Bitchat for Gaza – messaging without internet
updates.techforpalestine.orghttps://bitchat.free/ Guess which building first demolished to the ground by Israel military in Gaza at the beginning of the conflict? No price of getting the right answer, it's the Watan Tower building that also hosted most of Gaza Internet Sevice Provider (ISP) companies including Paltel and Jawwal and their infrastructure. It was also a hub for several international media outlets, including the Associated Press and Al Jazeera [1],[2]. We are somewhow supposed to believe by Israel propaganda that the demolition of the Watan building is necessary to cripple the resistance but in war, truth is always the very first casualty that further leads to countless human casualties. [1] Israels warns Palestinians on Facebook but Israel bombing decimated Gaza Internet Access: https://theintercept.com/2023/10/12/israel-gaza-internet-acc... [2] #KeepItOn: Telecommunications Blackout In The Gaza Strip Is An Attack On Human Rights: https://m.scoop.co.nz/stories/WO2310/S00117/keepiton-telecom... I imagine Gaza may currently be one of the most difficult environments to write software code in. I happily admit that I would not be able to be productive in such an environment - my environment here in Europe is really quite sheltered (guess this also depends on where one lives; areas close to Russia may not feel as comfortable as in central Europe or Western Europe). The only distraction I have here is youtube music playing in the background - that's about it. My brain wouldn't be able to operate well in any high risk high danger environment or any non-standard environment in general. I taught myself to write an original software application in JavaScript while living in Afghanistan about 16 years ago. I suspect Gaza is maybe 10x, or much more, challenging environment. I often didn’t have access to internet, but in Gaza I suspect electricity is universally hard to find. I was only out of pocket on electricity while waiting for flights, which is a lot more time than you would imagine. I also had reliable access to food and water even when my travel and living situation was completely mysterious. Based on my own experiences danger is far less distracting than hunger and fatigue. You can generally get through danger and still be interested in learning, but it’s hard to learn if your brain doesn’t have the rest and resources it needs. Even in Ukraine it's quite possible to code. I worked at Google with people who stayed in Ukraine after Russia started the war. I can't say they were unaffected - there was stuff like meetings interrupted by missile alerts - but they managed to do normal work despite the ongoing war. 40% of the bombing victims in Gaza are under 10 years old https://msf.org.uk/article/gaza-msf-survey-shows-almost-half... Comparing it to the war in Ukraine ("Even in Ukraine") isn't really helpful or informative, to understand the condition under which Palestinians are surviving. The website you linked to specifies a subtly different thing from what you’re asserting: >”Forty-eight percent of the people who died from blast injuries among our colleagues' households were children and 40 percent were under 10 years old.” That is quite different from saying that “ 40% of the bombing victims in Gaza are under 10 years old”. Can you clarify the difference between "bombing victims" and "people who died from blast injuries"? I'm not seeing it. This is really splitting hairs, but i think it's: 48% of bombing victims/people who died from blast injury are children of those children 40% were under 10 years of age so .48 * .4 = 0.192 meaning roughly 20% of bomb deaths were under 10. But like if you're having this conversation you've already lost. There's no way to frame it so it's not horrific. The text does not say "of those children", the text says that 48% of the whole are children, and 40% are under 10 years. I agree it's a little ambiguous, but I read that as meaning that 40% of the total bombing victims were under 10 years. It says the dataset is 'colleague's households' which might be different from all of gaza. The "among our colleagues' households" is the key part. It's not generalizable to the whole of Gaza. I'd assume that "victims" includes injured, not just killed. > Comparing it to the war in Ukraine ("Even in Ukraine") isn't really helpful or informative Why not? 40% of bombing victims in Gaza are under 10. What fraction of the population is? How does that compare to Ukraine’s demographic and bombing victim distributions? These are valid questions for contextualising a conflict. The majority of deaths in Gaza are women and children. Nearly 70%.[1] The reason we talk about "women and children" in Gaza is because Israel can accuse any adult man of being a militant. Statistics from Ukraine are harder to get but according to the OHCR,[2] we know that 39% of non-combatant casualties are women and less than 5% are children. What percent of total deaths are civilians is the hard part, but in Donbas about 25% of casualties were civilian.[3] [1] https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cn5wel11pgdo [2] https://www.ohchr.org/en/meeting-summaries/2023/07/ukraine-c... [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casualties_of_the_Russo-Ukrain... > So we have a 70% women/children rate vs about a 11% (very very roughly calculated) women/children rate Sure. This is how "comparing it to the war in Ukraine" is both helpful and informative. Actually the answer is almost 40%. Gaza had a young and fast growing (one of the fastest in the world) population before the war. Some estimates even indicate their population has continued to grow (though at a very reduced rate) even during, but no reliable statistics have been collected. Unfortunately the reality in Gaza is way more severe than the reality in Ukraine in nearly every conceivable metric: deaths, famine, buildings destroyed, farms, schools, hospitals, journalists killed, shortages (by blockade) of essential goods... And Ukraine is a massive war with over a million casualties, so imagine that. Just the fact that there is now a whole generation of children who have missed over two years of school. One child missing two years of school is already a tragedy. A whole generation missing school, starving, under constant risk of violence and death, this is the first thing I think of when I think of Gaza. I'm not even a Palestine "supporter" but I will not longer support the state of Israel for any reason, even if the "good guys" come to power. a lot of these kids are missing limbs, it breaks my heart How is it more severe if the Ukraine war resulted in over a million casualties? I have a couple of programmers currently in ukraine. Unless you are in a war zone there is low risk and life is mostly normal. Only risk right now is no electricity or getting snatched on the street to be sent to war. I had a colleague in Ukraine and one day we joined the daily meeting and the team lead announced that guy is detained by that Ukranian org that abducts people. I never heard from him again. