IDF killed Gaza aid workers at point blank range in 2025 massacre: Report
dropsitenews.comReport [pdf]: https://content.forensic-architecture.org/wp-content/uploads... Forensic Architecture is a truly remarkable work. If anybody is unfamiliar with Eyal Weizman, I would highly recommend checking out more of his work. Including the 2014 series Rebel Architecture and some of his talks. He recently did a presentation called "Conditions of Life Calculated" at the David Graeber Memorial Lecture at CIIS that I think gives a lot of insight into why the work being done at Forensic Architecture is so remarkable. He also talks about his work with David Wengrow and the Nebelivka Hypothesis based on novel archeology of ancient Ukrainian cities https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bfD1y7WZLpM alternative FE: https://yewtu.be/watch?v=bfD1y7WZLpM The last time I came across Forensic Architecture was their report on the Beirut Port Explosion, someone posted it here on HN. Mind blowing analysis. https://forensic-architecture.org/investigation/beirut-port-... This is very thorough. Thanks for the direct link. The case seems pretty clear, especially since the soldiers tried to hide all evidence. > case seems pretty clear, especially since the soldiers tried Even if the 'soldiers' didn't, it wouldn't have mattered as the governing apparatus usually goes out of its way to protect their own militants. Ex A: Yes and no. It does matter because it illustrates both malicious intent and evidence of guilt, as in the guilty party knew they were perpetrating a criminal action. However, you are also correct, the IDF has little or no accountability for criminal behavior. > evidence of guilt, as in the guilty party knew they were perpetrating a criminal action. That might be a little strong. A cover up can happen for other reasons than covering up crimes (for example covering up bad PR that doesn't raise to the level of criminality). It does seem like a crime is what happened in this case, but i don't agree with applying that logic in general. The IDF has some accountability for criminal behavior. If you search you will find plenty of examples were soldiers were held criminally responsible for their actions. It's true that the default (and maybe the correct default) is to shield soldiers from actions taken during the course of war. This is not unique to the IDF, it's true for all western armies. Try and find me if the US pilot that bombed a hospital in Kandahar, or the US security contractors that mowed down people in the Baghdad market, were ever held criminally responsible. And just to be clear, my position is that if there was a criminal act here the IDF should absolutely prosecute. To my understanding this is still not settled for this case, i.e. there has not been a decision to not prosecute. But we shouldn't kid ourselves that this is somehow different. Indeed, and a fig leaf does technically provide some amount of coverage. For an example of how big this accountability is, when 3 of the hostages escaped they were killed by the IDF and that's ok because there was no malice in the act of shooting bare chested unarmed civilians waving a white flag as they approach. Was there ever a serious prosecution and serious punishments by IDF personnel? They always make PR circus how they investigate another war crime, but nothing ever happens from what I could find. You are correct about others but it doesn't change anything here - war crimes and atrocities are the worst of human behavior. Whataboutism shouldn't diminish outrage, and every such person should be extremely severely punished and ostracized by rest of humankind till end of their days, no exception, doesn't matter what passport they hold. Basic morality and all that. > the guilty party knew they were perpetrating a criminal action ... the IDF has little or no accountability for criminal behavior. May be the brazenness is why they make the best Tech CXOs? The tank commanders of another, bygone war also had the reputation for attention to detail. Funny how history rhymes. I think the only defense here would be if the soldiers came up with some reasonable explanation of why they thought the vehicles were hostile. Its kind of hard to imagine, especially with shooting the follow up vehicles, but motive seems like the only unclear part where there is any potential for a defense. One part that is really confusing, is if they knowingly intentionally targeted the ambulance because they thought they could get away with it if they destroyed the evidence, why leave witnesses alive? If you assume the motive was an intentional massacare with point blank executions, it doesn't entirely make logical sense to leave witnesses. The motive was pretty clear i.e. to murder aid workers helping Palestinians and assumed to be Palestinian. The report is very clear that the IDF could see the vehicle lights the entire time, making it clear they were protected aid workers. They attacked the first ambulance, the follow up ambulances, the UN truck, and the UN bus, before and after dawn, with plenty of time between. If this were a movie, there could be a clever twist to show some other motive, but in the real world, this is as clear as you get without confessions to tell you what was in their heads. Why didn’t they murder everyone? As testimony says [0], when one of the survivors called out that his mother was Israeli, the IDF soldiers lowered their weapons and helped him up. It seems to me that these are soldiers that have decided that Palestinians are less than human, or that Palestinians will never coexist and it is “them or us”. This mindset happens in many wars, but actual incidents depend on leadership at all levels and how much it is implicitly allowed. I think their cover up actions speak the loudest to how widespread these things are. The on the ground commander clearly wasn’t worried about destroying any and all evidence or leaving witnesses. Buring everything was to make it too difficult for outsiders confirm what happened, not to prevent leadership from putting them in jail. They were counting on being protected, and they were. A letter of reprimand for the commander, and losing his position as deputy commander (not loss of rank or being kicked out of the military) is little more than a speedbump to their military careers. [0] Page 36-37 of report > One part that is really confusing, is if they knowingly intentionally targeted the ambulance because they thought they could get away with it if they destroyed the evidence, why leave witnesses alive? If you assume the motive was an intentional massacre with point blank executions, it doesn't entirely make logical sense to leave witnesses. Couldn't the ability to make this very argument be a reason why? Without the witness we probably wouldn't be having this conversation at all. We probably would. The most concrete evidence of this incident is clear video, not eyewitness testimony. It was obtained about a year ago from the dead when the grave was unearthed. https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/04/world/middleeast/gaza-isr... > A video, discovered on the cellphone of a paramedic who was found along with 14 other aid workers in a mass grave in Gaza in late March, shows that the ambulances and fire truck that they were traveling in were clearly marked and had their emergency signal lights on when Israeli troops hit them with a barrage of gunfire. Intimidation tactics do not work well without someone to tell the story. I think people being murdered is pretty good intimidation frankly. Maybe it's like a kind of brag? Like, it the monsters massacre people and no one's left to report on how awful it was then they kind of "lose the gloat value" to a degree? The team involved in this analysis, Forensic Architecture, have a pretty decent youtube channel showing how they do things: https://www.youtube.com/@forensicarchitecture1967/videos With a specificity of the number of shots and the spatial reconstruction of the scene, there's some impressive uses of tech to bolster reporting: >A digital reconstruction of the scene shows that the soldiers would have had an uninterrupted view of the arrival of the convoy. >The reconstruction was jointly achieved with the two survivors of the incident, with an immersive spatial model they could walk through and amend. Together with spatial and audio analysis we established the position of the soldiers on an elevated ground with an unobstructed line of sight to the emergency vehicles. Forensic Architecture, the people who did the spatial reconstruction, have been around for a while. You can see more examples of their investigations here: https://forensic-architecture.org/ What a depressing portfolio... Their reconstruction of the Beirut Port explosion was incredible though: https://forensic-architecture.org/investigation/beirut-port-... Forensic Architecture are great. I remember their work being very hot in the international art scene around ~2018 (when they were nominated for the prestigious Turner Prize, among others - https://www.tate.org.uk/whats-on/tate-britain/turner-prize-2...). Not sure if they're still fêted as artists or have moved away from that label. I still find their approach completely mesmerizing nevertheless. * * * Awesome technicalities aside, it is really hard to watch the non-sensical violence and destructions when nobody is held accountable. I remember when folks here were shilling the "Israel promises they'd never bomb a hospital" and "Hamas is lying about the death toll" lines. All the hospitals are now rubble, and the IDF quietly let it slip that the death toll is legit recently. https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2026-01-29/ty-article/.p... There's damning video of this specific incident, recovered from the dead. I suspect subsequent massacres made a policy of finding and destroying all the phones. https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/04/world/middleeast/gaza-isr... > All the hospitals are now rubble Hospitals may have been used for retaliation [0], but it is unclear how many & in what capacity (according to accepted conventions, using a hospital to treat wounded combatants wouldn't make it a valid military target, for example; but hiding weapons or personnel would). [0] One such recent report: https://www.reuters.com/business/healthcare-pharmaceuticals/... A lot of that ambiguity would vanish if Israel did not have a habit of drastically overstating their case and quietly walking it back after they end up killing more journalists and toddlers than active combatants in hospital bombings. Also if reports didn't deliberately conflate 'armed man' with 'Hamas militant' and euphemize about the 'Hamas-run Interior Ministry' like that one does. Not sure I understand the mass downvotes on this one. I didn't take it as endorsing the action but summarizing the rationale. many somewhat intellectual(1), but evil(2), people love to play make pretend of just "summarizing the rational", "playing devil advocate", "just pointing out facts" to endorse their word view while having "plausible deniability" if caught (as they tend to know many people think their ideas are evil). Idk. if this is happening here but given how some threads devolved and other patterns common for such people emerged (red hearing arguments, false conclusions etc.) it looks quite a bit like it. This kind people (the also tend to argue endlessly not based on common sense, understanding of the real world and empathy (in questions of ethic/moral) but based on nit picking stuff like as if the word ist just a game you find holes in the rules with to "cleverly win". Because for them the world often is just that. But a lot of people find such behavior deeply deplorable. hence why if something looks like that it will get a lot of down votes even if it wasn't meant that way. --- (1): Non intellectual people try that too. But they tend to lack the skill to pull it off. Hence why it tends to be pretty obvious why they are down voted or similar. (2): Non evil people do that too, they just normally have the decency not to do so with topics like genocide. I also use evil here as a over-generalization but I have mostly seen that behavior with neo-nazis and other groups which are least fascist adjacent (and most times outright fascist). I think we should avoid suggesting that other people on this forum are evil, even if you think their ideas and arguments are harmful. I think sometimes people are so certain about their beliefs that they perceive any argument that challenges them to be evil, bad faith trickery. But I think the best way to respond to these arguments is simply to give compelling reasons why they are wrong (and not why the person giving them is bad). Otherwise, some people will be mislead by these bad arguments and you will have done nothing to help but say “don’t listen to him he’s evil”, which is not very convincing really. > intellectual(1), but evil(2), people love to play make pretend ... argue endlessly ... understanding of the real world and empathy (in questions of ethic/moral) but ... nit picking stuff like as if the word is just a game you find holes in the rules with to "cleverly win" I get what you're trying to say, but ... > playing devil advocate One look at my comment history on this topic should help dispel the notion. People have had good reasons for downvoting the above, but it's unclear how many and what those reasons might be. > according to accepted conventions Who accepted those? And did they have a right to do so on behalf of _all_ of humanity? The conventions are a guideline. To use them as a blanket moral justification for your actions after the fact is extremely disingenuous. Two things are valid at once: - Hamas is a terrorist organization that planned and executed a mass terror campaign, fully knowing and hoping for the reaction. And boasting about it continuously and repeatedly. - Israel's response was hasty, unplanned, purely driven by emotion at the beginning, and it quickly grew beyond any reason in the next weeks. Israel's response was very similar to the US's response to 9/11. 3,000 Americans were killed by terrorists (a smaller percentage of the population than Israelis killed on 10/7) and as a response the US started two wars killing at least 100 times as many Afghans and Iraqis (there are lots of debates about the total casualties there too just like Gaza). This is not a defense of Israel, just a fact that seemingly is never part of the conversation that I think can help people better understand why this is happening. Tens of millions protested the US response. Today they still spit to the side when having to say the name George Bush or Tony Blair, among others. You either weren't there, have a bad memory, are watching typically mainstream new sources, or are willfully ignoring the voices that are having that conversation today. Many of the ills today can be traced back to powers grabbed at the time to assist that so-called "war on terror". I genuinely don't know what distinction you're trying to make here. Do you think there aren't equivalent protests in Israel? There were minorities in both countries that opposed these responses from the beginning and those responses generally became more unpopular as time went on just like the men who spearheaded them, but a majority of both countries were initially supportive. Perhaps I'm wrong, but your initial post reads as if Israel's genocide in Palestine is consistent with historical precedent such as the Iraq war when facing similar national traumas. I'm suggesting that many of us are disgusted now by Israel's genocide, land theft, and murder ... just as millions of us were disgusted by the Iraq war. >Perhaps I'm wrong, but your initial post reads as if Israel's genocide in Palestine is consistent with historical precedent such as the Iraq war when facing similar national traumas. The US response was deadlier in both total number of people killed and in proportion to the inciting terrorist attacks. Both countries also committed clear war crimes along the way. The primary distinguishing factor between the two is the label of "genocide" only consistently being applied to Israel's actions, but that is mostly due to practical reasons, namely the relative small size of Gaza in terms of both geography and population. If Afghanistan and Iraq had the population density of Gaza, not only would that have likely made the US response even more deadly due to the mechanics of warfare, but it certainly would have led to more people describing the US's actions as genocide. Once again, this is not a defense of Israel. If this reads to you like I'm downplaying the actions of Israel, then you are underestimating the death and destruction caused by the US. Some estimates have the US responsible for as many as a million deaths. I'll dispute that. While I recall many at the time calling it a genocide due to the sanctions, the thrust of the military action was an illegal war. Israel, by contrast, systematically murdered civilians, journalists, starved a civilian population with impunity and with government intent, and ... the list is tragically too long. Size and numbers have nothing to do with it. Israels actions were ruled a genocide in the ICJ, the UN, among many other genocide experts (including Jewish experts). The Israeli's had/have actual genocidal intent. Just read the reprehensible words of some of the current Israeli cabinet. Not some radical fringe, but the actual Israeli cabinet. Sure, you mention you're not defending Israel, but the implication that there is some double standard here (perhaps "antisemitic" given your focus on labelling) is in itself a defense of Israel. The current "administration" is a disgusting body, and the Zionist ideology, in its current form, is an absurd, preposterous ideology which gives birth to a population who dehumanise their "enemy" in exactly the same way as the Nazis dehumanised the Jews (not my words, but the words of Jewish scholars). Your opinion of the US is too high. >Israel, by contrast, systematically murdered civilians, I'm not willing to ignore the US's propensity for bombing weddings.[1][2][3][4][5] >journalists Or the notorious Collateral Murder strikes.[6] > starved a civilian population with impunity and with government intent I already hit on this with the mentioning of Gaza's population density and the mechanics of war. Gaza is much smaller and denser which means that the same bomb dropped there will kill more people and destroy more infrastructure than in Iraq or Afghanistan. That has caused a larger percentage of the arable land in Gaza to be destroyed and they already had less of it to begin with. This had made them more reliant on Israel. The US simply didn't have the opportunity to control the food supply in the same way and I'm not willing to categorize a lack of opportunity as evidence of a lack of intent. And despite that all, the long tail of the US's actions still has led to a food crisis.