gaza are Hamas". The point of my questioning was to arrive upon a common definition for the word "persecution". Your offered definition was indeed trivially false, since you just admitted that the IDF shot innocent civilians in that time frame. Perhaps you would like to amend your statement and pick a definition more suitable for your arguments, such as Amnesty International's definition. In that case, I offer this report detailing the many ways Palestinians were persecuted under Israel's rule prior to October 7: <https://www.amnesty.org/en/documents/mde15/5141/2022/en/>
We were debating whether Gaza was an open-air prison. My claim is that it wasn't because people could get in and out. I have already acknowledged that the 6.6% figure refers to documented exits via the official Rafah crossing rather than indivudual people, and that this includes people who cross multiple times. You have not yet acknowledged the >400,000 crossings from Gaza to Israel, and you put in scare quotes the "secret Gazan escape tunnels."
But these tunnels weren't secret and they did exist. "To mitigate the impact of the blockade on Gaza, a tunnel economy evolved and peaked between 2007 and 2013, with more than 1,532 underground tunnels running under the 12 km border between Gaza and Egypt. "
Source: https://unctad.org/system/files/official-document/tdb62d3_en...
That's just one source and likely an underestimate on the number of tunnels. You claim you were unable to find the easily-findable stats on the birth-rate in Gaza; this should be an easy one for you as there are multiple documentaries about these tunnels you can find freely on youtube, and you can see video evidence of the tunnels.
I am glad you now say that when people refer to Gaza as an open-air prison, they don't actually mean what they say, but are instead referring to a situation where there were hundreds of thousands (indeed more than half a million) documented exits each year between Egypt and Israel; to a place where the men with guns patrolling the prison were Hamas, not the IDF; to a place where if you were going to get killed, your killers were most likely to be Hamas, not the IDF.
Likewise, I appreciate you acknowledging that this is a special kind of genocide where the population hasn't really been reduced much.
And I also appreciate your deep skepticism of everything I say, despite the many credible sources I provide, and your complete failure to provide any primary evidence for your claims of tons of nameless, faceless, odorless corpses under rubble; your evidence-free claims that people born in Gaza today have a low chance of living; and your prediction that if you give Israel 10 more years, it will eradicate the population of Gaza. I look at population charts; this will be an interesting one to watch - care to make a bet on polymarket with me?
You forgot the rest of the quote: “ While the tunnels prevented the complete collapse of Gaza's economy, they were unsustainable, informal, uncontrolled and unregulated by governments on either side of the border. They were closed by mid-2013.”
I did not forget the rest of the quote; I omitted it because it turns out that was wrong. Tunnels existed from Rafah to Egypt right up to 10/7. There are videos of Egyptian and israeli authorities destroying them post 10/7.
Israel has successfully conflated “being Jewish” with “embracing Israeli politics.” What a PR coup! I wonder, though, what they expect to happen when they lose their last remaining allies, as the world gapes in horror at the situation in Gaza. After all, most people have an intuitive sense that blasting a terrorist through their hostages is a morally indefensible action, unless you don’t really see the hostages as people.
The domestic situation in the US is also a real issue. Israel gets unreasonably favorable political treatment compared to every single other country, it's a real issue from the isolationist right as well.
Agree with Peter Woit's reply to Aaronson's post.
From the article: Given the ever more obvious case that genocide is going on in Gaza, I had been thinking that Scott Aaronson’s going quiet on the issue meant that he was starting to realize that this had become indefensible. Turns out I was very wrong.
In his latest blog posting, he explains that the current situation in Gaza is analogous to an evil murderer kidnapping your child and strapping her to train tracks before an oncoming train. If you pull a lever to divert the train it will instead kill five of the murderer’s children. This situation provides for him a definition of Zionism:
> Zionism, to define it in one sentence, is the proposition that, in the situation described, you have not merely a right but a moral obligation to pull the lever—and that you can do so with your middle finger raised high to the hateful mob…
> Zionism, so defined, is the deepest moral belief that I have.
Scott formulates this as an abstract moral dilemma, but of course it’s about the very concrete question of what the state of Israel should do about the two million people in Gaza. Scott’s answer to this is clear: they want to kill us and our children, so we have to kill them all, children included. This is completely crazy, as is defining Zionism as this sort of genocidal madness.
Source: https://www.math.columbia.edu/~woit/wordpress/?p=15191
The population of Gaza has increased during the war. Roughly 60k deaths and roughly 103k births, using the UN statistics of 150 births per day in Gaza.
