Okay, sorry, no. This story is ridiculously Reddit.<p><i>"This sort of story is important; I don't care if we call this 'Hacker News' or not."</i><p>pg once linked to a Reddit comment by a passionate Redditor who refused to follow the rules. The gist of the comment was, "I refuse to post this Ron Paul story to the Politics subreddit because I feel <i>it's just too important</i>."<p>And now here we are about a year later and Ron Paul hype turned out not to be even remotely important, and so yes, maybe Israel is using phosphorous, or maybe the whole thing is staged to make Israel look bad, or maybe....! My point is, you can't know the whole truth, so please post this to some other community that values <i>importance</i> over <i>intelligence</i>!
<i>If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic.</i> </quote> <a href="http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html" rel="nofollow">http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html</a>
Fantastic.<p>I'll start posting stories about Hamas storing weapons in mosques, schools and hospitals. And firing rockets at civilian centres in Israel.<p>Then we'll have ourselves an old fashioned reddit party! first one to invoke godwin's law wins!!
I think the fact that this thread has 70+ comments, yet has not turned into a political flamefest, but rather an intelligent discussion on whether it belongs, is an almost unbelievably strong testament to the quality of the HN community.<p>I say this as someone who has very strong views on the topic, yet hope and pray that issues this divisive will not be allowed to sow seeds of disunity in an otherwise harmonic and well functioning community.
White Phosphorus is not a banned substance, nor is there anything obviously illegal about Israel's use of it in this conflict. It's certainly not a chemical weapon or any other sort of WMD, despite what some of the more breathless reporting would imply.<p>The only international convention which may regulate the use of White Phosphorus is Protocol III of the Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons, however as WP is designed primarily to be used as a smoke-generating agent it falls under Section 1(b)(i) of the Protocol for most uses, which states:
(b) Incendiary weapons do not include:<p>(i) Munitions which may have incidental incendiary effects, such as illuminants,
tracers, smoke or signalling systems;<p>If used as an incendiary weapon, other restrictions in the Protocol might apply. These include a prohibition on using WP as an incendiary weapon directly against civilians or by air-dropped shells against military targets in heavily civilian areas. But again, this does not apply when WP is used as a smoke-generating agent and it's perfectly legal to use WP as either a smoke-generating agent or an incendiary weapon against military targets if they are not located within heavy concentrations of civilians, such as in an open field.<p>Israel (along with the US) is not a signatory to Protocol III of the CCW and so it's not subject to its restrictions in any case, but the IDF's military manuals instruct its soldiers to abide by its restrictions voluntarily. Thus far, there hasn't been any evidence that Israel has used it as anything other than a smoke-generating agent, which is absolutely necessary in this kind of urban fighting, or that it has intentionally been used as an incendiary weapon against civilians. In fact, the particular shell Israel uses (the US-made M825A1) is remarkable for having a much slower fall-time through the air than WP weapons of old like those used heavily in WWII, so it provides sufficient time for people to get out of its way and makes it a lot less effective as a weapon.<p>So all indications are that Israel's use of White Phosphorus is well within the accepted and legally-permissible bounds that govern its use. That does not mean that groups like HRW should not keep a strict eye on the IDF's use of it in case there are transgressions and targeted attacks on civilians, but it does mean that we need to stop this ridiculous tendency to regard any use of WP as an illegal and barbaric action. It's a legitimate weapon with legitimate uses and NGOs and the media should recognise that.<p>As an aside, the International Solidarity Movement used as a source by the Guardian is hardly an impartial source, having long been linked to Hamas and supportive of that organisation. Any video, witness interviews and photographs released by the ISM should be regarded as immediately suspect unless corroborated by other sources.
<i>"A woman described how on Tuesday Israeli forces "started to fire phosphorus bombs against the people"</i><p>Please. Since when is a civilian woman a reliable source of information on weaponry? Gimme a break! Bad journalism. What else could one expect from the Guardian?