[7] >Just read the reprehensible words of some of the current Israeli cabinet. Not some radical fringe, but the actual Israeli cabinet.... The current "administration" is a disgusting body, and the Zionist ideology, in its current form, is an absurd, preposterous ideology which gives birth to a population who dehumanise their "enemy" in exactly the same way as the Nazis dehumanised the Jews If we're talking "reprehensible words" and dehumanization, it hasn't even been two weeks since a US congressperson said that Muslims were below dogs. The US has the benefit of two extra decades of hindsight and many still haven't learned the lesson you're discussing.[8]. I genuinely think you should read through some of this[9]. It sounds like it might open your eyes to the US's actual record of behavior. [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wech_Baghtu_wedding_party_airs... [2] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haska_Meyna_wedding_party_airs... [3] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mukaradeeb_wedding_party_massa... [4] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uruzgan_wedding_bombing [5] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2013_Radda_airstrike [6] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/July_12,_2007,_Baghdad_airstri... [7] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2025%E2%80%932026_hunger_crisi... [8] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Randy_Fine#Muslims [9] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_war_crimes#War_o... Thanks for the links. I'm afraid I won't click on them because I'm not sure what we're disagreeing on now, so probably a good moment to end this. I'll absolutely call the US a power hungry monster that has inflicted genocide on many people. Israel has done the same from the point of view of a perverse, religious-nationalist ideology. Not much point splitting hairs on that one. What a strange reply. You were the one who originally replied to me and tried to split hairs, but I guess now you're above it. Well, I'll take that as a compliment, as you've clearly descended into horseshit. Sorry to see it. Have a nice day. Bye. I was alive at the time. While there were some protests, i dont recall them being all that significant, and many of the objecting voices seemed more concerned with the price tag rather than the human cost. You might be referring to a different period, but I'll note that the anti-war protests in early 2003 (immediately before the invasion of Iraq) were quite literally record breaking. https://web.archive.org/web/20040904214302/http://www.guinne... This is pure misinformation. I have personally never seen such large crows as the anti war demonstrations of 2002-2003. There 100k people marching several times for several weeks in the European capitals I know. Some estimate that these were even bigger than the demonstrations against the war in Vietnam in the 1960s. These put the total number of people going out in demonstrations world wide at 30M+. This war was massively protested against, any which way you count. Hmm, i googled it and i guess you were right. I suppose subjectively it was something i didn't particularly notice at the time. They were significant enough to make news in countries outside of US. This is a fair criticism of the U.S., though I'll also point out that millions of Palestinians have lived out their entire lives under occupation now, and history didn't start on October 7. To me, all of the evidence going back to 1948 points emphatically to genocide. Also, I'm not clear on whether there was a precursor to 9/11 comparable to Israel's response to Gaza's 2018 non-violent protest, the Great March of Return. You forgot eighty years of occupation, cultural , economical and ethnical cleansing of the local indigenous people called Palestinians with help of US and Western countries mainly. >the local indigenous people called Palestinians While you have a valid point overall, I always hate this specific phrasing because it's either ignorant of history or implies there is a statute of limitations on being indigenous. And if it is the latter, you're actively being counterproductive to the cause because that is telling the Israelis that the land will be morally theirs if they can hold it for enough generations thereby encouraging continued occupation. > implies there is a statute of limitations on being indigenous. Is there not? I’m pretty sure every tribe that’s considered indigenous now at any place has replaced some other group that lived there before them. Not clear, and unlikely in Australia. * https://mgnsw.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/map_col_high... * https://www.abc.net.au/news/science/2016-09-22/world-first-s... This recent genetic based view replaces the "gut feeling" view akin to yours that was long pushed by Quadrant et al. But surely, the different tribes in Australia also moved around and replaced each other? They might all come from the same people that came to Australia first, but that doesn’t mean they are native to the place they currently live in. If a tribe moved from southern Australia to the north and replaced another tribe, who gets the land now? And how do you settle that without some arbitrary statute of limitations? > But surely, the different tribes in Australia also moved around and replaced each other? Read article, chase up the papers, evidence says "no". The Tasmanians and the Noongars (Southern most to east, southern most to west) have genetically been in place a long time and had no one to replace. The article mentions "genetic diversity" between east, west, centre, north, south, etc - that comes from not mixing. "But surely..." <-- gut feelings? You should joinn Quadrant. > If a tribe moved from southern Australia to the north and replaced another tribe Do you have any evidence of that? > who gets the land now? There's a wealth of material on Mabo, Land rights, Native title, et al that address all that - if you're generally curious it's there to read. eg: starting with, say https://aiatsis.gov.au/explore/mabo-case Ok, then we settled who gets Australia. Sorry for shifting the goalposts now, but we still need a method to determine what to do with the rest of the earth, right? Who gets to stay in the different parts of Europe for example? "We" haven't settled anything .. neither of us is an expert or player in the domain of indigenuous land ownership. Your "assertion" (weakly stated) was > I’m pretty sure every tribe that’s considered indigenous now at any place has replaced some other group that lived there before them. which is _false_. A single counter example suffices, the Māori people of New Zealand are still in a shared treaty with European settlers and no prior humans were displaced by the Māori people when they first arrived circe 1320 or so. Australia and that region offer up many many other examples. > Who gets to stay in the different parts of Europe for example? I cannot see how this is related to your global assertion nor can I see how I'm responsible to answer it. The original problem is whether there is a "statute of limitations" for being indigenous. Even when my original assertion that every single tribe replaced another tribe at some point is wrong, there still needs to be some mechanism do determine what to do with the rest of the world where my claim applies. If you take the view of history that the ability to forcibly drive other people off their land grants the new inhabitants a valid claim to that land, then Israel's actions are only objectionable because they are happening now rather than in the history books. It's inherently a doctrine of might is right, and the Israelis are mightier than the Palestinians at this current moment in history. Right, but at least historically, what alternative is there? You can’t really unroll thousands of years of human history and make everyone go back to where their ancestors came from (even just because people ended up mixing after colonizing other places), so you have to take some state as the correct one and then condemn every change after that (or just let everyone do whatever they want). Otherwise, how would you decide who gets which part of the world? Which is exactly why this area has been in conflict for millennia. Many different groups have valid claims to the area being their historic homeland. Dubbing one single group as "indigenous" is a refutation of all the other people's historical claims on that land and it means all the Israelis have to do is wait out this conflict until it becomes "history" and the Palestinians lose that "indigenous" label. This will be the case tho. US big brother will make sure to protect its little “older” brother. Hilarious as it sounds. Obviously Palestinians were displaced and that needs to be addressed, but ethnic cleansing is a tough sell. Their population has multiplied by 20x since then. Forced displacement due to the mass destruction of all facilities in an area consists exactly in ethnic cleansing.
Ethnic cleansing means : systemic removal of a group or person by another group of person in an area. And it's exactly what's happening.
It makes no sense to say it's neither a genocide nor ethnic cleansing if the population grows. Same as saying there were no genocide or ethnic cleansing in Rwanda or Bosnia since the population has grown. I mean by that definition, USA's immigration enforcement constitutes ethnic cleansing. I guess I just question your moral authority to second guess Israel's handling of their very unique situation. > USA's immigration enforcement constitutes ethnic cleansing. Indeed, it is ethnic cleansing.
This situation isn't unique at all. Actually, it's quite common in History. The same happened to Algeria with the French colonization. Arabs are not indigenous to Palestine. Palestine was Roman when it was colonized by the Arabs. Before Palestine, Judea was a Jewish state which was colonized by the Romans. They are the same people, they just converted to another religion since the diaspora that saw some of the population leave 2000 years ago. And before that, the australopithecus You think you are a smart alec You can call hamas whatever you'd like, but it's certainly not hamas doing most of the terrorizing in palestine.... I am entirely behind this take. > and it quickly grew beyond any reason Why did it quickly grow? Because of literally years of terrorist acts from Hamas? Because the action initially had overwhelming public support? Because, as any military action without proper planning, they promised a quick victory and had no plans beyond "bomb, bomb, bomb"? And had no plans for "what do we do if we don't succeed"? For an exactly same "military action with no planning but a lot of bravado" scenario see Russia's invasion into Ukraine. Consider the possibility that “bomb bomb bomb” was the entire and only point of the exercise. The correct answer is: because the Biden administration told them there were no red lines. Israel is completely dependent on the US, Reagan picked up the phone and got them to stop bombing Lebanon in 1982. As Israel continued to ramp up the atrocities, they discovered that nothing would cause them to lose patronage from the US. Because there were children to starve. Brown children. More than half of the Israeli Jews are "brown people" from the neighboring Arab countries. Hamas is a terror organisation funded, and quite possibly created, by far-right nationalist elements in the Israeli government to weaken the Palestinian authority and create a pretext for the occupation of Gaza. Netanyahu is on the record funnelling money through Qatar. He said it was for "humanitarian aid" - which would be more credible if it wasn't such an extraordinary and unusual outbreak of concern for Palestinian wellbeing. The occupation is straight out genocide, labelled as such by many Israeli scholars, as well as most of Rest of World. This level of barbarism and entitlement has no place on a civilised planet. We should stop using this term terror/terrorist, it's lost any meaning. If Hamas are terrorists because they're terrorizing Israeli population then so are Israelis' IDF or whatever force kills other country's population. And the list extends beyond that. To paint a resisting force/army as terrorists is just charged language to emotionally manipulate and pollute discourse. It would be more useful to put in balance what each side is fighting for. Terrorism has a simple definition: using force against civilian life to further ones goals. Target a music festival with no military value: terrorism. Blow up a building because hamas has a tunnel under there: not terrorism. If the military value gained is disproportionate to the civilian cost, it is a war crime. But still not terrorism. > Terrorism has a simple definition: using force against civilian life to further ones goals. Not disagreeing with the definition but this is what both sides have been doing. Look, blowing up aid workers, which is in question in this article, is also terrorism. Killing unarmed civilians, kids, etc is also terrorist. Also if you you use your definition for what Israel has been doing in the last 70-80 years it makes them terrorists as well, the word is simply meaningless at this point. What political/ideological goal does attacking the aid workers move forward? It's a war crime, no doubt, but terrorism has a meaning that doesn't include all war crimes. > Killing unarmed civilians, kids, etc is also terrorist. The vast majority of lethal force actions in Gaza are targeting Hamas operations. Civilians getting killed by those strikes is NOT terrorism. > What political/ideological goal does attacking the aid workers move forward? Terrorizing aid workers, which reduces how much aid reaches the Palestinian population? Israelis brag about inflicting casualties on Gaza civilians and when confronted about it say that this will stop when Hamas releases the hostages and lays down the arms. This is textbook terrorism. Netanyahu is very clearly on the record supporting and defending a policy of allowing Qatari money into Hamas‑run Gaza, including publicly defending those payments to his own party as a way to keep Hamas and the PA separated. There is real evidence that Israeli authorities helped the Islamist network that later became Hamas to grow and organize, but not good evidence that Israel secretly “founded” Hamas in the sense of designing or controlling the group. In the 1970s and early 1980s, Israel allowed and at times supported Sheikh Ahmed Yassin’s Islamist charity Mujama al‑Islamiya in Gaza (the Muslim Brotherhood–linked precursor to Hamas), seeing it as a useful counterweight to the secular PLO. eg From 1967 to 1987, the number of mosques in Gaza reportedly tripled, with Mujama heavily involved and benefiting from Israeli recognition and Gulf funding; Israeli officials hoped Islamist forces would weaken leftist, PLO‑aligned groups. Scholars and former officials describe this as “blowback”: Israel strengthened the Brotherhood‑type infrastructure, which then reorganized itself into Hamas and turned violently against Israel. There is no credible evidence that Israeli intelligence drew up Hamas’s founding charter, appointed its leaders, or covertly directed its formation in 1987; the group was an initiative of Palestinian Islamists tied to the Muslim Brotherhood. To reiterate: Israel did not secretly found Hamas, but it surreptitiously facilitated the growth of its Islamist precursor networks and tolerated them for strategic reasons, and several former Israeli officials now openly say that this policy helped “create” Hamas in hindsight. You didn't actually address the actual point. Israel and it's defenders have been lying about the death toll this entire time and Hamas was not. > - Israel's response was hasty, unplanned, purely driven by emotion at the beginning, and it quickly grew beyond any reason in the next weeks. This is also an extreme understatement. It's literally a genocide. > and it quickly grew beyond any reason in the next weeks. you still refuse to call it a crime against humanity? shame on you. There is an alternate World Peace Force that just got started recently because I believe, as regimes change, the UN will audit what happened. The issue is there will now be another international body that will argue the other way. It’s not exactly 3d chess, but, it is chess. Purchase of US TikTok (chess moves). Never heard (and couldn't find anything) about it. That "Board of Peace" you're most likely referring to is nothing more than your usual Trump grift - each country willing to join has to pay 1 billion $, and there have been 25 countries declaring their intent to join. Make up the math yourself, even if there will be legitimate expenses for PMCs, reconstruction and god knows what else, even skimming off 5% of that sum will still be a lot of money for Trump. And it would not be the first time he launches a multi-billion grift / money laundering scheme, remember $TRUMP and $MELANIA and I've probably forgotten about the other coins? It's a bit more complicated: the peace deal Trump got passed through the Security Council did create a board in charge of monitoring some aspects of the Gaza process (I'm not sure on the exact details) so there is a real UN body in the mix. Then trump seems to have bolted on two or three entirely new and unrelated organisational levels "over" the UN affiliated board and declared himself king of all peacemaking. There is much that is unclear about how things will work in practice, but the reality is there's a potentially important part of the Gaza deal being held hostage by this board of peace, and that's why the Arabs joined. It's important to note that the official death toll, acknowledged by the IDF, are of those whose bodies have been recovered. Nor has the genocide stopped. Don’t forget the “all they have to do is return the hostages” line There was a second part to that which is "and surrender". But there's definitely been a large reduction in violence since the hostages were returned. Most or all of it in response to violations of the ceasefire by Hamas. > There was a second part to that which is "and surrender". Honest question. Why should they surrender? > Most or all of it in response to violations of the ceasefire by Hamas. A complete and utter inversion of reality. First page of Google results for: Israel ceasefire violations “How many times has Israel violated the Gaza ceasefire? Here are the numbers: Since the ceasefire took effect, Israeli attacks have killed at least 615 Palestinians and injured 1,658.”