The statistics of 150 births/day in Gaza are from 2023- is it clear to you that the population now is undernourished, forced to flee from place to place, their homes demolished and their relatives dead or injured? Life expectancy in Gaza plummeted from 75 years to around 40.
And how do you even know that there have been 60k deaths in Gaza? That number is likely a vast underestimate.
Source? Also, even if this is true, it doesn't actually negate claims of genocide. That is still a colossal number of deaths, and conditions in Gaza are rapidly worsening to the point that few of those born will survive.
Source on birth data is the un. You can Google it, they actually say 180 births per day in some documents, I'm using their figure.
Yes, conditions are bad in Gaza, and yes there have been many deaths, but it's not a genocide if the population is rising.
No, I really can't find any documents like that. Could you post a URL to the document you're referring to? Additionally, your claim of 60,000 deaths is an extreme underestimate. The dataset provided by data.techforpalestine.org lists more than 60,000 deaths, despite only including people whose corpses could be identified and directly linked to an Israeli attack. In other words, this does not include deaths from starvation, exposure, or illness. It also does not include unconfirmed deaths, and, of course, cannot include unreported deaths.
You may think data.techforpalestine.org is a biased source, but their total identified death count roughly agrees with every other source I could find.
It's hard to get good data on current birth rates in Gaza, but the recently published preprint of a demographic study of the death toll in Gaza (https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.06.19.25329797v...) provides some evidence that the death toll in Gaza is approximately balanced by births. Specifically, the project directed in-person interviews of Gazan citizens representing ~2k households and ~9k people in them, and recorded ~390 violent deaths and ~360 births in that cohort, both from 10/7 and until January 2025.
Thank you for providing a source! That data certainly contradicts @richardfeynman's claim, in that it suggests a shrinking population. Additionally, since total deaths will be greatly in excess of violent deaths, I would say it suggests a rapidly shrinking population. I would not call the birth and death rates "approximately balanced" in this case, but I suppose that's a matter of opinion.
No, this data in fact suggests growing population, for the following three reasons:
- the survey recorded a surprisingly small excess of nonviolent deaths (in excess of what's demographically expected), this is discussed in the preprint. The much larger number of violent deaths is almost matched by births, so the total balance is somewhat towards shrinking, in that cohort
- however, it is well known that the violent deaths occurred overwhelmingly early in the war (so far) - according to the official Hamas statistics, something like 50% of all casualties are in the first 4 months of the war, out of 22 so far. Whether these statistics are over- or under-counted is not likely to make a dent in this huge imbalance. So as the war is ongoing - and it's already been another 8 months since the 14 covered by the survey - the death rate is still "collapsing" compared to average rate so far.
- at the same time, the birth rate has evidently not seen such a huge collapse since the first 4 months of the war; this can't be gleaned from the survey, but enough plausible reports (e.g. what @richardfeynman quoted) exist that point in that direction.
So if we consider the survey relatively representative of the entire population, the imbalance towards shrinking population after 14 months is already almost certainly repaired towards growing after another 8 months, because so few civilians are violently killed (again, compared to the first 4 months of the war) in 2025.
Once again: do you have sources for any of this? Yes, there were more violent deaths at the start of the war, but how much more? @richardfeynman did provide quotes for his birth rate claims, but as I already mentioned, those quotes appear to be estimates of birth rates for a single month. Extrapolating that data across all 22 months is nonsense.
Additionally, your argument hinges on a single preprint paper that has yet to be peer-reviewed.
And finally, we don't even need to play these games counting up death tolls in different, increasingly creative ways. There are already reports from the UN and others directly confirming that Gaza's population has decreased: <https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2024/dec/06/instagram-...>
The time-wise imbalance of deaths is a very basic fact about the ongoing war, I didn't realize you were ignorant of it and needed a verification. The Hamas-provided statistics are timestamped, you can look e.g. at https://data.techforpalestine.org/docs/casualties-daily/, download the CSV file, look in the cumulative deaths column, see that it's just over 60k for the entire period, and note that 30k occurs around 2024-03-01. So I was slightly off and it's a little less than 5 months (oct 07 to mar 01) out of a little less than 23 months (oct 07 to 2025-08-31) that account for 50% of the deaths.
There isn't any report that actually counts Gaza's population, the UN provided an "estimate" with no methodology, births are not mentioned, and it's built on figures including number of people who exited Gaza (irrelevant to the claimed decrease due to violent deaths). That's not serious.