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Territorial_Center_of_Recruitm... > I happily admit that I would not be able to be productive in such an environment No shit. 80%+ percent of the country is rubble. To be more precise — in the UN's analysis using satellite imagery they estimated 81% to 84% of all buildings have been damaged or destroyed as of October 2025. That percentage also includes 90% of all residential buildings it's a nitpick, but country is Palestine, and Gaza is part of it >I imagine Gaza may currently be one of the most difficult environments to write software code in. That you think this says a lot about our news environment. I can think of a dozen places in Africa. Is there anywhere worse than Yemen? Burundi has entered the chat. Strange you're getting downvoted. A lot of Meshcore/Meshtastic stations popping up lately too all over the world too. Repeaters/Router can, if you put a bit of love in to highly efficient 3.3V generation, forever an a 6V solar cell and a 18650 LiPo. I've tested 60km with a 868MHz LoRa station using a shabby 5dBi omni antenna. Just run out of hills to test more. But not as easy to use as BLE(+BLE Meshing) which is basically integrated into every smartphone. I looked into Meshtastic a while ago and they use AES with no authentication tags. Also decryption happens on the LoRa device, which is a lot easier to crack with physical access compared to my phone. Even if you delete the messages it's still possible to decrypt sniffed LoRa traffic if, at some point in the future, one device gets captured. I'd rather the protocol gets updated so the crypto key can stay on the phone. There's a few issues that have been brought to light in the last couple years at Hackfest and other events related to LoRaWAN / Meshtastic (and derivatives). I think most notably was the failure in entropy generated during the flashing process, detailed here - https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2025-52464 I think we're a bit past the initial AES issues, at least the Meshtastic project promptly alerted people to their crypto issues and encouraged everyone to update firmware asap. It's not too hard to use, as long as the hardware is flashed and ready. For the end user, it's an app that connects to a bluetooth connection. I think it would very trivial to have a few good LoRaWAN ops in the community, flashing nodes en masse and handing them out to peers. Agreed – and MeshCore follows a similar "security on the radio" design. With the "cell phone + companion radio" setup which is currently very popular, it would seem the correct solution is to perform encryption on the phone – using the Signal protocol – and use the companion radio only to send/receive these blobs. This has the added benefit that you can pair with _any_ arbitrary companion radio, rather than your identity being tied to one specific radio you own. Many radios don't have "a phone". No, but all MeshCore radios operating in Companion Radio mode do, which is what my post is about. This will be very interesting if they can conquer the distribution issue. During the Hong Kong protests I recall several such solutions were created, but the dominant thing ended up being airdrop because it is what so many people already had locked and loaded. Another problem is what happens when police stop to search you. You don't want to have "please beat me dead" app installed when it's happens. If goons are killing you for having an app you don't need more apps, you need a gun. You are right but as German if I made that point publicly in regards to Palestine I would get arrested. I am not exaggerating It is crazy how we have dehumanized Palestinians to the point that just hinting on the fact that they might have a right to resist it completely taboo. Like you don't have to agree with their methods but expecting them to do nothing while Israel murders them and the world looks away is such a cruelty that is hard to comprehend. I don't know about that, if settlers in the West Bank cop some violence then that's going to be considered well deserved. Soldiers of 'a government' committing murder, rape and hostage taking on a music festival is going to earn you a bit of looking away to the consequences. I don't expect them to do nothing, I expect them to come to a deal not sacrifice everything in an eternal and vain attempt to remove Israel from the map. What about a society glorifying children murder and rape on prisoners of war ? > I don't expect them to do nothing, I expect them to come to a deal Well that is what they did. People like you told shite like "The war ends if they release the hostages". They agreed to the first step of the peace plan. They released the hostages. They are keeping the truce. (Israel claims they killed a few soldiers but that seem to be a lie, they probably died from explosive that were already lying around). So what did it gain them? Israels keeps murdering them. People are still starving in Gaza because Israel refuses to let food in. > committing murder, rape and hostage taking This is what Israel has been doing for decades. We just call the hostages prisoners. While the Palestinians have treated their hostages as well as they could even when Gaza was starving, the bodies of the dead political prisoners Israel gave back were so mutilated from systemic torture that not even family members are able to recognize them. As for the accusation of the resistance committing systemic rape, that is just racist propaganda. Same when they justified the lynching of black people in the US with saying they raped white women. We would have video evidence if something like that had happened. > They released the hostages The deal included remains of deceased hostages, most of which were not released at the agreed 48 hour point. > they probably died from explosive that were already lying around The source behind this theory seemed to be a tweet claiming "I’m told by a source familiar", and another tweet which was explicitly speculating ("most likely due to an explosive device ..."). No evidence was offered. > While the Palestinians have treated their hostages as well as they could even when Gaza was starving A UN envoy found "clear and convincing information that some [hostages] have been subjected to various forms of conflict-related sexual violence including rape and sexualized torture and sexualized cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment". Evyatar David also appeared to be the most severely malnourished adult in Gaza, while being forced to dig his own grave. > Palestinians have treated their hostages as well as they could 82 of the 251 hostages taken by Hamas on Oct 7th were killed. Give ‘em hell Netanyahu. Who killed them? Israeli bombs. Netanyahu cares more about murdering Palestinians than saving his own people. It's either a gross ignorance or gross deceit to compare those numbers to the amount of civilians who have been killed during the Palestinian genocide. A terrorist attack doesn't give you the right to ignore human rights. The international criminal court has an arrest warrant for Netanyahu. He is a war criminal. Get your facts straight. "they might have a right to resist " How do you define this? Killing Israel soldiers. Or killing hundreds of civilians at a concert and parading the dead body of a young