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2025/11/11/how-many-times-has... “UN experts urge States to act as Israeli violations threaten fragile Gaza ceasefire”
https://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2025/11/un-experts-u... “Israel has violated ceasefire 47 times and killed 38 Palestinians”
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/oct/18/israel-has-vio... “Fact Sheet: Israel’s History of Breaking Ceasefires”
https://imeu.org/resources/resources/fact-sheet-israels-hist... > Honest question. Why should they surrender? The full statement is something like "to end the war, Hamas only need to return the hostages and surrender". Surrendering is typically what the losing side needs to do to end a war. > Honest question. Why should they surrender? To save the people they claim to protect. Just like in WW2, had the Germans and the Japanese surrendered earlier, the Allies wouldn't have had to kill so many of them. That same logic applies in reverse, though, so it can't be the answer. If the Allies surrendered to the Axis, it would have also saved lives. No? Hitler explicitly laid out a plan to expel and starve much of Eastern Europe. > Don’t forget the “all they have to do is return the hostages” line So there's zero link whatsoever between Hamas executing 1200 civilians on Oct 7th, taking 200 hostages, and the following war (and war crimes) of Israel? Israel literally unilaterally began a war and committed war crimes without any act of aggression? And from the moment 200 hostages had been taken, many of whom died in captivity, everything was carved in stone and no matter what Hamas did, Israel was going anyway to war and to commit war crimes? Or did something happen on Oct 7th that triggered all this? Actually a large number of those 1200 were killed by Israeli incendiary rounds fired from helicopters due to Operation Hannibal. It’s why the estimates kept getting rounded down from an initial 1500, because many of the bodies were too badly incinerated to be counted accurately. This is a wild enough sounding claim it deserves a cite. https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-09-07/israel-hannibal-direc... The Hannibal directive or the more recent Dayiha Doctrine[0] The investigation into this found 14 deaths from Hannibal Directive actions. Mostly firing on vehicles carrying hostages. Report: https://www.un.org/unispal/document/coi-report-a-hrc-56-26-2... Keep reading, you're missing the next sentences. > The Commission also verified information indicating that, in at least two other cases, ISF had likely applied the Hannibal Directive, resulting in the killing of up to 14 Israeli civilians. One woman was killed by ISF helicopter fire while being abducted from Nir Oz to Gaza by militants. In another case the Commission found that Israeli tank fire killed some or all of the 13 civilian hostages held in a house in Be’eri. > The Commission found that Israeli authorities prioritised identifying victims, notifying families and allowing for burial rather than forensic investigation, leading to evidence of crimes, especially sexual crimes, not being collected and preserved. The Commission also notes the loss of potential evidence due to inadequately trained first responders. (That I'm completely fine with. But it presents challenges for verifying incidents, which probably means it's an undercount.) > Mostly firing on vehicles carrying hostages. That is the Hannibal Directive; "the kidnapping must be stopped by all means, even at the price of striking and harming our own forces". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hannibal_Directive If they wanted to go after Hamas, why did they employ methods of combat that were guaranteed to affect civilians, like cutting off the entire strip from food supply? Or the massacre that this thread is about for that matter? Cool, now justify the things happening in the west bank. Israel so peaceful, coexists with neighbors. The issue isn't whether or not Israel started it. It's the genocide they did once it started. It's really about motive and targeting. Were they trying to get the hostages back or just kill people randomly? Were they targeting Hamas or aid workers? > Don’t forget the “all they have to do is return the hostages” line Did the ceasefire not coincide with the return of the hostages? What am I missing? Civilian deaths have continued https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-01-31/israel-strikes-gaza-h... That article says 30 deaths of "people" not civilians and that the strikes targeted commanders. if the ceasefire only applies when targeting civilians, was agreeing to a ceasefire in the first place thus an admission of targeting civilians? I don't know why you're using the past tense here, I was still trying to talk some sense into these people barely two days ago. It's hopeless at this point. > I was still trying to talk some sense into these people barely two days ago. It's hopeless at this point. I don't think "sense" is the issue. 1) Are you sure you were talking to actual people and not fake personas or even bots? 2) Keep in mind that there is A LOT of money to be made working for Israeli PR. Some people will take that money regardless of what they know is the actual truth. Some examples: - Certain social media influencers being paid up to $7000 per post [1] - Israel boosts propaganda funding by $150m to sway global opinion against genocide [2] [3] - "[...] a firm called Bridges Partners LLC has been hired to manage an influencer network under a project code-named the “Esther Project.” " [4] [1] https://responsiblestatecraft.org/israel-influencers-netanya... [2] https://www.middleeasteye.net/live-blog/live-blog-update/isr... [3] https://jewishchronicle.timesofisrael.com/israel-has-spent-m... [4] https://www.jta.org/2025/09/30/united-states/israels-secret-... If you have 3 hours, there's a documentary you can watch, about a man who was sanctioned by the government to kill a lot of "communists" in 1960's Indonesia: The Act of Killing (available at e.g. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3TDeEObjR9Q ). It's sort of understandable why the defenders of the genocide have to keep defending it. Stopping doing so today would mean admitting that until yesterday you've been defending utter inhumanity. A review: > Joshua Oppenheimer’s The Act of Killing is a challenging documentary. It is not only difficult to watch, but it also probes into one of the most grotesque aspects of human nature: the capacity for self-delusion in the face of horrific atrocities. This isn’t a film about history, facts, or statistics; it’s about the memories of the men who killed, the stories they tell themselves, and how they continue to live with the horrors they’ve inflicted on others. The film’s power lies in its ability to take the viewer beyond a surface-level understanding of evil and into the psychological abyss of those who have committed atrocities—and seemingly moved on with their lives. From: https://docthisway.com/2024/09/23/the-act-of-killing-review/ It's one of my favourite documentaries, almost as good as The Death of Yugoslavia. For whatever reason YouTube has put age limits on some of the uploads of it, here's the start of one without it: The Act of Killing is near the top of my list of underappreciated films. Permanently haunting. Thanks for sharing! I will definitely give this a watch. Hamas has weaponized every hospital in Gaza. By contrast, Israel has not dropped an aerial bomb on any hospital building in Gaza. What has happened is Israel has attacked hospitals with Hamas presence using ground forces, and they have dropped bombs on hospital grounds, but not in hospitals themselves. > By contrast, Israel has not dropped an aerial bomb on any hospital building in Gaza. An oddly specific claim. Hamas hasn't killed any Israeli with a turtle, either. I'm not sure why destroying hospitals with tanks, missiles, and sappers is better than "aerial bombs". Could you elaborate? Yes, it's specific. It's also a fact that is in direct contradistinction to the OP's claim. Israel has also not fired any missiles at hospitals, with one exception (a small diameter bomb aimed specifically at Hamas that caused minimal damage). Again: > I'm not sure why destroying hospitals with tanks, missiles, and sappers is better than "aerial bombs". Could you elaborate? Israel is an oppressive, genocidal, apartheid illegally occupying force. You can't compare the two sides. Palestinians have been under this assault by Israel and Zionists in general for nearly a century. Defending anything Israel does at this point is indefensible. Their context has ALWAYS been wrong and they've been caught lying so many times it's more accurate to believe exactly the opposite of anything the IDF says. This is wildly one-sided and basically incorrect. The Palestinians initiated multiple conflicts against the Jews, even before the foundation of Israel. The Jewish people beat them back every time, and this same pattern continued after the Israel's founding. What happened throughout history when someone beat back a hostile enemy that attacked them? The loser lost territory, resources, and freedoms. Which isn't to say that Israel hasn't done some seriously unethical things, but this notion that the Palestinians are poor innocent victims that have never hurt a soul and carry no blame for their situation going back a century is absurd and ahistorical. This conflict has nothing to do with "the Jews," and framing it in that way seriously distorts it. It's a conflict between the native population of Palestine and people who came in from the outside with the goal of making Palestine their own. The outsiders won for a number of reasons (British backing, superior political organization, etc.). They now rule over the native population, most of whom they deny any rights to. They justify this by saying the native population deserves it because it hates them and resists them. It is about the Jews, because the Arab population started violent conflicts against Jews who were legally purchasing land up through Israel's founding. Palestinians lost territory because of the violence they repeatedly started, despite legitimate military losses over territory and new borders drawn by armistices. Please read some history: The Israelis could be Shinto or Sikh, and it would make no difference at all to the Palestinians. The Palestinians just care that foreigners came in and took over their land. By casting this as the Palestinians hating "the Jews," you're trying to frame the conflict as just another example of antisemitism. The Palestinians get cast in the role of the Nazis, and the Israelis get to pretend they're the victims of antisemitism. The actual situation is completely flipped. The Israelis exercise military rule over the Palestinians and subject them to an apartheid system, not the other way around. It’s not though. Before the British gifted land to the Israelis they owned 7% of the land through land purchases and just ended up with 51% of the land after pressuring the British to leave with a series hotel and car bombs. So, yeah the Palestinians were victims and then about 750,000 of those people were forced from their homes into crowded ghettos Nazi style. All of that occurred irrespective of any armed conflicts between Israelis and Palestinians. Hamas didn't "weaponize every hospital in Gaza." Finally, a refutable claim. Can you name me a hospital in Gaza that didn't have a Hamas presence? Can you name a hospital in Israel that doesn't have an IDF presence? "Presence" is an incredibly vague claim. In order to attack a hospital, you have to prove that the enemy is actively shooting at you from it, and your attack has to be proportionate. Vaguely asserting that some enemy might have set foot in the hospital at some point does not give you carte blanche to blow up a hospital full of civilians. Yet that's exactly what Israel has done over and over again. I'm not vaguely asserting that "some enemy might have set foot in the hospital at some point." I'm accurately pointing out what is common knowledge: armed Hamas members were and are in hospitals, where they also took and killed Israeli hostages. Also, as I mentioned earlier, Israel has not blown up any hospital buildings. This is a myth. If you think I'm wrong, point to which hospital building Israel blew up. Show me standard OSINT stuff: when it occurred, pictures of the rubble, the munitions used, who died. IDF are all throughout the hospitals in Israel. Would you also justify Hamas attacking Israeli hospitals? Hospitals in Israel are generally guarded the same way hospitals in the US are: by police and security guards. As opposed to Hamas, the IDF doesn't use hospitals as bases. They don't build terror tunnels under hospitals. They don't take hostages to hospitals and kill them there. They don't shoot from hospitals. They don't store weapons in hospitals. Hamas does all of those things. IDF personnel are in and out of every hospital in Israel all the time. Every other adult in Israel is IDF. Israel has attacked every hospital in Israel with the blanket claim that some Hamas person was there at some point. Not that there was active fighting at the hospital. Not that Hamas was barricaded inside and firing out of it. Just that someone however loosely related to Hamas might have been near the hospital at some point. By that same argument, virtually every building in Israel would be a legitimate target. Israel killed UK army veterans, it was a targeted operation and a precision strike to send a message. It was covered by UK media for a short period and they would gloss over the veterans and focus more broadly on WCK, there is lots of examples of UK media weird coverage like this which no doubt was intentional. It was also barely spoken about by UK politicians RIP John Chapman, James Henderson, and James Kirby. Accountability has gone out of the window a long time. The only way it will come back is when the people fight back. Many of us are waiting for the people in the US to start taking their responsibility seriously. By buying US products, using US-based media, and adopting US narratives? That's a part of the problem. This world is lacking multilateralism. > The Israeli soldiers remained on the sandbank while firing continuously at the aid workers for four minutes. Damn… >Israeli soldiers fired over 900 bullets at the aid workers That is a LOT of shooting. A normal mag holds 30 rounds, that's 30 full magazines worth of bullets they dumped into these people. They were really trying to make sure there were no survivors. Shot, execution-style, then dumped in a mass grave. The ambulances were then buried to try and hide evidence of the attack. What is the appropriate term to describe something that would do such a thing to a human being? What should be done with it? In case you wished to support legal efforts against Israeli soldiers accused of war crimes. https://www.hindrajabfoundation.org/donate What can we individually do to help the people in Gaza, but even more broadly with human rights issues. Basically, to whom give our money to? Any risk of being accused of funding terrorism by the US if I donate there? There are other efforts if you don't want to do direct donations. See Connecting Gaza (Rabbi Mivasair). There's also the Sameer Project. Nothing helps as much as speaking out vigorously and unambiguously though and without equivocation. We have to stop killing Palestinians first. The downtrodden have become the oppressor. I think about this a lot re: Israel. I had a conversation once with an Israeli where he was convinced "everyone is racist," but we're all too woke to admit it or something, or have some belief that racism is wrong but work to overcome this inherent thing. His arguments were all very zero sum, "if we didn't do it to them they'd do it to us," and from conversations with friends I'm thinking that what's happening here is the Israeli media apparatus focuses heavily on creating an "us vs them" mentality for diaspora Jewish people, which has now backfired to create a whole lot of Islamophobic and racist people. It's interesting because one may think that people with a historical trauma of one of the worst things ever carried out in human history would be the least likely to do something like that and the most likely to see the writing on the wall if something like that was about to happen again, but sadly that was too optimistic: the opposite happened. People with historical trauma are far more likely to inflict further wrongs than people without historical trauma. This is the case for individual trauma too. It has always been this way. > "if we didn't do it to them they'd do it to us," And he didn’t think that Hamas could use the same lame excuse for their terror? As is often the case. I've never seen a topic I couldn't upvote before? I can upvote just fine. Perhaps you’ve already upvoted it, so the (already used) upvote button is now missing? Nope, unvote is missing as well. Could you please email us (hn@ycombinator.com) a screenshot of what you see here? nope. I cant upvote it either. @dang Could you please email us (hn@ycombinator.com) a screenshot of what you see here? dang is very active and often sees these @'s, but there isn't actually any notification-like behavior on HN (or at least there wasn't a year ago). I've emailed hn@ycombinator to let them know there might be some bug here. Has anyone thought much about the impact of living in a group with a strong shared mythology? That is very rare among modern people, to the extent that we may have a hard time relating to it or reasoning about the impact it has on people’s moral sentiments and behaviors. Or at least it’s hard to see the one we do live in in a “this is water” kind of way, and we may have a hard time reasoning about the differences that different “waters” produce. Like if you grow up living inside the Star Wars mythology and suddenly you get a chance to fight The Empire, do you do it? Do you really care if people outside the Shared Mythos Group (TM) disagree with you doing it? (Note that I’m not saying anyone in this framing is “The Empire”, I’m just using the Star Wars mythology as a familiar example of a mythic framing) What is the HN community doing to use tech to combat terrorism and defend civilian security and freedom? Well, you could join Palantir and fight terrorism: https://www.palantir.com/careers/ Well, you could join Palantir and f̶i̶g̶h̶t̶ ̶t̶e̶r̶r̶o̶r̶i̶s̶m̶ help develop Israel's terrorism in Gaza. That didn't happen. And if it did, it wasn't that bad. And if it was, that's not a big deal. And if it is, that's not the IDF's fault. And if it was, they didn't mean it. And if they did, Gaza deserved it. and if you don't agree, you're antisemitic I actually got accused of being racist for saying that anti-zionism and anti-semitism are not the same thing. I know Zionism as the idea that Jewish people have the right to self-determination. Do you:
1 - Think that it is something different?