There's no coherent notion of genocide that fails to reduce the population significantly. Yes, you can argue (and people have) that the legal definition, by using the "part of" wording, can conceivably apply to virtually any number of deaths, but again, that's not serious.
Source: https://www.who.int/news/item/03-11-2023-women-and-newborns-... "There are an estimated 50 000 pregnant women in Gaza, with more than 180 giving birth every day. " - WHO
Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaza_humanitarian_crisis_%2820...
"On 18 January 2024, Natalia Kanem, the executive director of the UN Population Fund, spoke at the World Economic Forum at Davos, stating the situation was the "worst nightmare" the UNPF representative had ever witnessed, as there were 180 women giving birth daily, sometimes on the streets of Gaza, as the territory's health system collapsed"
Source: https://www.savethechildren.net/news/about-130-children-born... "About 130 babies will be born in Gaza every day over a month into a healthcare system driven to the verge of collapse, where some may not survive complications at birth. "
The 60k death count is likely an overcount, not an undercount, but this one I won't google for you. However you cut the numbers, and even if you believe in nameless ghosts under the rubble, there's been no population collapse.
Thanks for providing sources! They estimate 180 giving birth every day, but over what time frame? Without a time frame, it's not really possible to estimate the total born.
As for the 60k count, every single source I have found suggests that 60k is a massive underestimate. You'll need to provide some very strong evidence to back up your claim to the contrary.
Regardless of the balance of birth and death rates, multiple sources have reported a significant decline in Gaza's population this year. So far, all evidence you have provided contradicts your own initial claim.
Excuse me, but my initial claim is that there is no genocide in gaza because there is no massive population collapse. During the holocaust, 66% of european jewry was murdered in a systematic effort -- all civilians, with no Jews attacking European cities. The figures during the rwandan and armenian genocide were similar: massive population collapses.
Whether you believe there have been 100 births a day or 140 or 150 or 180, I have demonstrated that there were tens of thousands of births during the war in gaza, using credible sources like the UNOCHA and WHO. But even if you assume ZERO births, the gazan population will have only collapsed by roughly 60k people. I may be wrong about this, but I think this is an OVERESTIMATE, not an underestimate. While you don't have to believe me, I at least can make this claim without appealing to nameless ghosts under the rubble and can provide credible sources.
- The hamas figures are not an independent registry. The numbers are produced by a Hamas-run Ministry of Health—i.e., a belligerent party—without external audit. The UN, etc. do not independently verify these numbers; they simply repeat them. Even sympathetic explainers acknowledge the ministry is governed by Hamas and its routine updates aren’t independently verified.
- The system accepts public self-reports (initially via Google Forms, later an MoH web portal). That alone invites duplicates, misclassification, and bad data. Washington Institute documents the Google Form; it also cites the current MoH “report a death/missing” portal.
- The public reporting portal explicitly allows “natural death” submissions. When the same pipeline feeds the headline tally, non-combat, non-IDF deaths can (and did) get swept in. The live MoH form literally offers “martyr,” “missing,” or “natural death.” Mainstream reporting later noted removals where entries turned out to be natural deaths.
- the gaza ministry of health uses opaque and unreliable methods to count deaths (“media reports” + family notifications) with weak validation. Beyond hospital records, the MoH has relied on poorly specified “media reports” and family submissions; AP also notes names often come via the Hamas government media office—not hospital documentation. That’s not a chain of custody you can audit. It included the known false figures from the al ahli hospital incident.
- Totals and demographics are unstable and there have big retroactive corrections. The UN/OCHA famously halved its women/children figures in May 2024, and months later the MoH removed thousands of previously listed “victims,” with officials conceding some were natural deaths or living detainees. That volatility is incompatible with “hard” totals.
- The overall figure doesn’t separate civilians from combatants or assign cause of death. By design it bundles Hamas fighters, civilians, misfire casualties, indirect war deaths, and (as above) even natural deaths—so it cannot answer the key question “how many Gazans were killed by Israel.”
Sources: Source: https://www.washingtoninstitute.org/policy-analysis/untangli...
Source: https://www.washingtoninstitute.org/sites/default/files/pdf/...
Source: https://sehatty.ps/moh-registration/public/add-order
Source: https://news.sky.com/story/hundreds-of-names-removed-from-of...
Source: https://www.euronews.com/2025/04/03/hamas-run-health-ministr...
Source: https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/un-says-gaza-death...
Source: https://apnews.com/article/israel-hamas-war-gaza-health-mini...