woman around like a hunting trophy like Hamas did on Oct 7 2023? The main problem is that Palestinians think they can defeat Israel with force but they can't. > How do you define this? Would you not try to resist if you were to live in an open-air prison like Gaza? What if you lived in the West Bank and someone came to knock on your door and tell you that settlers were now taking over your land your family has lived in for hundreds of years and the bulldozer was coming the same afternoon to destroy your house, how would you react? I never condone attacking civilians, but i can't reasonably understand what those people had to live through for decades while their neighbour get to go to the beach every weekend. The only reason Gaza is a "prison" is because Hamas staged hundreds of suicide bombings from it. ALL of the problems in Gaza are caused by Palestinians trying to defeat Israel with force when they simply can't. > but as German if I made that point publicly in regards to Palestine I would get arrested. I am not exaggerating What are you talking about? I'm also German but nobody is getting arrested here for that. I literally walked past a pro Palestine protests 1h ago. They are regularly arresting people and police brutality has gotten so bad that even the international press is taking note: > Irish officials express 'concern' after Irish protestor left bloodied by police in Berlin https://www.irishpost.com/news/irish-officials-express-conce... > Footage circulating on X shows police using brute force to push back protesters, with at least 28 people arrested, according to police reports. https://www.humanrightsresearch.org/post/crackdown-on-pro-pa... > Udi Raz, 34, is sitting in a cafe in Berlin, where he lives, reflecting on a turbulent six months. Since Israel’s war on Gaza began following the Hamas-led attacks of 7 October, Raz, an Israeli Jew raised in Haifa, has been fired from his job and had the activist group he’s part of labelled antisemitic by Germany’s official antisemitism commissioner. > Last Friday, German authorities arrested Raz, a board member of Jewish Voice for a Just Peace in the Middle East, after they cancelled and then banned the group’s three-day conference on Palestine. https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/germany-crackdown-israel-... Yes, even Jewish people are labeled anti-semites, it is that insane. Ok so the Irish guy got punched in the face after doing that: > as O'Brien is seen calling officers 'genocide supporters' and accusing one of 'acting like a Nazi'. If you scream
at peoples faces and insult them, you risk getting punched in the face. Police or not. Would be more professional to ignore that. But this is not a state systematically coming after you for voicing opinions. If you want to see a real example of that, look no further than Hamas. >I would get arrested Have you considered getting a gun? Why or why not? > Like you don't have to agree with their methods but expecting them to do nothing while Israel murders them But Israel's not murdering them. The war has a very low civilian to combatant death ratio. According to the UN 70% of the dead are women and children There are children with sniper bullets in their bodies. This is not war, this is ethnic cleansing. The UN pays for schools for children to be brainwashed into suicide to kill as many Israelis as possible via UNRWA - it is not a reliable source of information. Do you have a source for "very low"? It seems liks a hard thing to measure well but as far as I can see it looks very average. >80% of the dead are civilians. What world are you living in? https://www.972mag.com/israeli-intelligence-database-83-perc... (Journalist from Israel) Sadly most repressive states and apartheid systems control who has a gun. You can see that in Russia (as one example of many more, mind you), where officials search through your apps on the smartphone, or worse, people being carried away by cops merely for holding up a blank piece of paper: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TbzV1it1YPY Exactly when a group like Hamas controls your home and brutally executes any dissidents or even suspected dissidents in public on a routine basis it’s difficult for any individual to fight back [1], almost worse is torture and maiming of anyone who even hints at “disloyalty” [2]. In such situations though encrypted messaging becomes crucial, but it’d be hard to hide. Note: links are rather disturbing. 1: https://www.cnn.com/2025/10/15/world/video/hamas-killings-ga...
2: https://x.com/afalkhatib/status/1979752415973834965 Yeah, it must suck to get brutally JDAM'd (along with your whole family [0]), sniper-droned (seeking to main and kill [1]) and mown down by "gaza humanitarian foundation" machine-gun fire (while queueing for food) [2] in Palestine, just for disagreeing with israel's position that your land now belongs to them. If you're lucky, you won't be thrown into one of israel's rape-and-torture-camps [3][4]. But anyways, great submission and great work. Remember though, your cell phone signals will earn you a JDAM, because you might be a terrorist for using a cell phone. So stay on the move. Warning: links are very disturbing: 0: https://www.972mag.com/lavender-ai-israeli-army-gaza/ 1: https://www.npr.org/2024/11/19/nx-s1-5195171/witnesses-say-i... 2: https://news.un.org/en/story/2025/08/1165552 3: https://theintercept.com/2024/08/09/israel-prison-sde-teiman... 4: https://www.btselem.org/publications/202408_welcome_to_hell Hamas is is a totalitarian theocracy that kills opponents to it. Hamas is killing traitors from criminal gangs who aligned with Israel during the conflict in the hopes of getting their 30 pieces of silver. Hamas supporters like you really make my skin crawl. Remember when they massacred hundreds of people at a concert and paraded the body of a young German woman they murdered like a hunting trophy? Is that what you support? If you're criticized by someone who supports israel's terroristic raping, torturing, killing, and genocide of innocent civilians, that's a strong indication that you're in the right, since they're in the wrong. The critic can pretend to be as offended as much as they want, but since they're supporting israel's terroristic raping, torturing, killing, and genocide of innocent civilians (an act far worse than the one they're criticizing), the criticism rings hollow: they don't actually care about innocent civilians, only about their "side" getting everything it wants. No sane person is "pretending" to be offended by the despicable actions of Hamas on Oct 7 2023. Even if Israel is committing war crimes (a reasonable position to argue), that doesn't make Hamas not a totalitarian theocracy that kills its opponents. These facts can coexist. Refusing to acknowledge Hamas's nature while condemning Israel's actions isn't moral clarity it's selective blindness.You're claiming moral authority to dismiss criticism by asserting I support worse actions committed by Israel, while simultaneously excusing far worse actions by Hamas. This is just "whataboutism" and it just attempts to silence criticism through tu quoque reasoning. This means neither side's conduct gets properly examined.