2 - Think that it is, but Jewish people specifically do not have it? (I believe this is racist)
3 - Think that no people have it?
4 - Something else? If you think that Jewish people have it but just not in Palestine, where in the world do you think they should have had it? You're wrong on the definition of zionism.
Zionism is a European nationalist movement that uses the assumption there is a consensual concept of "homogeneous jewish people" who have the right to self-determination to justify Palestine's colonization. Anti-zionism is being against the colonization of Palestine and being against nationalism and supremacism. Anti-semitism is hating someone because of the are jew. So are the vast majority of Israelis, coming from Arab countries, not Zionist? What is your connection with the Zionist movement that let's you define it? When is a migration of people to a land isn't colonization, in your book? > So are the vast majority of Israelis, coming from Arab countries, not Zionist? Yes, they are. Being a European movement doesn't mean non-european cannot be zionist.
Fascism is also a European movement as it emerged in Italy. > When is a migration of people to a land isn't colonization When there are no settlements, no oppression of indigenous people, no land exploitation, no discrimination law made by the colonizer.
It's not "in my book", it's in every books not made by a colonizer. You don't "migrate" into a land by flattening villages. Thank you! If self-determination means an enthnostate then no people has that right. If every ethnic group had its own state in which it was guaranteed supremacy, the world would be a complete mess. It doesn't work. We are seeing in Israel/Palestine a thoroughly worked out example of why it doesn't work, and what the consequences are when you try to make it work. I don't see how Israel/Palestine is any kind of evidence that ethnostates can't work. There are Palestinians that have been peacefully living in Israel just fine for decades. There are unique historical reasons why there's so much conflict in this region. > Palestinians that have been peacefully living in Israel just fine for decades. when you write something like this ask yourself if were Palestinian if you would be happy if you son or daughter said they are moving to Israel to live there. if you answer Yes, we good. but of course no way you’d ever say yes… So you don't take the word of the Palestinians who actually live in Israel. Remarkable, but ok. don't answer a question with a question :) They have not been living just fine, and Israel calls them a "demographic time bomb". How is ethnicity related? Judaism isn't an ethnicity, and there are Jews in Israel from Poland, from Ethiopia and from India. In terms of ethnicity, Israel is probably one of the most diverse places on Earth. Judaism is a religion, but Jewish identity encompasses ethnicity. And Judaism is a religion founded on the idea of a "chosen people" formed from the "seed of Israel" after all. And the Tanakh says this chosen people is entitled to the Palestine region. So we can easily see how this is a mythos made of an ethnostate, when interpreted through an extremist (Zionist) lens. The Jewish people already loving in Palestine had a right to live there. The problem is when you try to forcefully displace an entire civilian population to make way for a colonial movement. In the same way I, as a Finn, would not have the right to take over any region in the Urals and kick out the people who live there, the Zionists had no right to do just that in Palestine since over a hundred years ago. No one is arguing in support of displacing a population. However, it seems like you believe that everyone should just stay where there are, and no population should ever migrate to any place. That's both naive and simply was never the case in the history of human kind. People migrate, for thousands or reasons, and almost no one leaving on a land on this planet have lived there since the beginning of times. A piece of land isn't yours because you were born there or your grandpa did. There's one Earth in we need to share it. No one can deny the connection of Jews to the land of Israel, in a same way that no one can deny the connection of Palestinians to the same place. The Palestinians Arab don't need to move back to the Arab Pennisula, where they came from, and the Israelis don't need to move back to Poland, Yemen, Russia, Morocco, you name it. "The times they are a-changin'". That is not at all what I believe, that's just you extrapolating wildly. Zionism is the support of the Israeli colonial project. Jewish people have a right to self-determination regardless of Israel's existence; Israel's existence does not determine the right of self-determination for all jews. As such, the two things are not the same. Zionism, then, is just support for a specific state (Israel), and support or lack or support for a state given its actions (colonial oppression) is not bigotry. Disliking a genocidal ethnostate does not influence in any way how you feel about the Jewish people as an ethnic and religious group. As such, anti-zionism and anti-semitism are not the same. Jews don’t have a right to an ethnostate. No one does. Jews have a right to live within any country in the world, but not run an apartheid government or commit genocide. > I know Zionism as the idea that Jewish people have the right to self-determination. I think the notion that any group has rights is problematic at best. Individuals have rights, not groups. Individuals can act collectively as a group, but the idea that that somehow imbues the group with some sort of right seems strange or confused to say the least. Interesting emphasis, but I don't see how that changes what I said. > I think the notion that any group has rights is problematic at best. Individuals have rights, not groups. Individuals can act collectively as a group, but the idea that that somehow imbues the group with some sort of right seems strange or confused to say the least. This matches the "individuality thesis" [1] (often debated among philosophers). For those who haven't explored the territory, I recommend the journey. There is no rush to figure it out. I suggest trying out various viewpoints and taking your time with it: maybe even remaining a bit uncertain for your entire life! - Uncertainty often takes an unfair beating. Uncertainty is preferable to confused or premature certainty. I would actually go further and say there is deep virtue in uncertainty -- there is an openness there. Absolute certainty closes doors; in a way it closes its eyes to new experience. - There is value in being uncertain about one's values! For individuals, locking in one's ethics can be unwise. [2] For cultures, value lock-in can be stifling or even oppressive. For AI, value lock-in is sometimes called incorrigibility and can be problematic or worse. Humans have a tendency to grow and change, all the way down to our value systems. Anyhow, I digress. Here are some relevant selections from Wikipedia's entry on Will Kymlicka: > In Multicultural Citizenship (1995), Kymlicka argues that group-specific rights are consistent with liberalism, and are particularly appropriate, if not outright demanded, in certain situations. > For Kymlicka, the standard liberal criticism, which states that group rights are problematic because they often treat individuals as mere carriers of group identities, rather than autonomous social agents, is overstated or oversimplified. The actual problem of minorities and how they should be viewed in liberal democracies is much more complex. There is a distinction between good group rights, bad group rights, and intolerable group rights. [1]: https://philarchive.org/archive/HABTIT-2 [2]: I learned this from What We Owe The Future by William MacAskill. Did he borrow it from someone else? Maybe Derek Parfit? I'll need to research more. Counter question, by that logic, what about the right to self-determination of the Palestinian people? Or the people of Lebanon or Syria for that matter? If so many comments are going to be flagged, why even bother having a comment section? The mods need an excuse to shut this one down. Because Attent-fueled truth-deniers might get downvoted or flagged by reasonable people. The place where humanity dies. Only a terrorist organization does this. Created a new account just to comment on this biased report. Either you a bot or you can't read https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/sep/09/the-gaza-famil... Read that and tell me that Israel is acting proportionally... If video evidence indicates IDF personnel committing these crimes also happen to be US citizens I wonder if those people could face criminal prosecution in the US. As an American I wouldn't want to live next to or do business with a serial murderer. I certainly wouldn't want them coaching my kids sports or other community involvement. > If video evidence indicates IDF personnel committing these crimes also happen to be US citizens I wonder if those people could face criminal prosecution in the US. I think it’s become pretty apparent that they would not face any repercussions and might even be rewarded. Israel doesn’t extradite to the US. Hence why so many pedos escape to there Our greatest ally doesn't extradite?? Funny that, isn't it They certainly could be prosecuted; see https://www.cair.com/press_releases/cair-chicago-urges-doj-t.... But at this point the DoJ acts more like Trump's personal law firm. It just shows how degenerate the indoctrination really is, its just out in the open now. Acting proportionally would make no sense though. You still have people defending the occupation forces even when the soldiers themselves are bragging no social media about killing kids, and how they wished they killed more. Exceptional report. Surprised to see that much of a confusion on HN about why it is there. MH17 posts with forensics did not seem to be offtopic when they were posted. This fits. I like Forensic Architecture’s work in general and I think this report is valuable as a micro-level reconstruction of a specific incident.
That said, I think a lot of the HN discussion is treating it as if it captures the broader complexity of the conflict and I’m not sure thats what it can realistically do, at most, it leaves a lot of room for speculations - speculations which are fed by already existing bias of the reader (or so I see in the comments). A few gaps that matter if we’re trying to reason beyond the single event: Framing / conclusion baked in: terms like “executions” and “concealment” may ultimately be correct, but they’re also strong legal/moral claims that can bias interpretation unless the alternative hypotheses are seriously stress-tested. Its a dead giveaway of the writers bias. From this point on it looks like most biased readers do not try to critically tackle the reports claims. Limited “steelman” of operational context - without full access to military comms, ISR feeds, ROE, intel context, and command decisions in real time, it’s hard to evaluate what soldiers believed they were responding to (even if they were wrong, negligent, or violating orders). Its a known practice that Hamas militants travel undercover using civilian/emergency vehicles - I think its really pathetic this report does not analyze nor even addresses this claim. This is not being objective, and most of you guys here are too critical-thinking to miss this one out (or is it a bot swamp here? i really dont know). Evidence asymmetry - open-source reconstructions can be rigorous, but they inherently rely on what’s available (videos/audio/witness accounts). That’s different from having the complete internal dataset that would settle key disputes. I know this is the best effort available, but still, it leaves a lot of room for speculation. My expectations of FA were higher than that. Conflation risk - a brutal case study can be an important data point, but it’s not automatically a comprehensive model of the war or the incentives/constraints on both sides. “Here’s a detailed claim about what happened at Tel al-Sultan on that night.” would be a correct title for this report. Curious what you think: what specific pieces of primary data would most change your confidence/speculations here? (e.g., full comms logs, drone video, ROE brief for that unit, chain-of-command timeline, etc.) Anyone else notice the "lorem ipsum" on page 13? If this was happening against the west, people would care a lot more. Unfortunately, nothing seems to be happening to Israel. > If this was happening against the west, people would care a lot more It’s literally happening in Ukraine and, to a lesser scale but precisely the same in type, Minneapolis. On the other hand, there are conflicts across Africa and Asia which are not receiving half the attention. > On the other hand, there are conflicts across Africa and Asia which are not receiving half the attention. Because the West doesn't fund and shield the perpetrators unlike Israel. > Because the West doesn't fund and shield the perpetrators unlike Israel. You could make an at least passable argument that the US offers a favorable media environment to our MENA allies (i.e., those other than Israel) during what is by all accounts an extremely brutal and mostly ignored conflict in Sudan. > the West doesn't fund and shield the perpetrators unlike Israel Sure. Though Western arms absolutely play heavily in Sudan and across South America. My point is it’s odd to single out Gaza as a case where the West doesn’t care. It’s more that it uniquely has folks in the West who care strongly about both sides. > Because the West doesn't fund and shield the perpetrators unlike Israel. Who do you think supplies the weapons to most of the world's conflicts? They just appear out of thin air? I hear this sentiment a lot when it comes to people trying to justify why Ukrainians or Iranians are somehow less deserving of their attentions, and it infuriates me every time. If the goal is to try to prevent unjustified killings, then it makes no sense. I personally raise awareness about Ukraine and Palestine in equal measure. But there is fundamental difference: Israelis will stop their violence on Palestinians the minute they lose support of the US and Europ, whereas the West doesn't hold the same leverage over Russia. I disagree with many parts of this narrative, but even this fundamental hypothesis that Israel will just give up without Western support, that there is absolute leverage, I have no idea where it comes from or what evidence suggests this. If Israel feels they need to do this, they will just source supplies from somewhere else. And everyone will be worse off for it. Israel couldn't even defend themselves against Iran missile attacks without US and UK stepping in. Israel wouldn't survive the the kind of sanctions the West imposed on Russia and should have imposed on Israel too. I wonder how the victims of Russia's imperialism feel about this comparison. If you back someone into a corner with no escape valve, they will just double down. A Cuba style embargo on Israel until they stop the genocide and ethnic cleansing of an indigenous population would be the end of the current direction of the Israeli establishment. Look at the size of the country, the natural resources and where they are positioned. They are dependent on Western imports for pretty much everything, and only export technology that Europe and the US can easily replace with domestic or other foreign sources. > Cuba style embargo on Israel until they stop the genocide and ethnic cleansing of an indigenous population would be the end of the current direction of the Israeli establishment Doubtful. You’d just get another Iran. Israel is rich and a weapons buyer and exporter. That gives it many friends of opportunity, from Russia to India. Building those weapons requires foreign imports. An embargo would stop that. Rich doesn't mean much if you're under international financial sanctions and can't use your assets. >You'd just get another Iran. The sanctions have crippled Iran making it a much less powerful and influential version of what it would have been without sanctions. And by the looks of it is now on the verge of collapse. So I guess this kinda reinforces the point that Western sanctions on Israel would be effective? Yes, like Russia and Iran, the fanatics in charge could continue in their direction for years, but they would be much less potent and the reaction of their population (who largely have dual nationalities and have extensive business and family ties abroad) may end up forcing a change in direction from the state policy of slow genocide and gradual ethnic cleansing of their indigenous population. China and Russia would love to have another chess piece for their collection. While I doubt Israel would ever willingly choose to joint that circle - if you give them no choice, that's what will happen. Then you lose all leverage. Not to mention, Russian arms are a lot more likely to hit untargeted civilians. It makes perfect sense. In a democracy your government (supposedly) represents you, thus the actions of your government are those you are partly morally responsible for and partly have some control over. If Russia or China is selling AK47s to warlords in Sudan, there's not much that westerners can do about it > thus the actions of your government are those you are partly morally responsible for and partly have some control over America has global force projection power. It has about as much influence in Gaza as it does in e.g. Venezuela or even, arguably, Iran. Everyone has good reasons for why their pet war is the most central to our interests. I think it’s fair to accept that there are multiple good answers. This is supposing that people only have an obligation to not cause harm, and that those who are able have no moral obligation to actively help protect those who need and deserve it. Kind of like the trolley problem, I suppose. > It’s literally happening in Ukraine Ukraine isn't part of the West. > to a lesser scale but precisely the same in type, Minneapolis What was happening in Minneapolis is not only much smaller in scale than what's happening in Palestine, it's also just a completely different thing. I doubt it is helpful to compare these conflicts because they all have