For those of us not in the loop, what is PG, SV, and YC (I guess that the latter is ycombinator)?

Is he still vocal about it? Do you have any recent comments of his to share?

I used to shame PG for his elitist views. Now I celebrate his moral courage.

One man cannot fix everything.

Dear PG (I'm sure you don't read HN, but this is yet another echo),

As I said on X, your own platform (YCombinator) is still full of hateful bigots who would censor/downvote even the mildest form of speaking against the genocide. Proof: this comment being downvoted. Downvoting as a mechanism is akin to censorship. It's being abused.

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Hard to put into words how those people act like the devil incarnate and a lot of the scene pretends that this doesn't matter.

> The vast majority (38/50) of US states have passed some form of anti-BDS legislation.

“Some form of” is doing a lot of work in that sentence, to the point of being dishonest propaganda. E.g., California is counted as one of those states based on AB 2844 of 2016. Which, to be fair, started out [0] as an actual anti-BDS bill (targeting state contracting only, but still an anti-BDS bill.) But the form that actually passed and became law does nothing that actually impacts BDS; it requires that state contractors with contracts of over $100,000 certify under penalty of perjury that (1) they are in compliance with California’s Unruh Civil Rights Act and Fair Employment and Housing Act, and that (2) any policy they have against a “sovereign nation or peoples recognized by the government of the United States of America”, explicitly including but not limited to Israel, is not applied in a way which discriminates in violation of either the Unruh Civil Rights Act or the Fair Employment and Housing Act.

It is not, in any meaningful sense, an anti-BDS law.

[0] Well, “started out” isn’t really true, either, since it was introduced as a technical change the an environmental health law replacing "Department of Health Services” with “Department of Public Health” in one section of law, reflecting a reorganization that had occurred subsequent to the law passing, went through a “gut and amend” switch to become a bill that would add new sampling requirements for drinking water, then went through another “gut and amend” to become an anti-BDS bill focussed on public contracting. But then it went through a number of more regular amendments which stripped out all the anti-BDS parts—both the operative anti-BDS language and the proposed legislative findings and declarations of purpose at the opening, replacing both the operative provisionsn and the findings and declaration portions with anti-discrimination rather than anti-BDS provisions.

For anyone else not familiar with "anti-BDS":

"Anti-BDS laws are legislation that retaliate against those that engage in Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions. With regard to the Arab–Israeli conflict, many supporters of the State of Israel have often advocated or implemented anti-BDS laws, which effectively seek to retaliate against people and organizations engaged in boycotts of Israel-affiliated entities."

From Wikipedia. Also: "Not to be confused with Anti-BDSM laws."

I think it's a legitimate worry, but I don't think using our old accounts give us any less protections than throwaway accounts. And I doubt the people that would make such accounts have anything of interest to add to the discussion.

And then there’s genocide. Framing support for Israel as purely geopolitical misses what’s going on.

Flipping the U.S. really is the key to ending this conflict. The U.S. reliably uses its security council veto to nix any meaningful UN response and the U.S. remains, by far, the biggest supplier of arms to the IDF. If the US were to stop veto'ing everything and cut off the IDF's supply of, at least, some types of weapons, the new ground assault would likely end quickly.

Unfortunately, that isn't likely to happen. Netanyahu has, to date, handled Trump deftly and Rubio's current presence in Israel seems to be aimed at offering support to the ground offensive, not opposition. I honestly have no idea what kind of backlash it would take to shake U.S. support for this genocide.

  > changed the ethnic composition of the Palestine region from 1-2% in the 1840s up to 30% in the 1940s.

> The videos coming out of Gaza have turned me and many others into single issue voters.

Ironically, that was one of the biggest campaign points and voter sentiment on which people flipped to Red. We all know what happened.

Serious question, will you abstain from voting? There are only 2 parties and they both fund Israel. One maybe slightly less.

Consider that the videos of Oct 7 had a similar effect on lots of decent people. The un is the same now as it was before October 7. In gueterres words "it didn't happen in a vacuum". The complete loss of credibility for the un also didn't happen in a vacuum. Even if their report is true it will fall on deaf ears thanks in no small part to their lack of any sort of objectivity when it comes to Israel.

US sure likes israel...

https://www.timesofisrael.com/liveblog_entry/saar-urges-250-...

250 us legislators had to fly there (probably paid by the taxpayers) a few days ago.

Sadly, looking at the US politics, whichever side you vote, israel wins.

Would you categorize all wars and all acts of self defense as genocide? Is there a specific threshold for collateral damage that makes it a genocide?

This is how Trump is going to continue winning elections.

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Same cards they always play:

- our enemies are Hamas sympathisers

- our enemies are secretly Hamas members OR

- it's antisemitism

Here is how they reacted, by preparing for isolation

https://www.cnn.com/2025/09/15/middleeast/netanyahu-israel-i...

https://www.dw.com/en/middle-east-israel-to-get-ready-for-is...

https://www.timesofisrael.com/netanyahu-admits-israel-is-eco...

pick whichever source you respect the most

People in Israel don't really care about stuff that comes out of UN.

I think at the moment a term like "genocide" is still floating free from the reality of what that term means.

Here's an interview with a senior UNICEF worker: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NsAo2j6aih0

I think after that I can't imagine the question, "will this impact israel?" makes any sense. They're deliberately perpetrating a genocide. It's real. It's the deliberate and systematic murder of two million people. I dont see the sense in asking: will the murderers care?