Massacring concert-goers, taking civilian hostages, and using rape as a weapon of war are either categorically wrong or they're not. If Israel's killing of civilians delegitimizes its supporters' moral standing, then Hamas's deliberate targeting of civilians on Oct 7 2023 equally delegitimizes yours. You can't claim the moral high ground while excusing incredibly evil actions when they are committed by Hamas. You remind me strongly of Trump supporters who support him when he does exactly the same things they criticized Obama and Biden for doing. > No sane person is "pretending" to be offended by the despicable actions of Hamas on Oct 7 2023 Interesting how your memory starts and stops at that very moment, ignoring israel's terroristic hostage-taking, raping, torturing, killing, and genocide, which happened before and after that date, in greater numbers. To me, that sort of whataboutism when deflecting the criticism of israel which was the original topic, indicates the speaker doesn't actually care about innocent civilians, unless they are israeli. Indeed, refusing to acknowledge israel's nature while trying to redirect to someone else's actions is selective blindness. Massacring children, taking civilian hostages, using rape as a weapon of war, engaging in war crimes, engaging in crimes against humanity, and engaging in genocide (all of which israel did and is doing) are either categorically wrong or they're not, regardless of what you think of hamas or any other 3rd party. You can't claim the moral high ground while excusing incredibly evil actions when they are committed by israel (actions which are even more incredibly evil than those of hamas). You remind me strongly of trump supporters who support him when he does exactly the same things, and much worse things, than those they criticized Obama and Biden for doing. "in greater numbers." Prove it Hamas's explicit goal is the destruction of Israel and creating an Islamic state to replace it. Do you support this? What is your ideal solution to the conflict? Hamas is essentially a less ambitious ISIS. Hamas similarities to ISIS: -Sunni Islamist organizations seeking Sharia-based states -Totalitarian control in their territories -Systematic killing of political opponents and "collaborators" -Rejection of democratic governance -Religious police and morality enforcement -Deliberate targeting of civilians as strategy -Suppression of media and free expression -Use of torture and extrajudicial execution Not a great moral wagon to hitch yourself to > [person complaining about whataboutism proceeds to make a post consisting entirely of whataboutism to distract from the topic of israel] Considering israel is guilty of everything you listed and worse (including genocide), and in greater amounts, this isn't even a good 'whataboutism' from you. Indeed, no amount of whataboutism, nothing hamas has done or can do justifies israel's crimes. Either way, try to stay on topic (israel) rather than engaging in whataboutism (deflecting from israel with 'whatabout hamas!?') and spreading anti-jewish slurs. By the way, I think our fellow poster is still waiting for an answer from you here: Please stop ignoring everything I say about Hamas with "Israel bad too". Do you or do you NOT want Hamas to replace Israel with a ISIS style Islamic state, as that is their goal. Have you ever read their insane rant of a Charter? First, I ask that you please stop ignoring everything everyone is saying about israel with "hamas bad too" [0][1][2][3]. Remember, israel was the topic until someone engaged in whataboutism w/r/t hamas. 'But hamas' here, on the topic of israel's bad behavior, is a tu quoque fallacy. Someone's bad behavior cannot be solely defended on the basis of 'but so and so did X', and israel's behavior in particular (oppression, civilian kidnapping, rape, torture, mass killing, collective punishment, crimes against humanity, war crimes, ethnic cleansing, and genocide) is indefensible, period. Do you or do you NOT want israel to continue their campaign of oppression, civilian kidnapping, rape, torture, mass killing, collective punishment, crimes against humanity, war crimes, ethnic cleansing, and genocide? Have you ever heard the insane rants of their leaders about Palestine and innocent Palestinian civilians [4]? It's the same language hitler used to describe jews like myself, and advocate for our extermination: "human animals"; "it is an entire nation out there that is responsible"; "they should starve to death"; "we must make sure that Gaza is empty of Gazans". That's bad! As a kid visiting Holocaust museums, I was taught the lessons of "never again", and recognized that it meant for all people. Let's all learn from that horrible genocide, and stop this one being perpetrated by israel. 0: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45938854 1: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45932235 2: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45934291 3: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45934210 4: https://www.lemonde.fr/en/international/article/2025/05/21/i... Hamas is is a totalitarian theocracy that kills opponents to it. more whataboutism defending israel Hamas is is a totalitarian theocracy that kills opponents to it.They would happily kill you. sounds like israel but with less torturing, killing, and genocide Use that gun and Israel defends itself. By killing 100 civilians in an appartment complex with an Americian bomb. It’s different situation in Gaza tho, unlike protests where you might need to hide your identity going there to participate so having that app will expose you, in gaza it’s more of a concentration camp where the main resources are controlled but on the ground, not really, so no police will stop you there because you have an app, bitchat might be the perfect solution. I think in these kinds of places they beat you dead for being the wrong skin colour if they're in a bad mood. I'm not sure how much your installed apps are relevant to the decision. The "wrong skin color" is projection of western ideologies to Israel/Gaza conflict. Israelis have lighter skin Ashkenazi Jews, darker skin Mizrahi Jews(majority of hte jews in Israel now) and black Ethiopian jews. And of course 20%+ Arabs living in the country. Gazan Palestinians skin color varies as well, some have light skin, while others
have darker skin tones. For example, does this woman have the right skin color or the wrong one: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/4/4e/Ah... The colonization of Gaza and the West Bank is entirely driven by western interests and ideology. Namely Zionism[1] Zionism was what pushed Jews to accept the Partition Plan[0], and later the disengagement plan[1], both rejecting the idea of Gaza as an Israeli territory. The colonization of Gaza is entirely driven by Hamas's attack on Israel. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Nations_Partition_Plan_... [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israeli_disengagement_from_the... Acting like the dominant political stream in Israel has not been interested in occupying Gaza since at least 1967 to this day is a bald faced and shameless misdirection. First, as the other comment mentioned, that political stream you're talking about was literally the one the left Gaza. Second, that political stream is the opposition of the Zionism stream that established Israel. Picking and choosing the last two years as a proof for what Zionism is all about is like saying "Americanism is all about taking over Greenland". Somehow, when it's Zionism, people will not notice how ridiculous that sounds. So that interest was actualized through removing all Jews -- living and dead -- from Gaza in 2005? Sure. Just look at how they're doing now: they have the full support of the world to re-invade Gaza, and this can be justified by the fact that no Jews live there (Just look three comments above yours: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45932249 ) If there were Israeli Jews (I am not referring to the religious group, but by which side of the conflict people are on) living in Gaza, such arguments wouldn't work, just like they don't work for the West Bank (which is also getting genocided but we're not talking about it, so maybe that strategy works too). Lets make the order of operatons clear. 1) Hamas started a war with Israel by invading it, slaughtering and raping hundreds of civilians at the music festival and in their homes as well as taking hundreds of civilians hostage, including as we all know an toddlers, womens and elderly. 2) Israel in order to rescue its citizens as well as protect them from future attacked invaded Gaza and attacked Hammas and its infrastructure So yeah, it makes sense to support the country trying to rescue its hostages from an enemy government. We can debate how Israel prosecutes the war, but its a war that Hamas started and yet in your accusation of Israel above there is no mention of role Gazan goverment -- Hamas -- played in this war. I doubt that my country -- the US -- would prosecute the war any better, had it been invaded by thousands of Mexican federales killing 42,000 people -- an equivalent of population the city of Cupertino where Apple is headquartered -- while kidnapping 9,000 of our citizens. I doubt any country would do better as a matter of fact. > Hamas started a war with Israel by invading it, slaughtering and raping hundreds of civilians at the music festival and in their homes Could you provide conclusive evidence for that? Could you provide even cases of formally filed rape allegations? [1] Yes I know that a lot of Israeli media people made the accusation, but there's no reason to repeat something that no proof was given for. [1] https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20250106-no-rape-allegatio... I find middleeastmonitor.com an extremely biased anti-israeli propaganda piece that makes BBC seem like an unbiased news organization. If you search for the name "Moran Gaz" used in this article to conclude
that "Gaz stated that her department has found no evidence of sexual violence" is actually not true and is Moran's statements were quite nuanced: "
In the end, we have no complainants. What was presented in the media compared to what will ultimately emerge will be completely different. Either because the victims were murdered, or because the women who were raped by them are not prepared to reveal it. We contacted women's rights organizations and asked for cooperation. They told us that they simply did not contact them. There were parents who contacted the organizations and asked what to do if something happened to their daughter, but they did not disclose the abuse...I know there is public expectation and understand the need to address the horrific sexual crimes and sexual assaults that have been committed, but the vast majority of them will not be able to meet the threshold of proof in court, and the criticism will ultimately come to the prosecutor's office – unjustly.
