...and destroying or damaging >2/3rds of all structures in Gaza and killing tens of thousands of civilians with airstrikes isn't?
Obviously yes, Hamas and Hezbollah indiscriminately firing rockets at Israel consistute war crimes. I assume you must agree that Israel's systematic targeting of schools, hospitals, mosques, and refugee camps would also qualify?
I'm claiming there is a reason that Israel destroys buildings you neglect to mention. Recognizing that reason strongly undermines your assertion of systematic targetting. There is a fog of war, and war is messy, so a charitable outlook should exclude blase confidence about the matter.
You're mixing two different things with the civilians in buildings. The mass building destruction we see is done on buildings after evacuation to dismantle booby trapped buildings. Israel does frequently do strikes on buildings or infrastructure that contain civilians, but that is a different kind of action with different reasons and circumstances (e.g. collateral damage of strikes on military targets, etc.)
I love how confidently you reply in a way that makes you think Israel just has a right to do it. Like they have a right to just level buildings because they think it's booby trapped.
You're someone that has deepthroated the Israeli narrative, with no critical thinking whatsoever. I hope, for your own sake, you start to see more of the reality, as defending a violent regime like this can have an impact on ones soul, which will affect - if not already - other areas of your life.
Did I say Israel has a right to do all these things? No, I did not. I described the situation and their reasoning. Now Israel does have a right to defend itself. Hamas, the government of Gaza, forfeited their relatively peaceful situation when they openly attacked Israel. That doesn't mean everything Israel does is unquestionable. There is plenty open to criticism. There is also a fog of war, and much is unknown now that will be revealed as time goes on. But that also doesn't mean that we should dismiss everythjng Israel says just because they say it. A little more nuamce and curiosity is the most ethical approach to this inherently morally bankrupt conflict.
The mere existence of a state per se is violent, and given that both Israel and Palestine insists on having mutually incompatible states over the same territory, there is no other option but endless bloodshed until both sides commit to a conciliatory settlement. Until that day, a day which may never come, since everyone is hellbent on egging their respective favored side on, things will simply continue as is until one or both sides are destroyed. Since Israel unquestionably has more power, it will likely survive. There is no morally unquestionable option, but I think anyone who has a stake in the livelihood of Palestinians would be interested in stopping the conflict as soon as possible and making a settlement, even an imperfect one. In such a quandry, the only ethical option is to remain open and curious, be willing to look at facts and evaluate claims instead of jumping to conclusions, and refrain from asserting an uncertain narrative as fact when there are competing narratives and counterexamples.
If you assert this, it is a open attack against the rule of law. Society requires peace, and peace requires deterrence and enforcement. Feel free to feel morally righteous, but recognize that your opinion on moral righteousness condemns all people to live the rule of the jungle.
It is pretty trivial to look up recent sattellite imagery and find undestroyed buildings, but that takes more interest in facts than finding youtube videos
As you're well aware, simply dismissing these as random "youtube videos" is disingenuous. The footage is sourced from the Associated Press (AP) which you have no doubt heard of. It has 235 news bureaus in 94 countries worldwide, and has been around for ~180 years, also having won 59 Pulitzer prizes for its journalism.
Your claim that buildings are being destroyed because they were "booby trapped" comes from a partisan source (the Israeli Government/IDF), which is an active participant in this conflict. Their claims are a liability limiting exercise and it's in their best interests do downplay destruction they have caused.
Statements from a government at war regarding their own military conduct are basically a PR exercise unless they have been independently verified. Plus independent verification is quite hard, as the same partisan source has prevented independent media from gaining access into the strip which stops independent verification of both side's claims.
Do you have independent sources for the booby trapping other than IDF or news organisations repeating their press releases? Basically anything from international NGOs / neutral observers that confirm that houses are booby trapped to such a scale that it necessitates the flattening of entire residential blocks?
While you say it's trivial to find a house with no damage, that was not my point. My point was from viewing the drone footage - that's view covers entire suburbs - there is not one single intact building in all 3 separate videos.
But since you mentioned "recently satellite imagery", lets look at the actual data provided by experts who analyse it.