Thank you for providing sources. I do find it interesting that the Washington Institute report concludes by saying that the Gaza Health Ministry's list of deaths is generally considered accurate, and that list currently includes more than 60,000 names.
But maybe you're right! Maybe the very sources you're relying on are wrong, and only 50,000 or so Gazans have died. That still doesn't mean this isn't a genocide.
The argument is that Gaza is currently undergoing a genocide, not that the genocide is already complete. If we were to have this argument about the Holocaust in 1942 or so, you could similarly say that only a small percentage of European Jews have died so far, therefore it can't be a genocide. In the case of Palestine, give Israel another decade of unchecked brutality and I'm sure they can attain your high standards for human extermination.
The sources I provided show that there are severe problems with the Gaza Health Ministry list. You may find particular sentences that show the top-line number is correct, and indeed that may be true. I provided those sources not to show that 60k is the wrong number of dead--a figure I myself used in my initial comment--but rather to show that the list itself has issues and that arguments can be made that it's an overestimate rather than an underestimate. I agree the actual figure is difficult to pin down. There's no need for snarkiness ("Maybe you're right and your sources are wrong.") in a discussion like this, where the goal is to discover truth on a complex, emotional issue.
The bottom line is that whether you believe 60k people died or 100k people died, and whether you believe 60k people were born or 100k people were born, there has been nothing close to a population collapse in Gaza. Indeed, the population appears to have risen. Therefore, if you're going to make the argument that there is an ongoing genocide, you're going to have to also admit (as it appears you now do) that Gaza's population has either risen during this alleged genocide, or decreased by a small amount.
There are additional hurdles for those claming a genocide: (1) why has Israel dropped millions of leaflets to warn of impending attacks?; (2) why has israel sent millions of text messages warning of impending attacks?; (3) why has israel ordered evacuations of combat zones prior to attacking; (4) why has israel set up refugee camps/ safe zones; (5) why has Israel supplied so much aid to a civilian population you claim it's trying to kill; (6) why has its genocide been so incompetent and long-lasting if it could accomplish its alleged genocidal goal in a week; (7) what % of those killed are terrorists?; (8) why is the civilian:combatant death ratio so low; and I can go on forever. You may have respones to some of these questions, and we can debate these, but perhaps it's not necessary. The argument for genocide is one of those "emperor has no clothes" issues. People say it with such confidence, as though it's common knowledge (and indeed it is widely believed), but that doesn't mean it's true, or that the emperor has clothing.
Finally, by the end of 1942, the Nazis had killed 30% of european jewry, 3 million innocent civilians. There was already a clear genocide, which the world ignored. The inverse is true today: there is no clear genocide, but most of the world maintains it is.
> (1) why has Israel dropped millions of leaflets to warn of impending attacks?; (2) why has israel sent millions of text messages warning of impending attacks?;
These are the kinds of leaflets dropped by Israel: https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20250220-israel-drops-leaf... https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2023/10/israel-opt-is...
"The world map will not change if all the people of Gaza cease to exist. No one will feel for you, and no one will ask about you. You have been left alone to face your inevitable fate. Iran cannot even protect itself, let alone protect you, and you have seen with your own eyes what has happened. Neither America nor Europe care about Gaza in any way. Even your Arab countries, which are now our allies, provide us with money and weapons while sending you only shrouds.
"There is little time left — the game is almost over."
So, to your question, the primary purpose of these leaflets is to terrorize and threaten the population. The secondary purpose is to have hasbarists like yourself pretend that they are evidence of humanitarian magnanimity.
> (3) why has israel ordered evacuations of combat zones prior to attacking; (4) why has israel set up refugee camps/ safe zones;
"[Forensic Architecture] has documented a pattern in which civilians have been directed to move to certain areas by official evacuation orders, only for the Israeli military to attack those same areas shortly afterwards, either on the same day as the evacuation order, or the day after.
"The incidents documented here are representative, not exhaustive." - https://frames.forensic-architecture.org/gaza/updates/attack...
> (5) why has Israel supplied so much aid to a civilian population you claim it's trying to kill;
Even rhetorically this question makes no sense, considering that it is very well-documented that Israel has been and is actively preventing real humanitarian aid. The Israeli-sanctioned "aid" via the GHF is a "killing field" of desperate Palestinians: https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2025-06-27/ty-article-ma...
> (6) why has its genocide been so incompetent and long-lasting if it could accomplish its alleged genocidal goal in a week;
Because then there would be even fewer of those alongside you willing to defend the indefensible.