Voters can take a stand and refuse to vote for anyone complicit in this atrocity.

I fully understand the feelings of helplessness and hopelessness with this situation. Lots of people like to imagine what they'd do in certain situations, historical or otherwise. We no longer need to imagine what most people would do in the HOlocaust. We now know: nothing. In WW2, most people could reasonably claim ignorance. Even a lot of Germans could claim ignorance. Now we have livestreamed 4K 60fps evidence that is impossible to ignore.

There's a phrase that's widely attributed (arguably misattributed) to Lenin:

    "There are decades where nothing happens; and there are weeks where decades happen"

So while the US could end this entire thing with a phone call, it's not true to say that things aren't changing. US support for Israel continues to plummet to new lows [1], to levels I never thought I'd see. Small things like blocking a cycling event in Spain, the future of Eurovision being uncertain, European states recognizing Palestine, problems for the port in Haifa due to changes in shipping because of Houthi rebels, ICC?ICJ investigations, these genocide findings and so on... it all adds up. It all matters. It all compounds to political and economic pressure on the actors involved.

[1]: https://news.gallup.com/poll/692948/u.s.-back-israel-militar...

Amnesty International, The International Red Cross, Doctors Without Borders, numerous other human rights organizations and world governments all say the same thing: genocide. To deny this is to say that you believe all of those groups are wrong and it is actually Netanyahu, Trump, Biden and Harris, along with their cronies in congress are correct. It is a position that cannot be defended logically.

> break the hearts of everyone who dreamed that the international community could hold each other legally accountable.

this is never going to happen. there is just no practical enforcement mechanism. laws and police works within a sovereign country because the state has the monopoly on violence, this is not true on the international stage. no country will go into war to enforce an ICC/ICJ conviction.

> I'm afraid the latest spate of "recognizing the state of Palestine" is not, in fact, a sign of coming relief for the people there, but rather a spigot to relieve domestic pressure to engage in substantive actions (sanctions, pressuring the US and other suppliers of arms to engage in sanctions, let alone sending peacekeepers or no-fly zones).

I don't think recognition as a State would really change anything. If at least one of the permanent members of the UN Security Council will veto everything that comes up, the UN won't effectively intervene in the situation. Military intervention in such a case is unlikely, unless at least one permanent member is willing to join an intervention coalition. Looking at conflicts the US has been involved in, it usually lines up around the lines with US maybe with their usual friends vs Locals or Locals and Russia and friends. The only one I found where the pattern was when France started sending arms to Nicaragua while the US was supporting the other side [1]. Unless Russia or China wants to support the Palestinians militarily, or the US decides not to no longer support Israel militarily, there's not much chance of outside intervention here.

Given the outside countries can't effectively intervene, recognizing the state of Palestine at least sends a message, that maybe hopefully influences the US?

[1] https://www.csmonitor.com/1982/0715/071566.html

It makes it worse by reducing pressure on Hamas to surrender, increasing the duration of the war. Grotesque virtue signalling.

The international community is a worthwhile endeavour. But all other countries play at the behest of the US and now, also China.

Between them, the rest have only local influence.

In the international community the double standard was always against Israel aside maybe when it declared independence. The external enemy to distract the peasants from relevant problems. It doesn't have a lot of maturity. Perhaps the UN will go the league of nations if the current Gx hegemony loses control.

There are many issues raised with the report, including it omits the invasion by the government of Gaza, Hamas, on 7 October 2023 entirely, and it omits that the Israeli army is fighting the army of Gaza, the Qasam brigades, who had 40,000 salaried fighters (pre-war), have fired thousands of missiles, developed hundreds of kilometres of tunnels specifically for urban warfare, and subverted public and private infrastructure for urban warfare. For such a serious allegation, it is important to consider and address all aspects and not simply omit them.

I would like to add, I don't think this topic is appropriate for Hacker News.

That is a rebuttal of the International Association of Genocide Scholars[0] resolution from August[1], not this UN report.

[0] https://genocidescholars.org [1] https://genocidescholars.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/IAGS...

No, the rules haven't changed—they've been the same for many years. Let me try to dig up some past explanations.

Edit: here's one from a few months ago, which covers the principles: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43738815.

Re how we approach political topics on HN in general: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so...

Re how we deal with Major Ongoing Topics, i.e. topics where there are a ton of articles and submissions over time: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...

Re how we approach turning off flags: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...

Re the perception that "HN has been getting more political lately" (spoiler: it hasn't - though it does fluctuate): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17014869.

If you or anyone will check out some of those links and still have a question that isn't answered there, I'd be happy to take a crack at it.

For me, this is meaningful because for the first time a legitimate international body is calling this a genocide.

Previously, it’s been activists and claims that this might be genocide. I haven’t read the report yet. But I will, and I intend to leave my mind open as to whether this raises the profile of this war in my mind relative to domestic issues.

  The commission has previously found Israel to be guilty of crimes against humanity and war crimes in Gaza, including extermination, torture, rape, sexual violence and other inhumane acts, inhuman treatment, forcible transfer, persecution based on gender and starvation as a method of warfare.

  > international peacekeeping operation

  > she analysed evidence and arrived to the same conclusion as the ruling you qre recognizing today.

maybe because we are two years into an event that will define the early 21st century.