The United Nations Satellite Centre (UNOSAT), released its Comprehensive Damage Assessment in late October 2025. So it's 3 weeks old. Completely fresh and up to date.
* It uses high-res imagery from as recent as 11 October 2025
* It tracks damage over time rather than just a before/after assessment
> According to satellite imagery analysis, as of 11 October 2025, approximately 81% of all structures in the Gaza Strip are damaged. Among the damaged structures, UNOSAT identified 123,464 destroyed structures, 17,116 severely damaged structures, 33,857 moderately damaged structures, and 23,836 possibly damaged structures for a total of 198,273 affected structures. Compared to the 8 July 2025 assessment, this corresponds to a 4% increase in total affected structures, and an 18% increase in destroyed structures, indicating worsening damage. An estimated 320,622 housing units have been damaged, 12% more than on 08 July 2025.
Their satellite analysis shows:
* 23,464 destroyed structures
* 17,116 severely damaged structures
* 33,857 moderately damaged structures
* 23,836 possibly damaged structures
* A total of 198,273 affected structures
It also shows the destruction of housing / infrastructure has been both systematic and continual over the past two years.
Having 81% of all structures damaged (and 320k housing units) puts extreme doubt to the claim that it is "just making it safe from booby traps".
Obviously a large proportion of buildings are destroyed. My point was that your question and framing were disingenuous. It is trivial to select a sample especially an extremely limited and biased one (which is a limitation of the kind of data video can capture and has nothing to do with credibility of a news organization) that a video can show, and ask a misleading question. I could take a video in an undestroyed part of gaza and ask the opposite question, which would be similarly misleading.
Hamas members themselves have said they have trapped structures [1]. I don't think it is unreasonable that many buildings were trapped. There are also other causes of destruction, like bombing.
Ethnic cleansing involves forcible expulsion of a population -- not just mass killing -- with the goal of achieving cultural or racial homogeneity in a given territory.
Israel is guilty of both the forcible expulsion and mass killing of Palestinians, so the definition certainly applies.
- Specifically calling out protecting "conservative ideas" in their section on creating an "intellectually open campus environment". This is a dog whistle that makes it patently clear which viewpoints will be protected, and which won't. See what happened to Mahmoud Khalil for a recent example of how this will work in practice.
- Preventing admissions of foreign students based on "hostility to America or our allies", which is obviously an attempt to silence dissent. Who is responsible for defining what "hostility" means? If a foreign student supports boycotting Israel due to their ongoing genocide against the Palestinian people, would they be barred from admission to an American university?
I would contend that threatening to annex Canada and Greenland constitutes "hostility to American allies", but since those talking points are being espoused by the sitting president, it stands to reason that this administration's justice department wouldn't intervene to prevent a potential student with similar views from from admitted to an American school.
- Forcing institutions to define bathroom usage criteria based on biological sex. Putting aside for a moment the fact that this is a blatant attempt to humiliate trans people -- how does this work in practice? Do you hire someone to stand at every bathroom door and prevent people from entering if they don't fit your notion of what that gender is "supposed" to look like? Do you demand identity documents before letting someone use the toilet?
There are plenty of videos online of cisgender people being accosted in the bathroom that aligns with their biological sex simply because other people _assume_ based on their appearance that they are trans.
Your "I don't know what words mean" is very selective.
So you don't know what "hostile to US" means.
Do you know what "Unwelcome verbal, nonverbal, or physical conduct based on protected characteristics" means? This is one of the many vague prescriptions in MIT code of conduct.
If I make a sour face at a gay person, is it "unwelcome nonverbal conduct"? Should I be punished for that? But not punished for shouting "from the river to the sea" i.e. demanding annihilation of Israel?
Is your argument that we should just scrap all code of conducts because it is by nature open to interpretation?
Or you just object to those that tickle your politics?
> And if someone violates that rule and is reported, they need to punish that person appropriately, just as they punish for any other violation of stated rules and regulations.
So how and where exactly is it established that a violation has occurred? If not Seal Team Six and DNA testing (the latter wouldn’t solve the problem conclusively in any case). How exactly are you, random bystander, supposed to know if an arbitrary stranger is male or female?