an entirely different source of conflict. Imagine being one of those soldiers. How could you live with yourself? How could you look anyone in the eye, your comrades, your family? This soldier couldn't https://edition.cnn.com/2024/10/21/middleeast/gaza-war-israe... You have to read pretty far into this very sympathetic piece to discover he was running over hundreds of living people with a bullzdozer: > In a testimony to the Knesset, Israel’s parliament, in June, Zaken said that on many occasions, soldiers had to “run over terrorists, dead and alive, in the hundreds.” > “Everything squirts out,” he added. According to reports from locals in Asia and Europe, they are traveling and enjoying life to the fullest while harassing local communities during those trips. I'm surprised such news and we have to read it from "dropsitenews.com" Iranian here! I wish freedom for the people of Gaza and an end to their suffering and oppression. Down with all the dictators and oppressors. Be it IRGC or IDF. Hello friend. From Palestine I want to send you all the best wishes for freedom in Iran. It's time. And to my Jewish sisters and brothers and siblings in general I want to send a wish for for freedom and end of this stupid hatred.. There is not actually a good reason for all this violence. Thank you for this sane comment. As someone raised as a Jew in America, this is beautifully said. Thank you. I would like to know: is there even a single person here, who actually changed his opinion regarding this whole matter upon seeing this report? Not confirmed anything, but actually was forced to re-evaluate his opinion. Like, previously you thought that IDF are good guys, and all Israel does is justified self-defense measures, and now you see this as genocide of Palestinians? Of course, I assume, the answer is — no one. (And I'm hoping somebody will tell me I'm wrong.) So, what's the point? Is somebody gonna be held accountable? Will Israel be treated differently as a country from now on? If no, what's the point? Seems like you’re asking “what’s the point of investigating crimes against humanity?” And if that’s a question you have to ask, then clearly something is very wrong. Seems like a good question to ask imo. The lack of accountability of crimes against humanity and children and the general apathy and shrug worthy reaction to most people to these issues especially on this site seems relevant commentary. Journalism isn't valued by how many opinions have changed, it is there to report on stories that are or have happened. You ask for consequences in your comment but how can there be consequences if there are no reports? Absolutely baffling take. This report is too biased for a critical thinker to change their mind. This report presents sober technical analysis combined with witness testimony, creating an extremely concincing whole. It's not biased in any direction except the truth. Presenting evidence has a point besides getting people to change their opinion on matters. However, peoples' opinions often change, and when that happens, it has to happen somewhere. Mine wasn't on reading this article, but I believe when someone on HN shared the wikipedia article on journalist deaths in Gaza, maybe around January or February 2024 This is a kind of inverted-retrograde of the Gell-Mann Amnesia Effect. Gell-Mann: 1) disbelieve a bogus story, then 2) turn the page and blithely believe the next story You: 1) believe bona fide investigative journalism, then 0) ask what the point of journalism even is. I can tell you that the genocide and the Epstein files have made me to completely recalibrate my world view in regards to few countries. Absolutely. I bet many normies are going through these thoughts too in their heads now. There's plenty of live footage of IDF forces targeting international aid workers and journalists. "fun" fact: more journalists died in the Gaza than in every conflict since ww2 combined. And WW2 only has more journalist deaths because some number of the genocide casualties had been journalists before the Holocaust. Being a journalist typically provides you some protection in times of war, but for journalists who are part of a group suffering genocide, it's a liability. I hear about IDF war crimes all the time, but this level of lying and cover-up is something new and causing me some serious cognitive dissonance right now. On the tech side I’m wondering if any LLMs were used for the investigation, they don't seem to mention any by name at least. Unfortunately this article and the conversation here is taken in the context of the entirety of Israel is bad, the whole military war against Hamas and its patrons was bad, and that there is a genocide in Gaza. It leaves little room to have meaningful conversations about difficult conditions in the war and whether soldiers acted incorrectly or not and if they should be tried or not with regards to this single incident. How does the fact that Israel is committing a genocide prevent anyone from discussing prosecuting the soldiers? That makes no sense. Mods, can you look at this comment and maybe unflag it? It has some snarky language ("armchair critics") but it doesn't seem to contain anything flaggable and it provides important context, namely what I take to be the perspective from the pro-Israeli side. I for one am very curious to know what that this. My stance is Mossad reading: - Likud is an evil political party - Natanyahu is a wanted war criminal - IDF committed many atrocities - Hamas was insane to think that Bibi would NOT BOMB the Gaza in retaliation. - Hamas was the first to cast the stone. - Israel ALWAYS gonna retaliate with non proportional force when it comes to security of its citizens. > Hamas was the first to cast the stone. Palestine is a country under a brutal military occupation and progressive illegal colonisation that has been going on for 80 years. Before October 7, Israel had already killed many, many more civilians in Gaza than Hamas did in Israel with that attack. > Palestine is a country under a brutal military occupation and progressive illegal colonisation that has been going on for 80 years. If Mexico had started attacking the US across the border, what would the US do? I'm curious to hear what you think a country should do in this circumstance. Are the US currently illegally occupying large parts of Mexico and progressively colonising it, displacing and oppressing the Mexican population? And if that were the case, would you say that Mexico had started attacking the US across the border? Or would you say that the US are waging war against Mexico and Mexico is fighting back? The depressing thing is that you don't know that the treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo was signed 178 years ago, and that territory can be legally ceded by means of peace treaties. The part of Palestine that is considered illegally occupied is the part that lies beyond the 1949 armistice borders and has never been legally ceded to Israel by any treaty. Yeah, the annexation of Texas. Which is similar to Israel / Palestine in many ways. You have the timeline backwards. Palestinians attacked Jews first, then Jews occupied the invaders. I disagree with this timeline (the Jews got there in the first place with the precise, declared intent of colonising somebody else's land. That's the whole point of Zionism). But more in general, there's no point in following a tit-for-tat that goes back 80 years or more with the intent of finding "who was the first". Each event further down the chain completely reverses the assessment, and you can't base any solid reasoning on such grounds. What you have to look at is the big picture: who is occupying someone else's territory? Who is oppressing the other with overwhelming force? Which side keeps taking and which keeps losing? > the Jews got there in the first place with the precise, declared intent of colonising somebody else's land. That's the whole point of Zionism Yes, but they were doing it by legally purchasing land, not through violent displacement. Arabs then rioted against Jewish communities, and that started the cycle of violence. And note how this push for Zionism coincides with a global expansion of antisemitism after WWI. The only place Jews could find reliable support was among their people and protected by the British who were bound to uphold the Barfour declaration. > What you have to look at is the big picture: who is occupying someone else's territory? But if you ignore the history, you can't actually determine whose territory it is can you? Jews purchased land from Arabs, Arabs repeatedly started conflicts with them and Jews repeatedly beat them back. Losers in a conflict lose territory, and the armistice following Israel's founding drew the expanded lines. As for the occupation of Gaza and the West Bank today, I agree it's problematic, but what exactly Israel supposed to do when they keep getting attacked? They were attacked after the armistice with Jordan and Egypt, so once again, they didn't start anything. If Mexico repeatedly attacked the US, they would do the same thing. Hamas continues to have over 70% support among Gazans, even now, and Hamas murders anyone who speaks against them. > but they were doing it by legally purchasing land This is false- the land they purchased was only 12% of what they claimed at the moment of independence. Besides, privately buying land doesn't give you any right to declare sovereignty over it- try that in your country. > The only place Jews could find reliable support was among their people Sucks for them, but absolutely can't be used to justify a crime against a third party- the Palestinians. > Jews purchased land from Arabs, Arabs repeatedly started conflicts with them and Jews repeatedly beat them back This is entirely false and even a cursory reading of actual history (not the passively repeated Zionist propaganda points that you're exposing here) would change your mind. > As for the occupation of Gaza and the West Bank today, I agree it's problematic, but what exactly Israel supposed to do when they keep getting attacked? First of all they should not occupy any territory that doesn't belong to them, because that makes the attacks entirely reasonable and justified. > Israel had already killed many, many more civilians in Gaza than Hamas did in Israel with that attack. And how does it justify Hamas killing unarmed civilians? How does it justify Hamas lobbing grenades at Nepali students? That's not what I am answering to, but the assertion "Hamas threw the first stone". No it didn't. When you know what father of Israel did during WW2 to fund the current Israel. Uhg, too bad its not taught in school coz history is written by winners and you have to search for it yourself. Yes Israel commits an ongoing genocide. And I look at this only by lens of history. > Hamas was insane to think that Bibi would NOT BOMB the Gaza in retaliation. My theory is that they knew this would happen and they did it because they knew it would garner support (which it did) and they also knew they had nothing to lose because this is what would have happened in the long-term anyway. They chose between a quick death and a slow death. Unfortunately, everyone else who originally chose them to protect them didn't get to choose. I doubt most would have voted for this if they had that choice. Let's also not forget that Hamas still exists and is regaining numbers and territory: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c98g1klxnpxo You can't just stamp out a guerilla resistance the way Israel have tried to do. I suspect Hamas reckoned that a well-timed short term sacrifice would turn global opinion against Israel. Well they still have the full support of the usa government, and I'm pretty sure that even democrats would still keep supporting Israel. So what did they really lost? Do they even care that some Europeans don't like them ? Europeans are not the one who sell them 99% of their weapons. Europe is extremely important to Israel. Their legitimacy stems from seeing themselves as European. Their loss of support from Europe is very bad in the long term. Yes, US is supporting them to. They are losing from both sides, though. They may have part of the remaining generation in power and that's it. The US is no longer a reliable partner. Once the current administration is gone the likelihood of US support is less than guaranteed. Even with this administration in place support is less than guaranteed. All it takes is the right moment to set off a tantrum and friends become enemies. Israel really doesn't have allies so much as accomplices and that type of friend only sticks around when it helps them. It's notable that the US right wing have turned against Israel. Witness Tucker Carlson dismantling Huckabee, and Zionist ideology, recently. Where it ends up, no one knows. But this is different. Trump is as far right as you can go and still support Israel. If America goes further to Tucker Carlson and Nick Fuentes land Jews will wonder why they let so much evil be done in their name by the Israeli government. Carlson has never been that strongly pro-Israel as I understand it. He's carefully toed a line that maintains a solid right-wing fanbase. See e.g. this [0] from 2012 and this [1] from 2019. [0] https://www.politico.com/media/story/2012/01/tucker-carlson-... [1] https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/archbishop-pelosi-says-walls... Of course that was just one example. But Carlson has definitely let loose since his Fox News days and, if you're aware of what's going on, you'll know that there is a significant section of the US right wing now that is anti-Israel. This isn't in doubt. On the flip side, I'm not saying they are pro-Palestine, it is definitely an America First agenda. However, the unified front on Israel is finally broken. For the best, I'd say. I’m not sure most non-Europeans care what Europeans think about them. :) Now that the world has knowingly seen a genocide and done virtually nothing, and that the US continues to openly support Israel, I think this was a massive victory for Israel. The genocide and ethnic cleansing Israel is committing is the best recruitment campaign for Hamas. Most people in Gaza now aren't old enough to have voted for Hamas. Median age is estimated to be under 20. Doesn't matter, there is always going to be resistance against the occupation anyway, if it isn't called "Hamas" its going to be called something else. This is not an enemy they can ever defeat and people either know what that means or are too afraid to think that far. You just can't have other peoples land, you just can't, not without vaporizing (literally [1]) the people you took it from. [1] https://www.aljazeera.com/features/2026/2/10/israel-used-wea... Yes no doubt, but I still feel as though it's important to dispel the "they voted for this" myth because it comes up a lot — it may still be true if an election was held today, but we can't know because the people in Palestine haven't voted for decades. When we're talking about who's suffering there, it's primarily young people who've had no voice in anything for their entire lives. > They chose between a quick death and a slow death. It continues to be strange to me that "not choosing death" was apparently never an option. >My theory is that they knew this would happen and they did it because they knew it would garner support (which it did) and they also knew they had nothing to lose because this is what would have happened in the long-term anyway. They chose between a quick death and a slow death. Unfortunately, everyone else who originally chose them to protect them didn't get to choose. I doubt most would have voted for this if they had that choice. Maybe. I actually think they didnt expect to be so successful also. I also almost believe that top echelons of Israeli intelligence knew about the upcoming attack, but they didn't expect THAT many fatalities and that Hamas were going to take hostages alive. That's interesting. It could be. Maybe some day we'll find out. A never ending conflict is what maintain the Likoud in power. This far right party and government has no interest in peace and is insulting the memory of the people who died in the holocaust. > Hamas was the first to cast the stone. That is ignoring many decades of history. > Israel ALWAYS gonna retaliate with non proportional force when it comes to security of its citizens. This is the logic of conflicts in the middle east and many or probably most parts of the world. If you don't retaliate hard and defend yourself thoroughly, it is seen as weakness. Not much more sophisticated than how bullying works. Sounds as if you're defending genocide style killing civilians. Israel was attacked, you are mixing that up. Replying to a genocide terror attack by starting to genocide kill civilians in the area the terrorists came from, is wrong. But that's what you're apparently supporting, looking at how you're writing. Plus you are misrepresenting what I said. Reminds me of Tiananmen square in regard to how stubbornly westerners insist that NOTHING happened in Gaza before 7/23 The point isn't that nothing happened, it is that nothing _that justifies_ the attack happened. Nothing justifies the attack on civilians because collective punishment is a war crime and a crime against humanity. The military objectives were entirely justified though (taking out IDF bases, attempting to capture IDF soldiers, and attempting to liberate several-thousand Palestinians being held by Israel) Of the 6000 people from Gaza who entered Israel that day, at most 12% were responsible for one of the 800 civilian casualties in Israel. If you consider that the minority who decided to target civilians were likely responsible for targeting multiple civilians, and that some number (at least 4 who are known) of those deaths resulted from the actions of the IDF, it's entirely possible fewer than 8% of insurgents targeted and killed civilians. All told, fewer civilians were killed proportionately than have been killed in Israel's response. What type of resistance would you have recommended Palestinians engage in prior to October 7? They tried non-violent resistance and were met with lethal force. Attacking the people who stole your land and murdered your family is justified in my book. I don't