C'mon man, the Charlie Kirk post stayed on the front-page for a pretty long time.

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First news on all major outlets here (Europe)

The news cycle is moving fast enough that shockingly enough this news is already pushed off the frontpage of these news sites, but the article is there if you dig a little.

- BBC: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c8641wv0n4go

- The Guardian: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/sep/16/israel-committ...

- NPR: https://www.npr.org/2025/09/16/g-s1-89014/israel-gaza-genoci...

Yes, this is ownership issue, nothing new :)

This was top story yesterday on al Jazeera the moment it happened. I think you missed the windows.

The mainstream media in the West is pro-Israel in a bizarre way. Social media however has not been captured but idk what's happening to TikTok now.

I more or less agree with you (if it were a _genocide_, you'd expect Israel to be equally targeting Palestinians in the West Bank and in Israel proper), but the report does have some specific examples of things that seem to go beyond "just" urban warfare. For example, Israel denied shipments of baby milk powder, which can serve no legitimate military purpose (except trying to prosecute the war via starvation of babies, which is illegal). When combined with the public statements from Israeli government officials that denigrate the Palestinians in Gaza as animals, I think there's definitely _some_ crimes against humanity being committed by Israel.

Given the deliberate creation of unlivable conditions on the ground and the absence of any viable plan for restoring Palestinian life and sovereignty, the civilian population of Gaza faces two primary and foreseeable outcomes:

Mass mortality from non-combat causes: The synergistic crisis of famine, disease, and healthcare collapse makes widespread death from starvation, dehydration, and preventable illness a mathematical certainty in the coming months. A significant portion of the population, especially the most vulnerable—children, the elderly, and those with chronic illnesses—will perish even if direct hostilities were to cease. This is the direct and inevitable consequence of the "conditions of life" that have been imposed.

Permanent displacement and demographic change: For the remaining population, survival inside a Gaza that has been rendered uninhabitable will become a practical impossibility. The complete lack of housing, clean water, food, healthcare, and economic activity will create immense and unbearable pressure for civilians to flee the land in order to survive. This outcome aligns directly with the legal definitions of forcible transfer and ethnic cleansing, as identified by human rights organizations. It is also the logical endpoint of a strategy that involves mass evacuation orders followed by the total destruction of the evacuated areas, and it serves as a necessary precondition for post-war plans that require an "emptied out" territory for foreign-led redevelopment.

The military campaign, therefore, should not be viewed merely as a precursor to a post-war settlement. Rather, it is actively creating the physical and demographic preconditions for a specific type of post-war reality—one that precludes the existence of a viable, self-governing Palestinian society in the Gaza Strip. The destruction is not an unfortunate obstacle to be overcome during reconstruction; it appears to be the first and most critical phase of a reconstruction model that requires a tabula rasa. This connects the seemingly separate phases of "war" and "post-war," revealing them as a continuous process. The objective is not simply to defeat a military opponent, but to physically and demographically re-engineer the Gaza Strip to make it amenable to a future state that serves external interests and permanently prevents Palestinian sovereignty. The evidence strongly suggests that the intended outcome of the current strategy is a Gaza Strip largely, if not entirely, devoid of its Palestinian population.

Some basic observations:

28% of children under five are actively malnourished.

IPC Phase 5 famine is officially confirmed in Gaza. 100% of the population is facing crisis level food insecurity.

Food distribution is being limited by the IDF and administered violently by US military contractors. https://youtu.be/uKpkZNAFwkc?si=4K3XeQmxbxF23tGO

The economy is completely dismantled.

63% of all buildings (including homes) have being destroyed. https://youtube.com/shorts/GLTurLL6lB0?si=AywZxmGTjhNa6zQv

90% of the population is displaced.

94% of hospitals are destroyed. The only remaining hospital is Nasser. https://youtu.be/mTqSq1xokeM?si=QAczyYx19jCbg3H5

Two weeks ago, journalists were targeted in an attack at Nasser hospital. Journalists are being targeted to scare them away and prevent what’s occurring from being shown to the world. https://youtu.be/xAK1w9r2J54?si=-ZvG-55KBKNZbqt9

You can be against both, it's OK. The UN has also identified a number of massacres of civilians in Ukraine as crimes against humanity.

Stop equating anti-war sentiment with pro-terror sympathies. It’s a bad faith argument.

Put two searches "Gaza genocide" and "Ukraine genocide" on this site and you will immediately understand what this is all about.

Technology enables so many of these problems and yet the technology builders want to flag it off the face of the internet?

The infrastructure for genocide needs a lot of technology and technology related subject. The victims of genocides include technology workers, hobbyists and hackers. No doubt there are HN members who are current victims of the ongoing genocide. They deserve our sympathy and their existence needs to be acknowledged.

Oh no, people are commenting too hard. Only mild topics on HN, otherwise the servers explode... or something

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  > The victims are the 60k+ dead people (including children), stop confusing things, you know this.

Médecins sans frontières perhaps?

https://www.msf.org/

If you live in the United States, your greatest point of leverage may be to influence your elected government representatives to take action.

Israel cannot continue without the ongoing support of the US.

isis-online.org

Many. A few from the top of my head:

PCRF (children relief fund): https://www.pcrf.net/

Heal Palestine (meals and patients): https://www.healpalestine.org/

PRCS (first responders): https://x.com/PalestineRCS/status/1721839906605998526

The Sameer Project (camps & tents): https://linktr.ee/thesameerproject

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Afaik, these organizations barely bring in £50m collectively. For context, FIDF, the largest non-governmental American donor to the Israeli military, has gift £1.5bn+ in the past decade (£500m+ in the last 3 years).

