from Hacker News

Belgium's Arrest of IDF Soldiers Could Be a Watershed Moment

by e12e on 8/4/25, 6:49 PM with 32 comments

• by mdhb on 8/4/25, 7:09 PM

  It’s genuinely hard to overstate the sheer magnitude of long term reputational damage this Israeli government has done to the nation of Israel itself.

  I saw a video[1] today where I think there was essentially every living ex leader of Israel’s various intelligence agencies stating that Netanyahu and his allies have essentially taken the country hostage and they see it very much as an existential threat from which they might not survive.

  Honestly it’s kind of hard to disagree with that analysis at this point from what I am seeing.

  [1] https://bsky.app/profile/newseye.bsky.social/post/3lvl4ynf32...

• by linuxhansl on 8/5/25, 8:20 AM

  Why is this flagged? Too political? Not technical? Off topic?

  Of course we can flag things, but I am not fan doing so silently.

• by _mlbt on 8/4/25, 7:07 PM

  The article isn’t very clear about this, did they have any reason to suspect that these 2 Soldiers had personally committed war crimes or were they arrested only on the basis of them being IDF? If it’s the former, then good on them. If it’s the latter, which I suspect since they were questioned and then released, then this sets a terrible precedent.

• by josefritzishere on 8/4/25, 7:32 PM

  Considering the genocidal scale of the war crimes it's amazing how long it took for this to happen. This specific segment of the war on Gaza started in October of 2023!