think I'm alone, very few people globally support Israel. By the wide definition of of "the people who stole your land" that you're using (meaning, no Hamas person checked who stole what land), almost everyone on earth is someone who stole someone's land. If not now, than in the previous generation. In my case as an Israeli, ~4 generations ago. In your case? I don't know. Either the people your family stole the land from X years ago have the right to attack you, or your family just managed to kill all of them years ago so there's no one to demand the land back. > By the wide definition of of "the people who stole your land" that you're using (meaning, no Hamas person checked who stole what land), almost everyone on earth is someone who stole someone's land. If not now, than in the previous generation. In my case as an Israeli, ~4 generations ago. Thanks for saying that (not sarcasm, I mean it). Peace can only start when both sides admit they’ve done wrong too. Would you say both sides did wrong with the Nazis vs Jews? This is an identical situation (possibly worse since the Zionists actively invaded Palestine to commit genocide). It is not identical, and it not even similar situation. You are sick in your head to compare the killing of 6 million people, unarmed, in gas chambers, with two nations that have a strong link to a place fighting over the land. The Jews never had anything against Germany - on the contrary, they wanted to integrate in it. Jews have real a historical connection to the land that even a Quran believer cannot deny, not to mention an archeologist. Your failure to see things through the eyes of the other side is exactly the kind of thing that makes the Middle East a terrible place to live in. The power differential between Zionists and Palestinians is much more extreme than Nazis and Jews. Zionists also have incredible control over my country (the US) than the Nazis ever did. In the 21st century Zionism is much worse than Nazism (which isn't even around any more in a significant way). No, the Nazis had an army that took over all of Europe and some of Africa. The Jews had no weapons at all. Palestinians have weapons, they receive support in military training, and often coordinated their attacks with other armies from the countries surrounding Israel. The "influence over the US" metric is ridiculous, the US was an enemy of the Nazis, of course they didn't have control over it. It's like saying the Nazis never had such a strong influence over Iran as the Palestinians do. Prior to WWII the Jews were so powerful that the Rothschilds were able to get the UK to give them Palestine. The Balfour Agreement is very well documented. The Palestinians can't even return to their homes stolen from them during the Nakba. It doesn't even need to involve an actual wrongdoing, even a Holocaust survivor might admit that Jews being a socially separate group in Europe may have contributed to the Nazis scapegoating them (just stating a widely accepted fact, not blaming the victims). A 100% victim mindset is rarely helpful. I'm indigenous like the Palestinians (who also did not steal anyone's land). Zionism was created in the late 1800s with the mission to steal land and ethnically cleanse Palestine. These are concrete and well documented actions that justify Hamas's resistance. It was the point. > - Hamas was the first to cast the stone. Saying that it was Hamas who casted the first stone on 7 oct, is basically saying nothing happened before. Which is plain wrong. It's the consequence of decades of oppression, crimes, and unstopping massacre from the colonial occupier. If you're going back decades, then Palestinians started started multiple civil wars against Jews before the founding of Israel. It's almost as if the Jews knew they couldn't peacefully coexist with most Palestinians on the same land. That is simply wrong. Palestinians were first attacked by the British, supporting the Zionists, in the 1930s. Then, in 1947, during plan Dalet, Israel attacked Palestine and the surrounding Arab states. Before that, of course, they colonized Palestine under the shield of the British empire. An easier way to disarm this argument is: Why did the Zionists come and displace the Palestinians? And who would respond peacefully if you try to displace them? I never mentioned jews and the point remains : It is untrue to say that Hamas started everything on 7th of oct and it is untrue to say that they were the first. Stop diverting attention from the causes of what happened. - Hamas is well-funded by Israel (to false flag?). It's not a secret. It started in the 80s and lasted until they won the election in 2005. It's not a conspiracy theory, this is History. Official History everyone one agrees on, even israel and Hamas themselves. > Hamas was the first to cast the stone. HAMAS is an entity formed by refugees having fled the nakba and been stored on top of each other in an open air prison. Israel is a spying and killing machine. At this point it feels like they serve no other purpose. People are tired of the endless violations to every single right a human has. This is reductive. All kinds of other countries do the same and the purpose is crystal clear. It isnt spying and killing without purpose. I dont like it either and i didnt like back when it wasnt trendy to not like it. But it isnt pointless. They know what they are about. The arab states offered a peace plan in 2002 that would include full recognition in exchange of an end of the occupation. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arab_Peace_Initiative At some point it becomes obvious that Israel (under the current government and political climate) doesn't want peace. In 2000 Israel offered the Palestinians what is essentially the two state solution everyone keeps talking about: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2000_Camp_David_Summit At some point it becomes obvious the Palestinians (under their current government and political climate) doesn't want peace. Wikipedia is not a good source here. There was never a sincere offer accepted by all Palestinians that acknowledged Israel's right to exist. Specifically the sticky point here is the right of return which means that Israel ceases to exist. A peace proposal that includes the destruction of Israel is not one made on good faith. Either way it's not up to the Arab states to make peace here, it's up to the Palestinians. This proposal? > Most sources agree, that under Israel's final proposal, the Temple Mount (including Al-Aqsa) would remain under Israeli sovereignty. Israel would also take most of the rest of East Jerusalem, while Palestinians would get some parts too. Israel would annex 8% or 13.5% of the West Bank, and would maintain a military of an additional 6–12% of the West Bank for an unspecified period of time (sometimes called a "long term lease"). According to some sources, Israel would also retain its settlement blocks in the Gaza Strip. The Palestinian state would not be contiguous and the West Bank would be split into 2 or 3 sections. Finally, Israel would control Palestinian airspace. How is that a sovereign state? > Specifically the sticky point here is the right of return which means that Israel ceases to exist. If you see Jewish supremacy as a core element of Israeli statehood, then I guess, yes. There are other concepts though, like a one-state solution, which would solve that. > Either way it's not up to the Arab states to make peace here, it's up to the Palestinians. The arab states have leverage though, and in this situation, they tried to use it. I honestly don't see how Palestinians would be able to make peace if the result is more creeping settlements like in the west bank. What is the outlook here? Where would they live? In the last 3 years, many users on HN have justified Genocide constantly and openly while downvoting any dissenting opinion trying to speak up against this genocide. And all of them, without fail, when convenient, without consequence, will lie and act like they were against it. Once the genocidaires have built waterfront property upon the fresh tiny bones once the Board of Holocaust Profiteering is done with its demonic mandate. The entirety of the upper echelons of the tech industry, now in bed with the death industry, is that one swimming pool scene from "The Zone of Interest". Shame on all of you. And shame on the rest of us. We have failed as a peoples in history. Of course, the Epsteinists have woken up and are now in a downvote spree. Disgusted by this, I hope that the good people of Israel realize what their hideous regime is doing and stop it.
I know for sure that The problem is majority of Israeli citizens think the government isn't doing enough. Cue the citizens that protested to stop the aid trucks from going into Gaza. The citizens that protested because the Israeli military arrested (after a lot of international pressure) soldiers that were caught raping Palestinian prisoners. They were protesting for the right of soldiers to continue to rape. > The citizens that protested because the Israeli military arrested (after a lot of international pressure) soldiers that were caught raping Palestinian prisoners. The people you're talking about are Israel's far-right. I don't think you can index from them onto the median Israeli's political views anymore than you could reasonably index from a member of Hamas's armed wing onto the median Palestinian. (A recurring theme in both I/P and MENA conflicts more generally is that political minorities - WB settlers in Israel, for example, manage to wield disproportionate power and induce chaos and strife across the region.) Might behoove you to know how schooling in that "country" is handled..especially when it comes to Palestinians. Below is an excellent insight as to how this is a "country" wide homegrown effort to raise unhinged cilivians that celebrate the murder of children & women. https://electronicintifada.net/content/book-review-how-israe... Exactly. I replied to the comment above, but a lot of people don't appreciate the right-left divide in Israel is very different to that in other western nations. A leftist in Israel would probably be considered extreme right in some other nations. I know a fair number of leftists of both Israeli and Palestinian extraction, and I don't really think this is true. The more nuanced and IMO correct appreciation of left-right politics in Israel (and MENA more generally) is that they're flavored but not inherently dominated by ethnonationalist movements that reached their fever pitch in the 20th century, and have slowly been replaced by ethoreligious movements that have substituted declining follower numbers for more extreme activity. Electronic intifada is propaganda. It is true that there are concerning directions the education in Israel is taking. But a propagandistic education is certainly not an issue in Israel alone, like this articles tries to paint. That is no excuse, but it still remains one-sided propaganda. I don't know what to tell you. If you think I don't believe that Israel structurally dehumanizes Palestinians, you'd be wrong. But you'd also be wrong in thinking that this is somehow a deviation from the norm; both sides are actively governed by their political extremes, like I said. You're painting with broad-strokes here which comes off as disingenuous, I presume that's not your intention but it calls into question your understanding of the history between these states being laid bare. I suggest reading Hamas' 2017 charter in full for proper context. I think I understand the two pretty well. And I've read both the 2017 and 1988 charters. The funny thing about charters is that you can put anything in them; the IDF's charter[1] is an exercise in frustration for anybody who knows literally anything about how the IDF actually behaves, and so for Hamas. [1]: https://www.idf.il/en/mini-sites/our-mission-our-values/ A stat I came across recently is that over 60% of Israeli's don't support a two state solution - i.e. they don't support the idea of Palestinians having a state. This also tracks with my travels to Palestine, friends who have travelled more recently, and various videos and article: the right-left in Israel is quite different to the right-left in other Western nations: namely, if you talk to a leftist Israeli, they will also hold strong view against Palestinians. > A stat I came across recently is that over 60% of Israeli's don't support a two state solution - i.e. they don't support the idea of Palestinians having a state. This is, critically, a pretty different political position from defending people accused of wartime rape. That doesn't make it a good position, but we shouldn't conflate the two. As for why: Israelis don't appear to disapprove of a two-state solution any more or less than Palestinians[1]. Both are absolutely committed to the idea that their one-state solution will be supreme. [1]: https://news.gallup.com/poll/695582/peace-distant-prospect-i... Two years after the 2005 Israeli unilateral withdrawal from Gaza (and the Israeli government evicted Israeli settlers from Gaza), the support in Israel for a two-state solution was 70% in favor. They were optimistic! Looking at the long term history of Israel, the left was more optimistic in general about hopes for peace with the Palestinians, while the right more suspected that Arafat never really wanted peace, and was just being sneaky. But let it be noted that the Prime Minister who ordered the withdrawal from Gaza was right-wing Gen. Ariel Sharon, Likud member and previous advocate of settlements everywhere. After the actions of Hamas in subsequent years, particularly Oct 7, 2023, that hope and optimism was completely eliminated. The 'withdrawal' wasn't really a withdrawal, was it. There was still a blockade, and IDF's routine 'mowing the lawn'. Let's not pretend that the 2005 'withdrawal' was a chance for a fresh start for the Palestinians that they floundered. The various negotiations were very one sided, and the offers were also unacceptable. Since 2005, Israel has aggressively settled more and more people in the West Bank, to the point where more than 10% of Israel's Jewish population (read: first-class citizens) now live in West Bank settlements, so Israel's right wing has done everything in its power to make a two-state solution less and less practical. IMO a one-state solution where everyone has equal rights is the only just and reasonable path forward. Like with the dismantling of apartheid, a transition plan will be needed. Hamas has a one-state transition plan: kill or drive out the Jews, or enslave the ones with technical expertise. The Israel far right has a transition plan: kill or drive out the Palestinians in the West Bank or Gaza, except for the few that don't cause them problems. Partition of disputed territory is the least bad solution in the world we live in. "One world" government remains a utopian fantasy. Dividing the world up according to a mix of consideration of peoplehood, self-determination, and whoever won the most recent war is what humankind has figured out so far. People who disagree with that will want to start wars. Wars are bad. Wars are bad, but sometimes the only way to end an unjust status quo. Is that a defense of war? Up to everyone to decide. The American civil war occurred, in part, because Lincoln decided to end the institution of slavery. I know this is an oversimplification and justifies the means with the end, but I think if "bad"-ness of the civil war is compared to the "bad"-ness of an eternity of black people being enslavement in the U.S., I'd argue the war was significantly less "bad". I think your other point about Hamas's supposed desire to genocide Jews lacks nuance, and your resignation to a world of ethno-nationalist states is a just-so story bordering on nihilism, but I suspect addressing those enters territory of tightly-held opinion, so I will just leave it at that. The far-right is a majority in Israel. They voted and elected a far-right regime. Only 5% of Israelis believe that IDF used too much violence in Gaza.. That's surprising low given 21% of the population are Israeli Arabs. I should have clarified - that was from the polling of Israeli Jews: https://www.jpost.com/israel-news/article-783849 94% of them believe IDF used appropriate amount of force or not enough of it. I'm Israeli and I speak regularly with Arabs. Now mostly with Israeli Arabs but prior to October 2023 I spoke often enough with West Bankers. Every Arab I've spoken with on the topic, states that Israel should have hit Gaza harder and sooner. That's from Arabs in the south (Bedouins) and along the coastal plain and Haifa ('48ers). The Israeli Arabs are more extreme in their viewpoint towards Gaza (not only Hamas) than are the Jewish Israelis. Okay, this is surprising. But why? Are these Muslim Israeli Arabs? Or Jewish/Christian Arabs? Muslims Arabs. I talk with them often in Arabic as I'm learning the language. Some Bedouin have family in the strip, most Hamas detractors are Bedouin from what I've been told. The Arabs are not coy - they tell it exactly as it is. I'll be speaking to someone in what I perceive a pleasant conversation, and he'll mention something that I'll realise this guy would murder me under slightly different circumstances - while being hospitable. Their culture is not easy for us to comprehend. Arab society has power struggles as a feature. There is always punching and slapping between family members, and there are always fueds with other extended families. For example, if one wants to find a wife or a job, his family needs honour. So he or his brothers go out and shoot up another family's complex. They are not trying to kill anybody, there are huge consequences if somebody dies. But they do some damage to display that they are an honourable (I guess tough) family, and now the younger family member can find a job or a wife. And this is how, they say, Israel should handle Gaza. When Gaza tries to gain honour in the eyes of their society, they need to be put back in place in a way that they understand culturally. Otherwise Israel will be the family that everybody shoots at. It's not that surprising. Ask the average Jordinian about their opinion of Palestinians some time. Ask an Egyptian or a Syrian if they think their countries