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From the guidelines:

On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity.

Off-Topic: Most stories about politics... unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

I wonder the same. It’s odd to see it still here given the low quality of the discussion. And it is flooded by mischaracterizations, misinformation, and one-sided hyperbolic takes. I wonder what the right space or format is to have debates like this but in an effective way, rather than sides trying to win.

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Because Israel is a part of the tech news cycle.

I don't understand this complaint. Are you the editor of this site?

Habr, the russian speaking HN-alike, was "outside of politics" too. That didn't end well for either Habr or posters there. For large issues like this, abstinence is complicity.

See here:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45267159

When a discussion like this happens on the front page then it at least provides some useful data for testing the software and moderation tactics for highly flammable subjects.

My conspiratorial mind wonders if it’s done on purpose as a fire drill, but a kind of The Office sitcom fire drill where someone lights an actual fire. (That’s an example of irresponsible behaviour, but I don’t actual think an HN/Israel fire drill is equivalently irresponsible.)

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This is politics and therefore probably off-topic for hn. It not being tech-related is irrelevant.

An argument could be made that it is an "interesting new phenomenon", but the post is most likely to result in tedious flamewars regardless and so should probably be killed.

From https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html:

> Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, or celebrities, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. Videos of pratfalls or disasters, or cute animal pictures. If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic.

I would agree with you if we were in 1994 and this was about Rwanda.

Those tower blocks in Gaza that were felled on the anniversary of 9/11 were not taken down with machetes. We have got AI assisted targeting going on, with all of your favourite cloud service providers delivering value to their shareholders thanks to sales to the IDF.

The corporation that once had 'don't be evil' as their mission statement are suckling on the IDF teat along with Amazon, IBM, Microsoft and Cisco.

Sure it does, if enough users find this interesting to them. I for one find this interesting.

I find it interesting and worth talking about.

This is a genocide.

Edit: since you've posted egregiously like this before and have ignored our requests to stop, I've banned the account.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44738555 (July 2025)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44362828 (June 2025)

Bottom-of-the-barrel antisemitism ought to be the easiest thing in the world to avoid, regardless of your views or feelings about the ongoing situation. In any case, there's no place for it on Hacker News—never has been and never will.

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rimunroe is correct, you've repeated a classic antisemitic trope. We ban accounts that post like that, so please don't post like that again.

It's entirely possible, and ought to be entirely easy, to make any substantive point you have without any of that.

What Israel is doing is reprehensible, but you're promoting a classic antisemetic myth: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blood_libel

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  > what should a non-Hamas member in Gaza do right now to avoid getting bombed

That sounds like you're flirting with holocaust denial. We ban that sort of account, so no more of this please.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Not so much "lies" as "a people having a genocide committed against them does not make them constitutionally incapable of ever committing one themselves in the future." For several reasons, including that it was different people (only 7% of Holocaust survivors are still alive) and that 'nation,' as a conceptual construct, still carries the same weaknesses that it did when a relatively few voices in Germany used that construct to rally the masses to commit atrocities against their own citizens (and the people in their temporarily-conquered territory) for being 'the wrong kind' of people.

"It's not wrong when we're doing it" is an old, old failing of human empathy and sense of justice.

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>The problem is the only alternative solution the pro palestinian crowd is suggesting is basically that israel should lie down and die.

IIRC theres a plan among arab states that would call for a DMZ between Israel and Palestine, theres just no way that Israel would accept their troops manning that DMZ. So it would have to be the US or UN troops manning that border and they dont want to.

>It's one of the most dehumanising things ever. "stay here and become a casualty statistic because that is the most convenient way to fulfill our political agenda."

IIRC Israel tried to pay them to leave and they wouldnt. They want to be returned to their land. Your complaint here is basically "Why wont they let Israel finish their ethnic cleansing" which is more disgusting than your implication.

> Also don't deal with israel consistently in bad faith and then expect them and their supporters to care about what you think.

I have never once, in my entire life discussing this issue, going back 10-15 years seen an Israeli government supporter argue anything in good faith. Would love to see that change.

>Just for the record i think this report is a fabrication and for those that say plenty of Israelis oppose what's going on in gaza i will respond that none of them can suggest any better alternative.

Is there a single alternative to "We will slowly take their land" that Israel would accept? They certainly wouldnt be happy if a neighbor absorbed palestine. They wont ever accept Arab League soldiers manning a DMZ. They will refuse to hand back parts of the West Bank and Golan Heights that they have occupied "For Security".

That means the only viable solution is a Single State. They should rehome the refugees, return them to their land, and get over it. Deal with Hamas as the internal matter it is.

Cited from the full report:

255. The Commission concludes that the State of Israel bears responsibility for the failure to prevent genocide, the commission of genocide and the failure to punish genocide against the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.

This specific political topic is on the top of everyone's mind. If the US president was assassinated, would you say the same? If your child was killed for political reasons, would you continue your blissful mornings aloof?

I'd find this is one of the safer and more civil places to discuss these kind of topics.

And I feel like less than 1% of front page topics are political, and you're certainly not obliged to open them... yet somehow this made it "goodbye" for you?