> (7) what % of those killed are terrorists?; (8) why is the civilian:combatant death ratio so low;
The postulate required for this pair of questions to not be self-defeating is to expand the meaning of "terrorist" to encompass, at the least, every male in Gaza. In other words, "Gaza deserves death. The 2.6 million terrorists in Gaza deserve death! … Men, women, and children – in every way possible, we must simply carry out a Holocaust on them – yes, read that again – H-O-L-O-C-A-U-S-T! For me, gas chambers. Train cars. And other cruel forms of death for these Nazis. Without fear, without hesitation – simply crush, eradicate, slaughter, flatten, dismantle, smash, shatter …. Gaza deserves death. Let there be a Holocaust in Gaza." - https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/jun/27/israel...
I think this answer partially misses the point, because at the core of Aaronson's argument is the idea that they are the victims, that some crazy murderer moved by a hatred as deep as it's nonsensical has forced them to this horrible choice.
And yet it's Israel that is illegally occupying parts of Palestine, not the other way around; it's Israel that has closed Gaza in a total blockade for twenty years and bombarded it any time it liked, claiming many more civilian lives that Oct 7 did; it's Israel that imposes apartheid on Palestinians in the West Bank. It's Israel that constantly builds new illegal settlements in other people's territory. It's Jewish colonists that invaded a land to build an ethno-religious state that excludes the natives.
It's the whole victimhood narrative that justifies the apparently immoral solution to the ethical dilemma: "fuck it, I'm done being a victim, I will not uphold high moral principles when I'm constantly being beaten by others"- except that Israel is a nuclear power that has enjoyed for the past 50 years at least the complete economic, military and diplomatic support of the US and the West, is illegally occupying other people's land, implementing apartheid and building new settlements with the obvious long-term goal of ethnically cleansing the whole land. And has obviously no trouble whatsoever reducing to rubble all of Palestine and the capitals of a few neighbouring countries- at the same time.
Whenever someone says "I'm done being a victim, I will only look after my own interest from now on" remember- that's exactly how Nazism justified itself.
Genocide is an attempt to destroy a people, how is it "obvious" it is going on in Gaza?
Even if this war continues in the exact same trajectory for another two years, do you see an obvious destruction of the Palestinian people in Gaza?
Did the Nazi homocaust of Jews seek to destroy all Jewish people, no. The UN has a working definition of genocide. The whole world, outside of the US (thanks AIPAC!) and maybe the UK is convinced that Israeli atrocities on Palestinians is clearly genocide.
"Never Again!" - really, Israelis? It's only okay if it's you doing the killing?
> Did the Nazi homocaust of Jews seek to destroy all Jewish people, no.
The entire goal of the holocaust was destroying all Jewish people (and many who weren't). This was exactly why this was dubbed "The final solution to the jewish problem". You might want to educate yourself a bit more on the subject
> The whole world, outside of the US (thanks AIPAC!) and maybe the UK is convinced that Israeli atrocities on Palestinians is clearly genocide.
The whole world was convinced that the Germans were mere victims who only need one more concession, Hitler was merely trying to fix the injustice of Versailles. Further, there was wide support for the German efforts to solve their "Jewish problem", As Jews of course have caused World War 1 through bond trading and caused millions of deaths, famine in Germany as well as Communism and its subsequent millions.
That may sound funny to you now, but that was a popular opinion in elite universities. When words lose meaning and truth become second, all kind of stories seem true
That's demonstrably false. A large part of the founding population of Israel came from Hitler paying the jews to move there specifically so they didn't have to have domestic conflict.
Well what are your thoughts on reducing Gaza to rubble? On forced starvation and repeated forced relocation of Palestinians? On killing called "mowing the lawn" by Israelis? On expanding Israeli terrority to include the property of neighboring countries and calling it "Greater Israel" ???? Where do the Zionists (many who are athiests) plan to stop, if ever? Does Netanyahu refrain from peace agreements simply to remain in power? Why does much the Israeli population reject all of this spilling of innocents' blood?
This post got flagged and hidden, but I vouched for it because I think it's more interesting than just another political take. It's a historical record of a brilliant academic (one who I once followed and respected) slowly being pushed into accepting, and then embracing, a genocide.
I was just reading through the discussion here because I was curious how people would respond to that post.
Thanks for all your thoughtful, level-headed and incredibly patient replies!
Thank you for reading! If nothing else, it's been a very interesting lesson in the state of online media literacy.