" >> Either because the victims were murdered, or because the women who were raped by them are not prepared to reveal it. >> We contacted women's rights organizations and asked for cooperation. They told us that they simply did not contact them. This reads entirely different that what that article from MiddleEastMonitor.com leads you to believe. The way its titled and the way you interpreted is there were no sexual assaults, only slaughter, only murders. Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sexual_and_gender-based_violen... Or if you read Hebrew (i dont): https://archive.ph/yEKjp Im not going to engage in "Hamas slaughered festival goers on camera, killed a father in front of his kids, while blowing out one their eyes and kidnapped toddlers, but we will question the sex crimes being committed". Is protecting the killers of families, babies and kidnappers of toddlers from accusations of sexual assault really the proverbial "hill you want to die on"? Lets focus on order of operatons: 1) Hamas started a war 2) Israel responded in order to free its citizens and protect from future attacks. > Could you provide conclusive evidence for that? Could you provide even cases of formally filed rape allegations? It's pretty crazy how far the Overton Window has shifted on Jews. We went from it being prima facie evidence of antisemitism to even "notice" their disproportionate influence on, or over-representation in, certain American institutions, like the Supreme Court--as shown when Pat Buchanan got soft-canceled for noting that Kagan's confirmation would make Jews a full 1/3 of Justices, despite being only 2% of the population--to it now being acceptable to outright deny war crimes committed against Israelis. It is important to distinguish between Jews and Israelis, as there is a significant portion of Jewish people who are leading the fight for truth about what Israel is and what Israel does. To address your comment, Israelis have been caught lying so many times that now when they make a claim, it is on them to prove that the claim is correct, rather than on others to prove that it is not. Just a few examples off the top of my head include: - The killing of medical workers in a convoy of ambulances and burying them in shallow graves, then lying about doing it until someone dug the bodies up and found footage confirming that they lied on the phone of one of the buried aid workers. [1] - The hunting down and killing of World Central Kitchen aid workers via multiple air strikes [2]. This was repeatedly denied by Israelis until too much evidence was stacked up and they settled for "it was a grave mistake". - The high profile case of killing of Hind Rajab [3] who for a brief period of time was the sole survivor of a tank attack in a shelled vehicle filled with her dead family members. Aid workers were dispatched to rescue here, coordinated with Israelis. Neither the girl nor the aid workers were ever seen alive after that. Israelis repeatedly insisted that there were no troops in the area, until too much evidence was stacked again. [1] https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/04/world/middleeast/gaza-isr... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Central_Kitchen_aid_conv... There's a UN report on it: https://press.un.org/en/2024/sc15621.doc.htm This was the conclusion of both UN and EU committees: "the two groups' fighters "committed widespread sexual and gender-based violence in a systematic manner, using it as a weapon of war"" "In July 2025, Hamas was added to the UN's sexual violence blacklist" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sexual_and_gender-based_violen... As well as individual research: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/jan/18/evidence-point... And even interviews with the fighters themselves in which the admit it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=On0SINArclQ Asking why there are no filled allegation is as ignorant as suggesting that no Palestinian home was destroyed because no Palestinian appealed to Palestinian court suing Israeli soldiers for destroying their home. You clearly don't understand how the system works. Hi, your mention of the UN report made me look at the actual report in an effort to find the truth of the matter. So let's go deeper into the UN report as it's often cited as a proof of rape, but as we'll see by the end of it, there isn't actually any evidence for it other than "people said" (for more context of why I'm dismissing this, look at the points below and especially at the end of this post). Please do double-check and correct me if I reach a wrong conclusion somewhere. Here's the link to the full report by Pramila Patten published around early March 2024: [1]. The key points based on which I say that there is no proper evidence are the following: > 34. The mission team, specifically the forensic pathologist and the digital analyst, reviewed over 5,000 photos, around 50 hours and several audio files of footage of the attacks, provided partly by various state agencies and through an independent online review of various open sources, to identify potential instances and indications of conflict-related sexual violence. So there is plenty of photo and video material from surveillance devices. Good. But, we have a few lines mentioning something very similar to this: > 16. [...] With respect to the latter instance, while the forensic analysis reviewed injuries to intimate body parts, no discernible pattern could be identified, against either female or male soldiers. Further searching of the word "forensic" reveals nothing conclusive about rape. Just notes that there were injuries to intimate body parts, which is expected when bodies are blown up by tank and helicopter fire (which was confirmed to have happened during the fighting). The report does not comment whether the injuries were inflicted specifically by hand-to-hand combat weapons and small personal arms. Now, searching for the word rape, it appears throughout the report, but only ever to point out that "there are reasons to believe that it happened", but no proof is ever given, only statements by other people. A reminder that there is a lot of surveillance photo and video material, but none of it supported the claims. For example: > 74. In the medicolegal assessment of available photos and videos, no tangible indications of rape could be identified. Further investigation may alter this assessment in the future. And an example of rescue teams' statements that are used as sources for the accusations: > 13. At the Nova music festival and its surroundings, there are reasonable grounds to believe that multiple incidents of sexual violence took place with victims being subjected to rape and/or gang rape and then killed or killed while being raped. Credible sources described finding 5 murdered individuals, mostly women, whose bodies were naked from their waist down – and some totally naked – tied with their hands behind their backs, many of whom were shot in the head. Please let me know if you find something in the report that represents credible evidence of rape. I'd like to see it because I care about the truth. We know that Israel rapes Palestinians in their torture prisons because we have not only victim testimonies (that we ultimately cannot take as solid proof even if they are true), but we have actual video evidence that was