The “hide” feature works really well for me in respect of the feelings you are expressing. It’s like the zapper tool in uBlock origin (a browser plugin that lets you delete DOM elements with a single click.)

Clicking hide and seeing something disappear forever is actively cathartic. I don’t do it often but it’s very helpful when I do. Give a try?

You know you can just not click on “comments” underneath the headline. Right? Are your views so fragile that you can’t even bear to see a viewpoint discordant with your own?

like you i largely came to hn to enjoy an intellectual conversational space away from the sensational political garbage of mainstream media. whatever you think of this submission that is still largely true: we are here, there is openness alongside thoughtful moderation in the comments. that said, this report speaks to my humanity, it should speak to anyone's humanity. if true, it's generationally profound. if intelligence is worth anything, its the possibility that we can change this course of history for the better, and that it's not something left as lesson in textbooks for our grandchildren

> political news

How come factual genocide is "political news"?

Exceptionally smart people are found on HN, and topics like these transcend technology enough to demand input from brighter minds. Go to lobste.rs if you want news only affecting the "Essential" tech world.

Best of luck.

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What stat are you using for current Palestinian population during this conflict? Any good estimate of the deaths to hunger over the next few years?

I don't believe that the charges in the report require success either way, but it would help with your statistics.

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Are you arguing that whether something does or doesn't genocide can the boiled down to a percentage. As it turns out, a lot of people disagree with that view.

Yep, it’s odd to call it a genocide when their population has been growing continuously, and significantly. Israel can’t both be a highly effective genocidal force and also failing to actually succeed at the outcomes of a genocide.

You can be kept on the brink of starvation just like you can keep a cup hanging over the edge of a table. It's a manufactured famine, therefore it can be created with precision. Unlike the potato famine in Ireland, it's controlled and they literally count calories going in (before cutting it to 0).

If your analysis is entirely headline based I can see why you might be confused. There are several levels of starvation, and Israel has progressively put Gaza through each. Complaining at each step is absolutely valid.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Famine_scales

Given all the hatred that is going around, I believe the genocide is real. And if it's not real yet, it will be if someone doesn't put a stop to this.

But all the reporting does not add up.

Half the pictures Hamas shows of starving children aren't legitimate. They're children with medical conditions, not in Gaza, or from a different conflict.

The number of people starving to death each day are in the single or low double digits. If what was said was really true, there would be tens of thousands of people dead by now.

And I don't believe a single thing Israel says either. How many tunnels were actually found under hospitals? Definitely at least one. Definitely not all of them.

A little truth makes all the lies more believable.

Israel seems like a very ineffective bully considering that the UN consistently condemns them the most vs. any other country in the world.

https://unwatch.org/un-condemns-israel-17-times-6-on-rest-of...

But for me, this says more about the nature of the UN than that of Israel.

In what way has Israel bullied members on the HR council?

The US will bully them on Israel's behalf.

https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/trump-administrat...

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Almost certainly

> Reality: The report was written by a 3 person UNHRC commission, which itself is seated by Ethiopia, Congo, Sudan, and Qatar.

Your framing that "3 people from Ethiopia/Congo/Sudan/Qatar wrote the report" is both incorrect and deeply racist.

Edit: and to make it clear, the report was authored by the "Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, and Israel" which is made up of the following three members:

- Ms. Navanethem Pillay (South Africa)

- Mr. Miloon Kothari (India)

- Mr. Chris Sidoti (Australia)

You can read more about the commission here: https://www.ohchr.org/en/hr-bodies/hrc/co-israel/index

I had to look this up on Wikipedia and remembered this is the 19 year old UNHRC. They have never been objective in regards to the Middle East conflict.

I'm sorry but Qatar is part of neutral commission? Israel just bombed them. It was a bad for Israel to do, but this isn't "third-party."

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Ok, lets imagine a scenario where there are 2 developed countries right next to each other that hate each other. One raids the other and kills some people. Generally you might sanction a raid against the military targets that supported the raid, or perhaps targeted removal of the head of state or something.

But thats not the case here. Israel herded these people into this open air prison, removing them from and then settling their land. And kept them bottled up next to their settlements.

The only moral way to approach this situation would be for it to have never developed in the first place. Failing that, you would work to undo it. Heck, as you return every single refugee to their land, you can process them to see if they are a hamas fighter and jail them.

This is the truth of the matter. As Israel uses force to contain Gazans, they are effectively their government. They cant have Electricity, or Internet without Israeli approval. They cant pass border checkpoints without Israeli approval. The Israeli military frequently raids them. They do get black vanned and sent to Israeli prisons all the time. They are defacto Israeli subjects.

Therefore, this isnt a matter of warfare, this is a matter of policing. A civilian response would be best. There is no second country, and the people who benefit most from pretending there is a pseudo state in Gaza, are the Israelis, who use it to justify asymmetric warfare.

I don’t believe questions like that are asked in good faith. Maybe you are the exception, but I have seen too many people begin with exactly this question, and then end up justifying the Gaza genocide.

In case you are asking in good faith—and following the HN guidelines—I suggest you abandon this question and consider that maybe this is the wrong question to ask given the situation. If that is hard, then I ask you to consider that indigenous resistance against settler colonial violence has been a pretext for countless colonial oppression in the past, including many genocides.