should take in Palestinian refugees. The regional Muslim Arabs all hate them too. Damn, the IDF got this guy mid-sentence... WHAT DOES HE KNOW FOR SURE??? > I hope that the good people of Israel realize what their hideous regime is doing and stop it. There’s a small but courageous peace movement in Israel. They don’t have the kind of sway it would take to stop anything. The good people of israel? You mean the citizen army that carried out the genocide? I am sure they really hate their government but probably because they think its not doing enough. Why was this flagged? Automatically / without review? This is a novel tech story, albeit one without a lot of technical detail. https://www.earshot.ngo/what-we-do/audio-ballistics https://forensic-architecture.org/ https://content.forensic-architecture.org/wp-content/uploads... > Earshot used echolocation to analyze the audio on the recordings in order to arrive at precise estimates of the shooters’ locations. Echolocation is the process of locating the source of a sound based on an analysis of the sound’s echoes and the environment in which the sound travels. The Israeli military destroyed and cleared so many buildings in the Tel Al-Sultan area where the ambush of the aid workers took place that very few structures remained. This destruction actually strengthened Earshot’s ability to determine the positions and movements of Israeli soldiers, based on identifying the surfaces responsible for clearly distinguishable gunshot echoes. Rather than having multiple buildings reflecting the sound waves, there were only a few standing walls and the emergency vehicles themselves. > “Earshot forensically analyzed over 900 gunshots fired at aid workers. It took one whole year of careful listening to reconstruct an auditory picture of what happened that dark night,” Lawrence Abu Hamdan, the director of Earshot, told Drop Site. I'm not sure how much this was actually necessary to the eventual verdict if this is ever adjudicated, though, if "hiding the evidence" is a factor: > Following the ambush, Israeli forces crushed all eight vehicles using heavy machinery and attempted to bury them under the sand. > The body of Anwar al-Attar was found near the ambush site on March 27, and the bodies of the other 14 aid workers, all wearing identifying uniforms or volunteer vests of their respective organizations, were found in a mass grave near the site on March 30. But the understanding that they were advanced upon in a walking wave of fire, and then the survivors were executed one by one at close range, may help. Any posts linked to the IDF committing crimes are automatically flagged on this site (and others). Many bots are at play here. Its not automatic due to bot activity. It is from people actively suppressing stories that don't want other people to see. This is discernible by watching how long it takes stories like these to reach a flagged state on the new submissions page. It is further evident by watching which comments within those submissions get flagged based upon their upvotes and visibility. > on the new submissions page What if they only act once it reaches the front page? Indeed, and try suggesting there should be minimal accountability for flagging[0] and you'll likewise be flagged. Sure maybe the data says there's not some cartel flagging conspiracy but it starts to seem awful suspicious that even reasonable discussion of this misfeature gets flagged. > Its not automatic due to bot activity. It is from people actively suppressing stories that don't want other people to see. Correct! The same people behind the US purchase of TikTok, for the same reason. You're attributing a whole lot of agency to things that might have different factors. I can't downvote becuase though I've read HN since 2007ish, this is a new account. I would, however, probably downvote threads like this becuase out of all 600 comments, I don't think very many people have learned anything and a lot of blatantly false and sometimes racist stuff has been shared by people of every persuasion. I don't think these discussions are productive at all, but it makes people feel good because they're "fighting" for a cause, but they're still just a rate in a cage. Is the cause of Gaza or Israel bettered by this comment section? These discussions are absolutely necessary because it’s the best we have to stay informed. If accuracy and credibility were more important we would have foreign journalists there on the ground providing factual information. So, yes, Gaza is bettered by comments like these. > Is the cause of Gaza or Israel bettered by this comment section? Absolutely the cause of Gaza has been bettered by the thousands of comment sections. Again, the US wouldn't have bought TikTok if it didn't. r/thedonald boosted the cause of Trumpism, posters on X have boosted the cause of extreme right wing nationalism in Europe. Discourse matters, that's why so many try to influence it. Reputation with the masses matters, that's why countries like KSA spend hundreds of billions on trying to shore it up. You always have plenty of excuses when you get called out. Looking the other way while bot armies mass downvote pro Palestine / anti ICE / anti PayPal mafia content is complicity. I’m sure you have the data to suss out what is obvious to anyone watching these threads in real time. Think about what you are saying for a moment. Why would "bot armies" come to Hacker News of all places to flag pro-Palestine articles? Don't you think it's a much more reasonable conclusion that people read the site guidelines[1], which clearly say that political posts are off-topic, and then flagged for that reason instead? There are a million places to discuss politics online. If I wanted to discuss politics, I would go to any one of them. Claiming any HN moderator is 'complicit' in atrocities is absurd. > Why would "bot armies" come to Hacker News of all places to flag pro-Palestine articles? Turn on showdead and you'll find much, much weirder wastes of time here. In 2026 I don't for one second think it organized inauthentic activity is implausible. I think in fact it's probably pretty extensive these days, though I'm not especially sure about penetration of HN in particular. But everything from marketing to state actors to organized political actors to anarchic but politically motivated online groups are mobilized to influence online forums and I think these phenomena are reasonably well characterized by academic research. It can also be people who aren't organized but abuse flagging out of political commitments. I also don't think your read of it as an organic outcome of a post that obviously violates guidelines is the natural conclusion here, I actually think that interpretation strains credulity more. Where I agree is that I don't think moderators are being heavy-handed on issues like this, but I do think high level political events do merit attention at least once in a while and I don't think the HN pattern has been toward oversaturation. And in terms of things that make this story unique, I think it's the highest standard of specificity I've ever seen in reporting of this kind, it's using impressive technological reconstruction of the scene, it's actually quite unlike typical news reporting on the topic and it's hosted on a platform that was YC-incubated, and I think DropSite News is in an ascendant moment as a major news breaker. There's lots to talk about here imo. I mean doesn't your take strain credulity as well? Let's actually think where most discussion happens these days, Twitter, Facebook, Reddit, the few remaining newspaper comments sections. I'd struggle to list more off the top of my head. Why wouldn't influence campaigns, we know every big country to be running, target this site? What reason would they have to leave it out from their list? Why not target a major news forum for the more wealthy and connected (predominantly) Americans in tech? This is not an uwu smol bean site anymore and the cost of (undetectably) botting any given site is rapidly approaching cents. I just see the same thing over again. I flag some article, then later I look at the comments and everyone is saying "rah rah there's a cabal of vote bots that flag articles". Obviously not - it was me? Is it so unthinkable that normal people on HN are flagging political articles because they are explicitly disallowed by the site guidelines? I didn’t flag. But the top comments are nothing to do with the tech, and aren’t dissimilar from any Gaza War commentary online. [flagged] Comparing to their own rituals and practices around corpses it really goes to show just how thoroughly they have dehumanized the Palestinian people. Israel long since stopped using smart bombs because a)they were too expensive and b)they didn't really give a shit who died in them executing someone a black-box AI decided was a terrorist (an AI they know is wildly inaccurate.) But even the smart bombs - they didn't care if they wiped out an entire family just to kill one person. They even have snipers focusing on children. Doctors from international aid organizations working in the hospitals noticed that they were seeing a large number of children were showing up with few injuries/wounds except nearly identical head/chest wounds, and that not many adults were coming in with such injuries. Targeting and prioritizing killing children has only one purpose: extermination. I reached this post via https://github.com/vitoplantamura/HackerNewsRemovals I recommend any hackernews users to check that site frequently, plenty of interesting posts on hackernews that get flagged and hidden daily. You can just click on your username in the upper right and change "showdead" from "no" to "yes". ok I just found out about /active a few weeks ago and now this? stop humiliating me please They also appear on https://hn.algolia.com/ In https://hckrnews.com these flagged items appear listed. With https://hckrnews.com as my entry into HN I don't see the need for HackerNewsRemovals other than curiosity to see what is removed. Mike Huckabee said yesterday that all the land from the Nile to the Euphrates should be taken by Israel. That would involve a cleansing of hundreds of millions of people. Mike Huckabee is a clown who was more or less strategically plonked into Israel to feed soothing quotes to the settler minority. I think it'd be an error to assume that his particularly evil flavor of Christian eschatology reflects the political or military policies of Israel (which is saying a lot, since Israel's military policy is very clearly good at producing war crimes). Hmm well I don't think it'd be an error to assume that his particularly evil flavor of Christian eschatology reflects the political or military policies of Israel. Huckabee is a Christian Zionist. I'm sure he sees the death and displacement of millions as a small price to pay to bring about the Rapture in his lifetime. This is commonly misconstrued as christianity, but in christian tradition it would bring about the coming of the antichrist, massive persecutions globally, and armageddon. Christians are ok with that, because they think they'll have been raptured already. Pre-tribulation rapture is a 19th century invention by John Nelson Darby that most Christians worldwide have never held. The entire Orthodox and Catholic traditions reject it. Treating it as 'what Christians believe' is like treating Mormonism as mainstream Islam. It tells you more about the speaker's ignorance of the subject than about the subject itself. Treating Catholics as "what Christians believe" is just as wrong. Pretribulational premillennialism is a popular position in mainstream Christianity in the US, e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Left_Behind_(novel) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rapture's_Delight It's all bullshit in the end, but I personally know many people that hold that view that consider themselves Christian. In fact, they think Catholics aren't Christian and are going to hell, because they worship idols. More specifically, when talking about US politicians like Mike Huckabee that spout off weird religious stuff like this, you can assume protestantism at least, if not fundamentalism and associated woo. I am not treating Catholics as "what Christians believe". Quite the opposite, actually. I'm saying the original statement was so wrong that two incredibly different denominations are aligned in their rejection of that stance. Your disdain for Christians is noted, but my point is that your original comment is an oft-repeated, incorrect interpretation of what most Christians have believed since the very beginning of Christianity. Huckabee is some official spokesperson of the Israeli government? Or holds some other role in it? He's the US Ambassador to Israel. So his comments represent the US, and don't represent Israel in any way? That would be a good point if Netanyahu and Yair Lapid hadn't echoed his comments and expressed intent to create greater Israel.. Seems like it would have been more relevant just to quote those people instead. the goal posts never stop moving huh They've never moved. First you were upset that I assumed the American ambassador had any input on Israeli politics (a definitional truth), then you changed the subject and became upset that I didn't quote Netanyahu or Rabin themselves. That's how you moved the goal posts, inventing problems without confronting any of my points on their merits. Not at all. You quoted an American as if he speaks for Israeli policy; he does not and never did. That's the entire meat of this thread. If Israel disagreed with the ambassador's statements, they would give him a note or call him in for a talking to. Diplomatic discipline is very common if an ambassador misbehaves this badly. The fact that they did not react to such inflammatory statements strongly indicates that they support them. What is the job of an ambassador if not to speak for policy? Keep in mind that these powerful men believe that Jewish people coming back to Israel is the first step of the Apocalypse, and the return of Christ. It is a death cult quite literally trying to bring about the end of the world, and they're ruling the world. Also, they are insanely antisemitic and believe most Jews will go to hell. https://religiondispatches.org/2025/12/04/mike-huckabee-trie... > Also, they are insanely antisemitic and believe most Jews will go to hell. A good chunk of them are insanely pro-semitic as well, as they adopt the dual covenant belief that Jews will actually also go to heaven as well as Christians. I've actually never met anyone that adhered to the pro-zionist dispensationalist view that fully thought out the implied consequences, then proceeded to harbor a personal hatred of Jews. The vast majority of them love all things Jewish and hold them in high regard. I'd really like to get stats on how many evangelicals believe in this "dual covenant" vs how many follow scripture and legitimately believe that Jesus will send all Jews to hell to be tortured forever when he comes back. I'd point out again, that most dispensationalists don't actually follow their interpretation to it's logical conclusion. And further, the view is not that all Jews will go to hell. It is that a large portion of Jews will suffer through the tribulation period, with most of them dying, but that the "remnant" will survive, all the remaining Jews will turn to follow Jesus, then rule the world under Jesus for 1000 years. And everyone will serve Israel. I'm annoyed that I spent so much time growing up learning this tbh. But I still find it crazy to call all of your average misguided adherents to this ideology antisemites. The death cult running things, sure. It's even more ridiculous to call the prosetylizers anti semites for trying to convert Jews, bc based on their world view, if they don't save as many Jews as they can, those Jews are going to suffer terribly instead of being raptured before the tribulation. I just wanna say it's nice to see more people finally waking up and smelling the ashes. I can only hope in the future this genocide will be studied to better understand the main points of failure to not repeat such a widely event covered event. The problem is that both sides lie flagrantly with such frequency that very few claims about the war can be taken at face value. On the other side there was the famous "hospital bombing" news event early in the war where it was claimed that 500 people were killed, and then within a couple of hours it became obvious that the explosion was caused by a misfiring Hamas rocket, with video from multiple angles of the failure, that it hit an empty parking lot in front of the hospital and only blew out the windows and burnt a few cars, and that no more than a handful of people had been killed. And also the repeated claims that Israel were lying about the tunnels under Gaza Hospitals, and make videos of one such strike (a bunker buster penetrating the parking lot just outside the entrance) go viral, only for Hamas to later announce that one of the replacement leaders for Sinwar had been killed in that strike, and for excavation to find the bunkers / tunnel network underneath that very hospital. As well as, earlier in the war, a Hamas bunker w/ data center equipment directly underneath the UNRWA HQ in Gaza. None of that justifies genuine instances of war crimes and atrocities that Israel may have committed, but there's a reason why people tune out some of the extreme claims that fly around. But not the video in the OP which demonstrates that the IDF were, in fact firing on aid workers and refugees as they had been accused of, and certainly not the hours of footage of the IDF brazenly taking human shields over the years while insisting they didn't, or the reports of the IDF arming settlers. Curious that you can't enumerate any of these, and you're happy to take at face value a claim the IDF makes but doesn't allow independent third parties to verify (a Hamas bunker w/ data center equipment directly underneath the UNRWA HQ in Gaza) while abjuring such behaviour. Independent 3rd parties were brought in to verify, though. I already said I don't condone any instances of legitimate war crimes. I don't think enumerating everything that has ever happened by either side is very useful. But it's a fact that both sides lie flagrantly about atrocities. Lots of the footage in the early days of the war that was claimed to be from Gaza was actually recycled from the Syrian civil war. If you want me to start listing some BS that Israel has done, fine - the calendar stunt was ridiculous (if you have followed the conflict, you probably have heard of it). What goes on in the west bank is disgraceful. There are plenty of statements by Israeli politicians that are basically genocidal language (though you can play that game with most countries, random US politicians say psychotic shit all the time). >Independent 3rd parties were brought in to verify, though. Reuters was given an IDF escort as they were walked through the tunnel system, during which a room with some servers was called a Hamas data centre, and they nodded along. That's not quite the same thing. >Lots of the footage in the early days of the war that was claimed to be from Gaza was actually recycled from the Syrian civil war. Lots of footage that Hamas or advocates for Palestine released or Twitter randos? Not all of those things are equivalent to Israel making a claim. Can you link to those reports? > On the other side there was the famous "hospital bombing" news event early in the war where it was claimed that 500 people were killed, and then within a couple of hours it became obvious that the explosion was caused by a misfiring Hamas rocket... Forensic-architecture published a report on that too: https://forensic-architecture.org/investigation/israeli-disi... > problem is that both sides lie flagrantly And yet one side is committing genocide. And one side started it by killing 1,200 civilians and kidnapping 250. Which doesn't justify genocide. But it does factor into the response when one side is governed by a death cult that has no problem letting scores of their own civilians die if it furthers their cause. I don't think Hamas started it, but they definitely escalated it. Oh, I didn’t know that the whole conflict started on October 6th. One side is governed by a death cult for sure, if you look at how many children they indiscriminately kill. When do you suppose the conflict started? When the first Israeli settler stole the home of a Palestinian. In the 1947 Palestinian civil war, and they have been attacking and trying to destroy Israel ever since? Also look at what they did in Egypt, Lebanon, Jordan. Palestinians, Hamas and Hezbollah are not the good guys here. Not saying Israel is all good either, but let’s put it this way. Where would you want your wife or children to live if given the chance? You can live as a Muslim in Israel, you can’t live as a Christian or Jew in Palestine. Holy misinformation. 