released of them doing that to a prisoner on surveillance camera footage. And there is an ongoing trial where the rapists are parading around the media in Israel and proudly defending their rights to torture prisoners, including via rape. And unfortunately they have a lot of support in the country. So if Palestinian resistance fighters did the same, I want to know. But we'll need proper evidence. One final question remains to be answered here -- why don't I think that Israelis making these claims should simply be believed? Because they lied so many times that now when Israelis make a claim, it is on them to prove that the claim is correct, rather than on others to prove that it is not. Just a few examples off the top of my head include: - The killing of medical workers in a convoy of ambulances and burying them in shallow graves, then lying about doing it until someone dug the bodies up and found footage confirming that they lied on the phone of one of the buried aid workers. [2] - The hunting down and killing of World Central Kitchen aid workers via multiple air strikes [3]. This was repeatedly denied by Israelis until too much evidence was stacked up and they settled for "it was a grave mistake". - The high profile case of killing of Hind Rajab [4] who for a brief period of time was the sole survivor of a tank attack in a shelled vehicle filled with her dead family members. Aid workers were dispatched to rescue here, coordinated with Israelis. Neither the girl nor the aid workers were ever seen alive after that. Israelis repeatedly insisted that there were no troops in the area, until too much evidence was stacked again. As for your video of an alleged pPlestinian fighter admitting to atrocities with an Israeli flag behind him, we obviously cannot take seriously a statement made in imprisonment, highly likely obtained under torture, given the vast evidence of torture (including actual rape) being conducted in Israeli prisons. [1] https://www.un.org/sexualviolenceinconflict/wp-content/uploa... [2] https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/04/world/middleeast/gaza-isr... [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Central_Kitchen_aid_conv... No, you are spreading lies. I won't engage any further but I'll just say that there is absolutely no video evidence, not even one, showing a rape of a Palestinian by Israeli soldiers. What there is is a video that shows Israeli soldiers standing around and beating a Palestinian prisoner, that happened to be a Hamas police-officer. The video is very unclear. The vast majority of the discussion in Israel isn't around the the right to torture prisoners (I have actually never heard anyone argue that). That's also a lie. The discussion is around whether or not it happened. The usage of rape as part of Palestinian resistance isn't exactly a new thing: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_of_Ori_Ansbacher The main difference is that in Israel, people who are suspected in doing such things would be trialed, and if found guilty, sent to jail. That's true by the way not specifically for rape, but also for harming a Palestinian in any other ways. Trails against settlers violence, for example, take place all the time. Yes, much more needs to be done, but it happens. On the Palestinian side, however, I cannot recall a single case of Palestinian facing legal charges for ever harming a Jew, and it's not because it never happens. Does Israel have a perfect legal system? Absolutely not. But it has a system that has put many Israelis behind bars, while the Palestinian Authority usually pays compensation for those who blew up civilian buses when I was child. colonization? How many western zionists live in Gaza today? No Jews live in Gaza. Israelis live in Palestine though - it's just that any area they live gets renamed from "Palestine" to "Israel", usually accompanied by heavily artillery fire and drone strikes, to clear out the natives. I wish more people were upfront with the truth like you are.
A very sensible interpretation of your words is a) All land between Jordan river and mediterranean sea should be called Palestine b) only Arabs are natives of that lands. Here b) is plainly wrong -- Both arabs and jews continuously lived in that area for hundreds and for Jews -- thousands -- of years.
and a) implies that the state of Israel does not have a right to exist. This basically a two sentence version of "From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free" slogan where its clear that we are not talking about West Bank and Gaza, but rather the entire land including Israel. THanks for clarifying it I didn't say Jews. You said Jews. I said Israelis. I don't care what their religion is - bombing all the hospitals and universities in a region and drone striking little babies is terrible horrible no no very bad stuff. By the way, if we're talking about tribalism, the distant descendants of the Jews who lived in that area thousands of years ago, are (largely) the Palestinians. The modern Israelis are (largely) an entirely separate group of white Europeans that immigrated from Europe after WW2. >> usually accompanied by heavily artillery fire and drone strikes, to clear out the natives. You clearly juxtapositioned Israelis vs the natives -- who did you mean by natives if not the Palestinian arabs? Regarding descendants of Jews being Palestinains -- I find the way you present this interesting genetic fact quite misleading, making it sound that modern day palestinians have exclusive genetic connection to the land, whereas all genetic studies done in modern years show that modern day palestinian arabs AND ashkenazi jews AND mizrahi(middle-eastern) jews have clear genetic ties to people who inhabited that land in the bronze age(aka Moses era). Lastly, its not true that modern israelis are LARGELY a group of europeans migrated from europe. Mizrahi jews(middle east and north africa) are the largest ethnic group in Israel. Not descendants of Ashkenazi europeans. Thank Iraq and Yemen for ethnically cleansing their countries of jews in 1948 for that. There are also black people in Gaza: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Afro-Palestinians > racism within Palestinian communities. Of course Projection? Really? ... Do a little research into how black Ethiopian Jews were given birth control shots without their consent or knowledge. Despite that, isn't there a history of compulsive violence based on skin-based profiling? These are facts, not ideology. 2 off-duty soldiers assaulted after being mistaken for Arabs
https://www.timesofisrael.com/2-off-duty-soldiers-assaulted-... Live TV shows Israeli mob attack motorist they believed to be an Arab
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/may/13/live-tv-shows-... Israeli soldier kills Jewish civilian in 'identity mishap'