Real people get this judgment wrong about cisgendered strangers all the time, this isn’t a hypothetical. See sibling comment https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45543644 for a list of cited examples.
Do you intend for the accused to display their genitals as an affirmative defense? To whom? Is every random accusation going to cause an interaction with the police and a gross violation of privacy?
Because that’s what it sounds like you’re suggesting here.
What's with this bizarre fantasy that humans can't distinguish the sex of other humans? It has to be the most stupid of all the trans activist arguments.
More Republican politicians have been convicted of sexual misconduct in bathrooms than trans people. Perhaps we can start with the real issue, and ban them from public bathrooms first? Remember, facts don't care about your feelings!
> No, the expectation is that people will respect boundaries and voluntarily stay out of the single-sex spaces they have no right to be in.
So currently, these people have the right to be in these spaces (whether or not you disagree that they should, legally, they do), the expectation would, I assume, be that people will respect boundaries and not accost people based on assumptions about their genitals. And yet as GP said:
> There are plenty of videos online of cisgender people being accosted in the bathroom that aligns with their biological sex simply because other people _assume_ based on their appearance that they are trans.
Why would we expect people who are currently accosting people who are in the right place to respect them more when there is additional legal justification to harass them?
Perhaps phrased differently: would you support legal repercussions for someone who falsely or incorrectly reports someone as using an "incorrect" bathroom? If the assumption is that everyone is following the boundaries of these spaces, then breaking that assumption is, bad faith and grounds for a complaint of harassment. You'd agree?
If the policy of MIT or any other institution states that certain spaces are designated as single-sex only, then no, people of the opposite sex do not have the right to use these spaces.
I don't expect people to have a problem with understanding this, in practice. It's really not that difficult to understand what sex you are and where you're allowed to be. Children learn this quite early on.
(Edit: My account is now rate-limited because of downvotes, so I can't reply to any responses. However I would like to point out that if MIT is currently allowing staff and students to use single-sex spaces that are designated for the opposite sex, this is very likely to be a Title IX violation. Unfortunately, sexism is rife in institutions of higher education, and MIT is no exception.)
> If the policy of MIT or any other institution states that certain spaces are designated as single-sex only, then no, people of the opposite sex do not have the right to use these spaces.
Correct, but this is not MIT's policy today, responding to your edit, I do not believe your understanding of title IX is correct, See [0].
>I don't expect people to have a problem with understanding this, in practice. It's really not that difficult to understand what sex you are and where you're allowed to be. Children learn this quite early on.
But in places that do have such policies, people who are using the correct bathroom get harassed. Given that you assume this is easy to understand (and I think I agree), would you support laws that codify harassing people about using the incorrect bathroom as criminal, given that you assume these don't need enforcement, we should discourage vigilantism, right?
[0]: https://www.congress.gov/crs-product/LSB10953 suggests that there is a circuit split on whether policies banning students from using gender-identity matching bathrooms would be a Title IX violation, with the 4th and 7th circuits saying that disallowing students from using their preferred bathrooms is a violation, and the 11th saying it is not. Currently there is no circuit split around the opposite question: the 3rd and 9th (and presumably also the 4th and 7th) circuits agree that allowing students to use gender-identity matching bathrooms would not be a Title IX violation, and the 11th Circuit's argument doesn't appear to preclude to a school or district choosing to allow gender-segregated bathrooms, it just allows sex-segregated bathrooms. MIT is under the 1st circuit and I can't find any federal cases at the district level, so it is technically not required to act in any particular way, but given other circuit precedent (and, I think, supreme court precedent under Bostock which says basically the same thing for title VII), I would suspect your interpretation would open MIT to legal risk.
Regarding Title IX, there are still cases working their way through the courts, so we will have to see.
I would be very surprised if colleges letting males enjoy women's locker rooms, and therefore not providing women any single-sex place to change, isn't ruled as being sex discrimination.
Keep in mind this issue is about privacy and dignity and safety for women, not about giving men whatever they want whenever they want.