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  "We could have killed all the Jews in Germany yesterday, but we did not do it. The demonstrations in Franconia were, in general, disciplined, clear, and farsighted." 
  
  - Julius Streicher, in a speech the day after Kristallnacht.

  "The behavior of the Führer and the Reich in these days of continuous Polish and English provocations were remarkable. No other nation would have been as patient. It would have done what the Führer finally did on 1 September much earlier."

    Killing members of the group: Palestinians were killed in large numbers through direct attacks on civilians, protected persons, and vital civilian infrastructure, as well as by the deliberate creation of conditions that led to death.
     
    Causing serious bodily or mental harm: Palestinians suffered torture, rape, sexual assault, forced displacement, and severe mistreatment in detention, alongside widespread attacks on civilians and the environment.
     
    Inflicting conditions of life calculated to destroy the group: Israel deliberately imposed inhumane living conditions in Gaza, including destruction of essential infrastructure, denial of medical care, forced displacement, blocking of food, water, fuel, and electricity, reproductive violence, and starvation as a method of warfare. Children were found to be particularly targeted.
     
    Preventing births within the group: The attack on Gaza’s largest fertility clinic destroyed thousands of embryos, sperm samples, and eggs. Experts told the commission this would prevent thousands of Palestinian children from ever being born."

They have repeatedly hampered the entry of baby formula, a clear pattern of actions to stunt childhood development, increase childhood mortality and dissuade the population from having more children.

https://www.timesofisrael.com/israel-said-hampering-entry-of...

https://www.lemonde.fr/en/international/article/2025/07/01/i...

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/jul/22/gaza-i...

> The attack on Gaza’s largest fertility clinic destroyed thousands of embryos, sperm samples, and eggs.

More info on that particular attack: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c15npnzpd08o

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> I find it funny people still find the UN legitimate. They still haven't criticised Hamas attack

I find it funny that you have to lie so much. They did, it's easy to find. My father is from a Christian orphanage in east Jerusalem. My grandmother hosted sisters and priests from Israel who worked in schools, hospice and orphanage all over the two countries. UN school programs there had a lot of issues, but being religious (Hamas was a religious group before being a terrorist one) or close to Hamas wasn't one (having no heating in schools during winter and having to sometime amputate toes from 10 year old was probably the biggest issue that I remember).

The UN secretary general condemned it the day it happened.

https://press.un.org/en/2023/sgsm21981.doc.htm

Given the Israeli military are defacto state sponsored terrorists (see e.g. their active support of settler violence on the West Bank if you want to avoid Gaza related complaints). That means every single company in Israel is employing terrorists.

"The UN is HAMAS" is certainly .. an opinion

Yes, everyone that criticizes Israel for killing and mutilating thousands of children in the most horrible ways is Hamas, we already know that...

Hamas is a terrorist organisation. Does it need to be condemned? Is Hamas a legitimate, recognised state and member of the UN? Israel is a sovereign state and member of the UN; it is therefore subject to higher standards. It should leave the UN or withdraw its staff, incl. its ambassador, if it does not like the UN.

AlJazeera is far better than most Western Media.

The UN discredits itself: UNGA 2015-2023, 154 resolutions against Israel, 71 against all other countries _combined_.

Of course it stems from the anti-Israeli bias of its members: a single Jewish state against 57 Muslim states.

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It's part of a broader phenomena: feelings over facts. Doesn't matter how many commissions say it's genocide and how much evidence is presented, people don't "feel" it is true, therefore it is not true. Zero difference between these people, climate change deniers, and anti-vaxers.

While you do have points that these UN bodies do seem to sleep more often than not, one should never, under any circumstance attempt to suggest that what's happening in Gaza aren't crimes against humanity.

A friend of mine is in the Red Cross staff, they had more than 20 casualties since 2021 in Palestine. Their staff was literally shot at because they were doctors.

It's sickening.

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  > Israel has killed something like 30-40x the number of civilians in the same timeframe.

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This commenter is located in Israel, FWIW.

that sounds like IDF propaganda and their credibility is basically non-existent

If that is true the simplest explanation is that members of the US congress do indeed have an advantage over you.

A one state solution means Palestinians can vote out the Zionists from power. They know that, so they'd rather prevent it while simultaneously genociding their population.

Addressed by dang here:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45267159

Every major genocide I can think of has been precipitated by the actions of the victim group against the oppressor group. Indeed, in many cases, it's explicit that the perpetrators were looking for just such a pretence.

The most serious genocide we're all aware of began, indeed, with a terrorist incident (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kristallnacht) -- a jewish boy assassinated a german diplomat.

This comment also conflates Hamas with the civilian population of gaza. The genocide isnt against Hamas -- we all regard israel's killing of enemy military combtants as not included in this crime.

Here's an interview with a senior UNICEF worker about israel's actions against the civilian population : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NsAo2j6aih0

This is not about israel incidentally hitting civilians. It's about the deliberate policy of mass starvation, withholding of medical supplies (incubators, pain killers, the lot), and the placing of the only "allowed" aid-distribution centres (4 out of a previous 400) in the middle of active war zones -- so that to recieve any aid at all, you have to go through active fire.

This has nothing to do with israel's actions against Hamas

>That would be the first genocide that involves terrorism, hostages and human shields at the same time.

No it wouldn't be, you're just spewing lazy Zionist propaganda.