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-34602287 3 hostages killed by Israeli soldier in Gaza were waving a white flag, Israel says https://www.npr.org/2023/12/15/1219695220/israel-soldiers-mi... Israeli Civilian Killed by Israeli Soldier after Being Mistaken for Palestinian https://www.palestinechronicle.com/israeli-civilian-killed-b... And from Wikipedia: > The Israeli Security Forces use racial profiling at military checkpoints and during some of the duties they perform. In August 2017 Haaretz reported that security guards working for a company which provides security at Tel Aviv's Central Bus Station said they were instructed to demand ID from people who look Arab and detain those who do not have an ID with them. OP said that Israelis beat people up for having the wrong skin color. The one I replied to said that is wrong and is a projection of western ideology. But it does not appear to be wrong in reality - OP was correct. Dont these show that skin-based profiling doesnt work in Israel -- Jews and Arabs are being mistaken for each other. Not sure what the Florida example has to do with anything though. Here are some similar headlines: Palestinians remove Muslim from al-Aqsa after confusing him for a Jew https://www.jpost.com/israel-news/article-692563 Palestinian stabs Arab Israeli bus driver thinking he was a Jew
https://www.timesofisrael.com/palestinian-charged-over-petah... Too often the results of these efforts (like the HK protests just using Airdrop) are never really called out anywhere so these tools become nerd catnip and nerds continue to build solutions that nobody ends up using. It would be cool to maybe collect a list of situations where comms infra was disturbed and what ended up being used (if anything) in those situations to help guide future efforts. This is a great point. Being able to run in a browser with airdropped code makes sense. Using Bluetooth and no central server does this mean getting messages out to a world wide audience isn't possible with the app? Apple pulled the app after complaints from the Chinese regime. Would not surprise me if this app met a similar fate. Other than the cold start problem which isn't discussed (what's the userbase size in Gaza?), the main argument for Bitchat (or any other off-grid network such as Meshtastic, Briar, etc.) in Gaza when mainstream E2E encrypted messaging apps already exist and are widely used, is to not be dependent on Israel for cell service. While I do really like the idea of off-grid networks in general but for this use case, is it really that hard for a state actor to jam Bluetooth (or all ~2.4GHz communication) on a large scale? I feel like the idea here is cute; but does it realistically work at scale? Of course, a messaging app like this—if it's going to work anywhere, is going to work in Gaza, one of the (at least formerly) most densely populated areas in the world. But bluetooth was not designed for this type of communication whatsoever; phones can only establish bluetooth connections between devices at the very most 100ft under the most ideal conditions; and is probably much lower than that in practice. Even if people are living in open-air conditions I can imagine messages getting stuck or being delivered very late; especially at night when there may not be a lot of human movement. How well does this actually work in practice? A disaster, cyberattack, or prolonged blackout could take down cell towers in a broad area, this could be useful in that case. And in a civil emergency a government may be able to shut down cell towers centrally, but not have the resources to jam the entire country. The user base size is huge. This is actively being used by tens of thousands Tens of thousands of users? Globally you mean? I doubt it's the user base size in Gaza but if that is actually what you meant, where did you pull that estimate from? Source code is MIT: https://github.com/permissionlesstech/bitchat-android I guess if a serious audit is done then it could be a nice solution. I would love to read more technical details about it, especially how it can be sure the messages are transmitted to the good person. What an awesome piece of technology. I've been wanting to create something similar, just on the technical merits. We have some pretty amazingly capable technology these days, but so much of it relies on IP infrastructure, which is fine when things work and you are either aligned with your government, or live in a society where there are strong checks and balances on government overreach. Exactly. With Chat Control being revived again in the EU, various VPN bans being proposed in US states, and ID verification rolling out seemingly everywhere, this kind of tech may end up being more useful than people expect. If it works in the extremely adversarial environment of a warzone, it should work fine here. How is this a solution to Chat Control and EU law? If this is used, governments will simply demand Apple and Google get the app declared forbidden, which both have done to apps for many reasons. Worse: they might demand a list of people who have it installed (and this violates the Chat Control law of course). Even worse: this app turns out to be written by a security agency or scammers and starts exploiting people. If they are demanding a list of people who have apps installed, you have two options: lie down like a dog or get in the streets and fight. If you think it’s going to get to that point, you need tools like this even more. Why is chat control controversial? It seems like the same people afraid of this are the same people outraged when people then use private chat to do bad things. The thing that I really like about the approach taken by OP is that it AFAIK is broadcast-only, up to a certain radius. The hard part in mesh networking is routing, and broadcast sidesteps that Is it actually being used in Palestine? My problem is that when you are actually locally near someone you don't really need live chat; and if you're far, it might become too unstable to use. But I might be wrong! it’s not just chat over Bluetooth, the message is relayed over a mesh so you can chat with people much further than Bluetooth range. BitChat can send messages over Bluetooth, and it uses a mesh network to relay messages across nearby devices. This allows messages to hop from one phone to another, extending coverage beyond the normal Bluetooth range, though the number of hops is limited and depends on nearby devices. When a device in the mesh has an internet connection, certain messages can be published to Nostr, allowing them to move from the local mesh to the global network. Not all messages are automatically sent online, and purely mesh-local chats remain local. Messages sent via Nostr can also be accessed through clients like NYM (Nostr Ynstant Messenger). BitChat combines offline mesh networking with a decentralized protocol to enable both local and global communication. I guess if even one or two people use it that's a good thing. BUT. It probably would struggle with RTL and LTR stuff regarding arabic script vs latin script (and people across the world are forgoing traditional scripts for latin characters ... seems bad) TIL what the green names mean on HN (new account). I once worked in an Information Operations group. It has left me deeply suspicious of the verisimilitude of online personae. One of the things I appreciate about HN is the ability to check whether I'm talking to a human, and whether they have a cohesive sentiment. Mods do their best here, but there's no way to check whether you're talking to a human (on HN or any other digital messaging service) my metric for now is "do they have human-sounding posts from more than a year ago" > TIL what the green names mean on HN (new account). You've been here for five years and just figured that out? Related. Others? Ask HN: Does Anyone Use Bitchat? - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44944414 - Aug 2025 (5 comments) Testing Bitchat at the music festival - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44815164 - Aug 2025 (55 comments) MitM Flaw in Bitchat: Identity Is a Bitchat Challenge - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44497622 - July 2025 (6 comments) Bitchat – A decentralized messaging app that works over Bluetooth mesh networks - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44485342 - July 2025 (424 comments) I think cellphones should come with LoRa, ZigBee, or Sub-GHz FSK modules. It would reshape the communication we have today. I never thought I'd see FidoNet again. We are probably all on a list for just commenting on this post :-/ Read it as bitch-at the first time :( Same. I once registered bithole.com because I wanted a better email address then what I had at yahoo.com...and I realized my mistake as I was typing it on my resume. This feels like a similar mistake. I don’t think that’s unintentional or undesired Exactly, it says Bitch@ such a dumb name unless he wanted it. Like Briar? Was thinking the same thing. This seems better suited for chatting with arbitrary people nearby, but with zero verification of who you're talking to. You don't have to set up an account at all, just install the app and start chatting as @anon<number> or change the username to whatever you want. I was wondering about Briar... seems maybe like reinventing the same thing over again although I assume there's some important functional difference I'm not thinking of. Briar requires manual pairing with users for some odd reason. Doesn't make sense and makes it unusable outside a family context. And Berty on iOS? Wasn't Jack Dorsey working on this as well? I’m pretty sure he vibe coded the thing, or at least the prototype As usual the HN hivemind disagrees with the facts: https://www.businessinsider.com/jack-dorsey-bitchat-app-vibe... https://github.com/permissionlesstech/bitchat/graphs/contrib... IMO, I think the decentralized tech is the next big thing, and I probably mentioned it before, but the current state of hyper surveillance especially now with AI and digital ID, plus the privacy violating companies like flock and ring, will push people further into ditching centralized to decentralized, or technology completely! Watching news coverage I am amazed if many are able to get their
phone working (as in not broken by the war) and charged. people in palestine have been tweeting, posting to ig and tik tok throughout the entire conflict Perhaps that is an indictment of the news source you take in. fast and reliable (and encrypted) communication is so important in such conditions. not sure how important that is next to not dying of hunger, being blown up, loosing friends, family and strangers, being erased and treated like an animal, but, you know. it's a start... This is pretty cool. I could see the use in other disaster hit areas or even just large public gatherings like sports events or festivals where network coverage is temporarily a bit patchy. [flagged] The primary threat to Palestinian civilians in Gaza remains the IDF. And in the West Bank, it's the Israeli settlers. How do Google and Microsoft prevent their tech from being used toward genocidal/settler ends against civilians? Umm they don’t sell to Hamas but I could be wrong. They do sell to Israel, which uses the tech to commit mass-atrocities against civilians. Is it their job to do that? > Is it their job to do that? Not that. But it should be someone’s job to monitor if Hamas adopts it. That is an external problem to the bitchat app. > That is an external problem to the bitchat app Not really. If it becomes a tool of terrorist communication, it will get shut down. Legally, technically and/or kinetically. > If it becomes a tool of terrorist communication, it will get shut down. You mean like how they shut down cell phone networks? Bitch about things on bitchat. How does that translate to local vernacular? I never see anyone on bitchat. Do people use it? I think the bluetooth limitation is gone, right? You can connect to users without being in proximity. I wish phones supported 802.11ah for things like this. 802.11ah hardware is sadly still rather expensive. The cheapest thing I could find is a $40 PCIe card (M.2 form factor); USB dongles for it are still $100+. At this point, it's probably worth abandoning 802.11ah as an idea and trying some different RF standard. Most phone radios have RX/TX around the 40-30cm band already. It's just a question of having arbitrary send/receive, and I guarantee you the hardware is designed to make that as impossible as they can. > /pass [password] - Set/change channel password (owner only) I assume to unset it just have to use /pass without arguments? Learning curve is probably an obstacle whats going to happen when adversarial entities perform a supply chain attack and booby trap these devices with c4 and kill all the users (men, women and children). we already know there are parties that are perfectly happy to make no distinction when killing them. > and booby trap these devices with c4 bit-chat is a piece of software, it's not a hardware device in the context of some encrypted vhf military radio, whats going to happen when adversarial entities use an anti-radiation missile to home in and blow the soldier up? like it's not that you're wrong, but that's not really in the scope of the problem being solved. ...except that he is definitely wrong about the targeting aspect as well. Almost all of the people hit by the pager explosions were legit military targets. In the videos of the explosions, you can see people unharmed who were standing within meters of the targets. It was one of the most well-targeted anti-terrorist strikes in history. HERE is the techforpalestine github that is worth focusing on https://github.com/TechForPalestine/boycott-israeli-consumer... This gives me the same vibe as OLPC. We had these places where people didn't even have electricity, running water, or public sanitation, yet some nerds at MIT thought (?) to themselves, "Hey, you know what these people need? Laptops!" But even worse, you can install it from App Store or Google Play! Israeli territory or Israeli territory! What will these dipshits do next? Send the Palestinians some more pagers out of Budapest? This in turn reminds me to a meme where a guy was complaining that he got an empty package from Amazon, even though he didn't order anything. The quote retweet then wondered: what's his problem then? The name choice is unfortunate. I read it incorrectly the first time. I read it correctly, but got a laugh after reading your comment. Maybe it could be marketable to two very different demographics Same here. Imagining now bitch@ as the logo. EDIT: Name aside, what an awesome project. Anything with "bit" in (with the T pronounced) is a bit unfortunate for French speakers: https://context.reverso.net/translation/french-english/la+bi... . Also anything with chat (chatte). Unfortunate or intentional.. "Pour info, j'ai pas la bite qui fouette." Or intentional and awesome. Pick better names people. I can't bring myself to use "CockroachDB" for example. Its almost better when you read it that way. Its at least coherent.
So we have a 70% women/children rate vs about a 11% (very very roughly calculated) women/children rate. Yes the nature of these conflicts are extremely different. (.39 + .05) * .25 = .11