While you may have whatever feeling about any issue, legally this isn't about "privacy and safety and dignity for women", it's about discrimination. And it's extremely difficult to contort shared facilities into "discrimination".
How do you propose preventing situations such as these?
“The couple said they were in the women's lobby bathroom when a male security guard came in and started banging on the stall doors. Baker said she was in one of the stalls while Victor waited for her near the sinks… Baker was born a woman and identifies as a woman.” [1]
“Gerika Mudra, 18, went to dinner in April with a friend in Owatonna, about an hour south of Minneapolis. When she went to the restroom, a server followed her inside and banged on the stall door while saying: “This is a women’s restroom. The man needs to get out of here,”… Mudra said she felt she had to prove to the server that she is a woman, so she unzipped her hoodie to show she has breasts.” [2]
“Dani Davis was in the women’s restroom at the Walmart where she worked when she heard a man’s voice shouting from outside the stall. The man yelled a slur for transgender people and said he was going to beat them up, Davis said. She was the only person in the bathroom at the Lake City, Florida, store… Davis waited for the man to leave before exiting the bathroom and finishing her shift. Her immediate supervisor was supportive when she reported the incident, she said. So she was shocked and confused when she was fired around a week later for not reporting the incident to the right managers and creating a “security risk.””[3]
“She said that she had entered the restroom with her ex-girlfriend, who handed her a tampon, when two male deputies stormed in, shining flashlights into the stall and demanding she exit. Morton, still using the toilet, was stunned... When she finally exited the stall, she said she lifted her shirt to prove she was not a man, expecting the ordeal to end. Instead, she said one deputy continued to question her appearance, insisting she “looked like a man.””[4]
It would be unfair of me to presume that you believe that all women should wear skirts, keep their hair long, and perhaps shave down any overly square facial bones so as to not invoke any hint of possible masculinity. But if there is a rule in place, then the rule requires methods of being enforced. Expecting women to expose themselves to a security guard or some other investigatory party in order to prove that they should be allowed to pee there is a guaranteed violation of their dignity, whereas the occasional transgender woman using the next stall over is not.
Those already very rare instances will become even rarer when males stop insisting they have a right to access women's spaces based on supposedly womenly thoughts in their minds.
Thankfully, this fad is on the way out, and with it, the overvigilance that has led to unfortunate misunderstandings like you mention in your comment - none of which are justification for males to impose themselves on female spaces.
Your comment still offers no solutions as to how these rules will actually be enforced. For example, do you consider the ordinance in Odessa, TX, to be sufficient? Is offering a minimum bounty of ten-thousand dollars to report on alleged men in the wrong restrooms going to incentivize a reduction in vigilance, or does it encourage yet more of it?
The driving force behind these “unfortunate misunderstandings” is not a worthy justification for increased scrutiny and violence done towards women, either. Can you help me understand what damage is done even if a fully masculine manly man strolls into a woman’s restroom without paying attention, relieves himself in a toilet, (hopefully) washes his hands, and then leaves? And is this violation of the sanctity of a female space more or less violent than a woman being harassed or beaten for using it?
You have come to the realization that systemic racism exists, and it grants privileges to the dominant socioeconomic groups. Congratulations, you are now "woke"!
That's what the term originally meant, before it was turned into a strawman for "anything I don't like" by the conservative media machine and weaponized to divide people.
I think the meaning of "free speech" is critically important here.
Being free to say what you want without government reprisal is (and should be) a fundamental right. In the US, there is significant legal precedent around this, and the instances where your right to free speech is impinged is limited to things like directly inciting violence.
However, if you get "cancelled" by society for something you have said (i.e. you lose business opportunities, friends, your job, you get banned from a forum, etc) then that doesn't qualify as impingement on your "free speech". That's just other people exercising their freedom of speech to tell you that they don't like what you said. Having "freedom of speech" does not mean other people are obligated to listen to what you have to say.
Freedom of speech != Freedom from all consequence for anything you say
Obviously yes, Hamas and Hezbollah indiscriminately firing rockets at Israel consistute war crimes. I assume you must agree that Israel's systematic targeting of schools, hospitals, mosques, and refugee camps would also qualify?