"Jewish-Zionist Terrorism and the establishment of Israel" - https://web.archive.org/web/20231029055310/ojp.gov/ncjrs/vir...

"Release of civilian hostages held in Gaza and arbitrarily detained [de facto hostages] Palestinians must be immediate and not hinge on ceasefire negotiations" - https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2025/02/release-of-ci...

"Why Does Israel Have So Many Palestinians in Detention [de facto hostages] and Available to Swap?" https://www.hrw.org/news/2023/11/29/why-does-israel-have-so-...

"Israeli use of human shields in Gaza was systematic, soldiers and former detainees tell the AP" - https://apnews.com/article/israel-palestinians-hamas-war-arm...

"The Israeli army’s use of Palestinian civilians as human shields has been documented on a large scale" - https://euromedmonitor.org/en/article/6390/The-Israeli-army%...

"The Israeli military has used Palestinians as human shields in Gaza, soldier and former detainees say - https://edition.cnn.com/2024/10/24/middleeast/palestinians-h...

"A Brief History of Israel's Use of Human Shields

This is a brief history of how the Zionist community in Palestine, and then the state of Israel, used its own civilians as shields in its conquest of the land. Zionist leaders realized early on that Zionism was a civilian and a military enterprise. In 1919, the first Zionist militia, HaShomer (which evolved into the Haganah, which evolved into the Israeli army) declared “the need to begin widespread settlement close to the existing boundary lines for the purpose of defending the country.” The idea was to establish new Zionist colonies in the border areas. The idea was to put civilians in harm’s way. But the problem ran much deeper. Zionist fighters soon realized they would need to embed themselves in civilian communities to establish a self-sustaining recruitment base and fund militia operations. The latter was achieved through combining agricultural and military training in civilian settlements. The financial support for military training was attained through the agricultural output of the settlement. By 1936, Jewish Agency Executive Committee Chairman, David Ben-Gurion, came to agree with HaShomer’s idea to establish settlements in border areas. HaShomer “once had a good idea,” he said, “creating … settlements along the country's borders. It appears necessary to establish settlements on every mountaintop in Palestine with crucial strategic importance.” The point became all the more obvious during the 1948 War. In April 1948, Ben Gurion told his government: “We must establish a string of settlements of a new type, different from the regular ones, that are not based on the sacred writ of the military academy but rather, constitute mixed battalions of settlers and warriors, farmers and fighters.” For Ben-Gurion, this was the only path to victory. In the aftermath of the War, Ben Gurion outlined the roadmap for how Israel should continue to settle the country: “Our conquest in the Negev and the Galilee will not be sustainable unless we quickly populate these portions of the country…[with]...the establishment of a long line of settlements on the frontier.” And so, in the 1950s, Israel built civilian centers in border areas to serve as a first line of military defense. 26 new settlements were established along the Lebanese border, the Jordan river and the Gilboa foothills; 13 on the eastern border, 8 in the Jerusalem corridor and 25 on the southern front. In total, some 108 such militant civilian settlements were built in Israel after 1948, including towns like Nahal Oz, short for Nahlayim Mul Aza, “Nahal soldiers across from Gaza,” which tragically ended up serving the purpose for which it was built. The point was to put Israeli civilians on the front lines as human shields.

Agricultural work conducted under guard in Moshav Nitzanei Oz (“buds of strength”) in 1954. Founded in 1951 as a Nahal settlement, the moshav was located on the Jordanian border and the outskirts of Tulkarem source (p.72) Initially, the status of the citizens in the border towns was “identical to reserve soldiers,” according to Israeli historian Yoav Gelber. These “civil” communities were even organized in companies and platoons and integrated into the Israeli military’s command and control hierarchy. The Israeli military trained and equipped these civilians in classic civilian stuff like anti-tank and light arms instruction. After the 1967 War, Israel took a similar approach in the newly conquered territories. In July 1970, Israel confiscated land in Hebron by military order, ostensibly for “security purposes.” The first buildings on it would be falsely presented as a military facility, according to Israeli cabinet meeting notes. Shortly thereafter, Israel built 250 civilian housing units in Kiryat Arba within the perimeter of the area specified for the military unit’s use. Similarly, in 1971, Israel declared Palestinian village of Aqraba a military training zone. By 1975, the Jewish settlement of Gitit was established on its ruins. The idea in the 1970s was to enmesh Israel’s civilian and military presence in Palestine. Then Israeli Defense Minister Shimon Peres called for creating a strip of civilian settlements slicing across the West Bank “for defensive purposes” and another strip near Jerusalem to break the occupied territory into fragments. He added, “there’s a line of army bases in Samaria…I’d put a small civilian settlement next to each one.” By 1980, the World Zionist Organization had developed a “Master Plan” for the Occupied Palestinian Territories. The plan called for settling the land between and among the Arab population to make it “hard for Palestinians to create territorial contiguity and political unity.” Civilian settlement in the service of military conquest! “From my perspective,” Avigdor Lierman said in 2017, “it's clear that the settlements in Judea and Samaria and those here in the area of Jericho and the Dead Sea are the State of Israel’s true defensive wall.” Israel’s military headquarters are located in the Tel Aviv city center, a few hundred meters from a large high school. All the major bus lines pass right by. Tel Aviv’s main hospital -- the Ichilov Hospital -- is just to the north and is connected to the base by emergency tunnels. The Israeli army radio station is located in a residential apartment building & its antennas are on the roof of that residential building. Then there’s Israel’s militant settlers, who often carry out pogroms and acts of violence against Palestinians together with the Israeli military. What’s more, the Israeli military has established settler militias, known as “territorial defense units,” which are civilian groups armed and trained by the army. All of this makes Israel’s claim that “Hamas uses human shields” deeply cynical. In its campaign of mass murder in Gaza, +972 reported Israel prefers to strike Hamas fighters in their homes, together with their families, so long as no more than 20 civilians are killed per strike (for higher level commanders, 300 civilians massacred is considered acceptable).

Imagine if Hamas adopted this military doctrine. What percentage of Israeli households would be legitimate targets? How many Israeli households have an active-duty soldier or a reservist, or live within 100 feet of a household with a soldier or a reservist, and thus would equally be a target given Israel’s use of dumb bombs? [Note: Half the bombs Israel drops on Gaza are dumb bombs that often land 100 feet away from their target]. I’d venture to guess the overwhelming majority of Jewish Israeli civilians would be targets. Of course, targeting civilians is always a war crime, even if they are being used as human shields. That’s true no matter who is doing the targeting. Zionist leaders have embraced the use of Zionist, Jewish and Israeli human shields for more than a century. It’s time for this practice to end." - Zachary Foster, jewish historian, founder of palestinenexus.com, [https://palestine.beehiiv.com/p/brief-history-israels-use-is...]

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Yeah you know, the UN, notoriously hostile towards Israel.

Despite, you know, literally creating it.

I don't want to downplay the atrocities going on in the current conflicts, but this sort of comment deserves some perspective.

About 70 million people were killed in WW2, as of the present day about 1 million have died in the war Russia is waging against Ukraine and about 70k people have died in the Israeli/Palestine conflict. The horrors are most certainly real. But WW3 this era is most certainly not, that's thankfully off by an order of magnitude.

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Sadly history is a very poorly studied topic.

I look at European leaders and they don't seem to remember it any better.

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> The UN is the only international democratic institution that - even with its many imperfections - prevents the world to fall into complete anarchy. It's quite telling that it gets ignored since so many years by the country that elevates itself as the world defender of democracy, the US.

It's not been ignored the purpose of the UN is for largely irrelevant countries to petition the world powers to maybe consider doing something. The UN has been so successful because it has no real power over players like the USA.

> The UN has voted for decades for ending the embargo towards Cuba.

Ok? I mean the purpose of the UN is for people to suggest stuff to players like the USA not for the USA to actually do what the UN votes for.

It's weird to claim that one country should be forced to trade with another country. International trade is voluntary on both sides. The US isn't responsible for keeping any other country's economy healthy. It's simply not our problem, and Cuban economic problems are a consequence of their own corruption and dogmatic incompetence. Should the US also be forced to trade with, let's say, North Korea?

The UN serves as a valuable diplomatic forum but let's not pretend that is does have or should have any real power or authority.

What people fail to understand about dynamics between countries, is ultimately there is no supreme court or arbiter of truth. The UN doesn't have authority over any powerful country (or non powerful country for that matter).

People seem to have this concept that there is some supra national legal system, or even moral system that can hold a higher truth than what powerful countries want, but there isn't. When it comes to geopolitics, the biggest and most powerful sets the rules and lives by them (or not). The USA has zero motivation to do something the UN wants it to do, if it doesn't itself want to do it. No one is going to hold it to account.

Ultimately - whoever controls the violence can set the rules. For the last 80 years that's been the US. Maybe that is changing, but not quite yet.

The UN isn't an international democratic institution. For the last 20-30 years it's been a powerless theatre. And it didn't have much power before then either. Because ultimately, whoever has the most nukes and the biggest army rules the world.

One hopeful observation is that I actually have seen coverage of the genocide in a local newspaper this time. N=1 of course (and I'm not sure what other local newspapers have been like), but that's more than before.

From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UN_Watch:

> Agence France-Presse has described UN Watch as "a lobby group with strong ties to Israel" ... Primarily, UN Watch denounces what it views as anti-Israel sentiment at the UN and UN-sponsored events.

Isn't that an Israeli "hasbara" site? The Israelis have admitted that they use the false cry of "antisemitism" to attack.

"Calling it antisemitism - it’s a trick we always use." Shulamit Aloni, former Israeli Minister

https://x.com/SuppressedNws/status/1896748975207952758

  > Initiatives, and so-called peaceful solutions and international conferences, are in contradiction to the principles of the Islamic Resistance Movement.

  > This sounds to me like you are trying portray poorer countries as lesser worth because they had the guts of calling Israel out.

unwatch is funded by religious lunatics in Israel. Nobody takes it seriously.

You can criticize it, but the fact that we're here should tell you enough already.

There is no "yes, but" when genocide is taking place.

Is there a specific report arguing that Israel is not committing genocide? I don’t see it on the home page.

True. And in the interest of balancing the claims of the critics, I offer up the observation that UN Watch is "a lobby group with strong ties to Israel" (AFP article: Capella, Peter. "UN Gaza probe chief underlines balanced approach." 7-Jul-2009. https://web.archive.org/web/20111222162658/https://www.googl...).

Nice critic. I remember on Reddit watching someone get blown up the other day while carrying water while it was still up. I think they were under 10.

Not sure if they died or just lost all their limbs.