1) Israel attacked Arab Palestine and the neighboring Arab states first, in plan Dalet. 2) Christians and Jews absolutely can live in Palestine. They were afforded that in the Ottoman empire (the Dhimmi) and they are afforded that now. 3) Muslims do not get to govern themselves in Israel. Every other religions can choose their own representatives in official matter, but Islam gets a token person selected by the Israeli state. > 2) Christians and Jews absolutely can live in Palestine. They were afforded that in the Ottoman empire (the Dhimmi) and they are afforded that now. Add to this, Amira Haas (Jewish, anti-Zionist Haaretz journalist) lives in Ramallah. There was also a Palestinian man who converted to Judaism living in the West Bank, but he was killed... by the IDF: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killing_of_David_Ben_Avraham This is so disingenuous, the poster clearly has no clue what he's talking about. Local Christian communities have been living amongst Muslims there for centuries and continue to do so under Israeli occupation. About 25% of the population that calls themselves Palestinian are Christians, and are treated the same as Muslims by Israel, that is as second class citizens at best inside the Green Line and targets for ethnic cleansing outside of it. Scores of foreign Christians and Jews go stay in Palestinian towns and villages in the West Bank to provide some amount of protection to the Palestinian Muslims and Christians there. They are encouraged and welcome to come stay among them by Palestinians. Right. Thats what happened in Jordan and Lebanon right? Damour massacre in Lebanon for example? Black September and Jordan civil war? Christian percentage went from 10% to 1% in Palestine. Parliament has 120 seats, 15 of which for Muslims, and Muslims have full rights. Sorry, ya’ll are delusional if you think you have better life and more rights as a Christian in a Muslim country than a Muslim in Israel or a European country. >Muslims have full rights. No they don't. Israel is a state with discrimination against non-Jews baked into its laws, with a couple of clever facades that don't stand up to basic scrutiny. https://www.btselem.org/publications/fulltext/202101_this_is... >Christian percentage went from 10% to 1% in Palestine. And the decades of ethnic cleansing by Israel against Arabs, both Christians and Muslims, has nothing to do with this? How come those communities were there for millennia and started disappearing? What major event in the last 100 years in the region of Palestine led to the flight of Palestinian Christians? >Christian Palestinians who are citizens of Israel suffer from the same widespread official and unofficial discrimination that other non-Jews do, in everything from land ownership and housing to employment and family reunification rights. [1] [1] https://imeu.org/resources/resources/discrimination-hate-cri... https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2025/12/7/the-centuries-o... https://mondoweiss.net/2026/01/mike-huckabee-is-interfering-... Muslim != Palestinian. You might want to read up on why this is. And the other side just. won’t. stop. attacking. That’s really the problem, innit? Palestine can’t stop poking, Israel overreact. 20 GOTO 10. You could say that about Israel too you know. The other side just. Won’t. Stop. Attacking. Israelis can’t stop sniping children. > On the other side there was the famous "hospital bombing" news event early in the war where it was claimed that 500 people were killed, and then within a couple of hours it became obvious that the explosion was caused by a misfiring Hamas rocket, This is an Israeli lie. Not only has Israel bombed all of the hospitals, they murdered an entire NICU of infants. I can't believe people are still trying to justify blowing up hospitals! No. This is about a specific claim. Hamas claimed that Israel killed 500 people in a hospital bombing, and that was indisputably a lie. Videos show that it was a Hamas rocket, not a bomb. Pictures show that the damage was limited to a few burned cars and broken windows and a pothole sized dent in the asphalt. There were no mass casualties and every credible news outlet that initially reported that there were, walked it back when evidence proved otherwise. https://www.npr.org/2023/10/19/1207173798/fake-accounts-old-... https://www.cnn.com/2023/10/24/media/gaza-hospital-coverage-... https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/2023/10/26/gaz... https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2023/10/gaza-hospi...\ Even the famously pro-Israel New York Times did an analysis and didn't find this rocket story convincing. https://archive.is/1GSOt > The death toll, initially put at 500 by Hamas and then lowered to 471, is believed by Western intelligence agencies to be considerably lower — but no number has been verified. The hospital itself was not directly struck; whatever caused the explosion actually hit the hospital courtyard, where people had gathered for safety, and a handful of parked cars. > Moreover, the crater left from the impact was relatively small, a fact that Israel has cited in arguing that none of its munitions caused the blast, and could be consistent with a number of different munitions. Hamas has not produced a remnant of an Israeli munition or any physical evidence to back up its claim that Israel is responsible. ... > In addition, the videos show that the projectile in the Al Jazeera footage was launched after the barrage of Palestinian rockets Israeli officials assessed was responsible for the hospital explosion. > From 6:59 p.m. on Oct. 17, barrages of Palestinian rockets are fired from two positions southwest and northwest of the Al-Ahli Arab Hospital, the videos show. Flames from the Palestinian rockets are visible in the nighttime sky as their engines propel them northeast toward Israel. More than 25 seconds elapse between the final Palestinian rocket and the hospital explosion. The Al Jazeera footage does show an interception, not the rocket that hit the courtyard. This has been known for years, indeed. But there were like 5 different videos of the event, which were frequently confused for each other, and that's not the one I'm referring to. The AJ footage went the most "viral" even though it was pretty obvious that it wasn't the right event if you knew what you were looking at. I don't know why the Times didn't mention any of the others. In any case literally all of the context around it remains a lie, and would still be a lie even if it ended up being a failed Iron Dome missile launched during the rocket barrage as the Times implied None of those are credible news outlets. Israel bombed every hospital in Gaza, starting with this one. There were mass casualties. (Correction: a PIJ rocket, not a Hamas rocket.) The media organizations and people who pushed the pro-Israel narrative already understand all of this - it's not a failure, it was their intended goal. It's gonna happen again and again and again until the end of humanity. It’s strange to me when otherwise intelligent people call this genocide. Genocide is an attempt to exterminate an entire people. Israel is a nuclear armed nation fighting against the equivalent of Dayton, OH. If genocide were the goal this war would have lasted one day. Collective punishment, or a long term ethnic cleansing would be much more accurate, but you’re just repeating what you read unthinkingly if you say genocide. This is one of the worst pro-Israel arguments; I can't believe people still make it. Israel isn't going to drop a nuke on the "holy land", where they want to start building Jewish settlements, a few dozen miles from Tel Aviv. No matter how much they hate Palestinians, people don't want to live in an irradiated wasteland. By nuclear-armed I’m pointing out that they’re a well-funded, first class military, not that they’re going to nuke the place. They’re arguably the second strongest military in the world. They could have achieved genocide very quickly with conventional weapons and boots on the ground too. >If genocide were the goal this war would have lasted one day. And the retaliation from the rest of the world in those circumstances would be swift and measured in hours, and there would be a smoking pile of rubble in that particular part of the world that would be uninhabitable for centuries. So instead, Israel is cooking the frog. So by your logic if you slowly exterminate a people its not genocide? You cannot exterminate a people too slowly because they can (and do) move. Ethnic cleansing can happen over centuries (see the last 500 years of our hemisphere for examples). Israel has let tens of thousands of them out of the country. Nazis did not let injured Jews go to hospitals in other countries. Which, again, is not dismissing war crimes, or denying that any have occurred. Just pointing out, this is not genocide but ethnic cleansing. Israel has a vocal right wing faction that advocates for ethnic cleansing, and a vocal left wing that is against it. That definition of genocide is so narrow that it would also exclude the Armenian genocide, since many were allowed to flee. I can't find any evidence that they were allowed to flee. They organize "mass deportations" that were really just dumping them into the desert without food or water to die. Some did flee, just as some Jews fled Germany and occupied countries during WW2. If you've got a source for that I'd love to see it, neither Google nor ChatGPT seem to agree. Please first tell me what kind of evidence you would consider sufficient, otherwise you’ll just dismiss whatever I present. I don’t know why I’d dismiss it, I’m not a shill for the Ottoman Empire and am interested in history. Any documentation from a historical record? Contemporary news articles? I couldn't easily find evidence that Armenians were explicitly allowed to escape, however it’s widely acknowledged that many were spared, especially those in Constantinople. Even the genocide deniers use this to argue against genocidal intent: "... certain groups of Armenians were spared, which proponents argue proves there was no systematic effort to exterminate the Armenian people." (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Armenian_genocide_denial) Your are using an argument similar to the repugnant logic of Holocaust deniers. They use claims that Germany could have easily killed Jews /even faster/ as an argument to claim that they didn't commit genocide /at all/. It's a ridiculous argument. The Nazis went through a LOT of effort and resources to gather Jews from all the corners of Europe, and even more effort into exterminating them as fast as they could, within the logistical and economic constraints of fighting a 3 front war. There's no comparison at all to the ease with which Israel could just drop a couple of bombs on Gaza, had it decided to do so. The only thing stopping Israel from doing that is international outrage. Israel is entirely dependent on its benefactor states like the US and, while it pushes the limits to the extreme, must at least contend with world opinion. That's like me saying you're a murderer, but you just haven't killed anyone yet because you're afraid of going to jail. Maybe it's true, but it's a bit of a silly argument, isn't it? In western society, we judge people based on their actions. Israel has murdered tens of thousands of people. Your argument doesn't hold. That’s not what murder means. They were attacked by a government and went to war. They've murdered tens of thousands of civilians. Israelis literally killed an entire NICU of infants. You seem to be ignoring the retaliation that would be enacted at a drop of a couple of those bombs. The fact that I just spent five minutes thinking about it proves that it's not ridiculous at all. The scale is different (so far), but I’m not convinced there’s a qualitative difference. Most people spend more than five minutes a day thinking about things that are ridiculous. Do you? I don't think I do. Unproductive, sure, but not ridiculous. You literally just did. So I guess your point is that other people think about things that you consider ridiculous. I don't dispute that. It's because you're deeply ignorant about the subject. Anyone can think ridiculous thoughts in complete ignorance. Try reading a history book about the holocaust, or even just WW2, and you'll see just how ridiculous you sound. Huh? If the Nazis could have killed all the Jews faster, they would have. They sought to eliminate Jews all throughout Europe. I’ve never heard this argument, but it’s unintelligent and I am not making it. The existence of camps where jews and other "undesirables" were kept for long periods of time disproves this entirely. The Nazi's were not trying to speed run the process. They were systematically eliminating people. That's why it's a genocide and not a series of massacres. I would suggest sticking with the definition of genocide instead of coming up with your own convenient version. You're just showing your ignorance. The Nazis killed the majority of their victims as soon as they arrived in the camp. They kept 20%-30%, mostly men who could work, to be used as slaves for their military industry, and they eliminated everyone else. They developed gassing especially in order to speed up the killing and make it more economical. It was a genocide because they tried to eliminate a specific ethnic group, for no other reason than its ethnicity. You should go learn more about the subject, if it interests you so much. It doesn’t interest them. People who think what Israel is doing is anything like what the Nazis did have had their brain washed clean by anti-Semitic propaganda. It’s smooth as a volleyball in there, facts don’t matter. “Your honor and members of the jury: my client could have easily committed way worse crimes!” How is long term ethnic cleansing different from genocide? Ethnic cleansing is the attempt to remove a people from the area. It can be accomplished by methods other than killing. Genocide is an attempt to kill them all. The Venn diagram has a lot of overlap for sure but they are not the same. > If genocide were the goal this war would have lasted one day. You can't infer intent that way. Nuking Gaza isn't free, it would introduce an existential threat to Israel. They are toeing a dangerous line already, and using WMDs would align other countries against them really quickly. Putin isn't avoiding using nukes on Ukraine because he's a nice guy. They have remotely guided bulldozers and enough non-nuclear weapons to do the job several times over conventionally too though. Why does israel use expensive precise munitions wherever possible rather than their stockpiles of much more deadly "dumb" ones? maybe because they are trying to act ethically toward a murderous neighbor that is conducting asymmetric warfare and those are the best tools to accomplish that. or, maybe because they came to the conclusion that the repercussions on the world stage of even more horrific media coming out of Gaza is too steep of a price to pay. i don't know which, but i do know it is naive to conclude that because they COULD end the war in a day and did not, they are driven by morality and ethical concerns rather than pragmatic ones. I didn’t say they were driven by morality, though I’m sure they are more so than Hamas. I just think what they’re doing is ethnic cleansing (which is not a compliment) rather than genocide. I’m actually pretty sure that most of the people who call it by “genocide” don’t know the difference between the two. Expensive for whom? US taxpayers? because it would be admitting to the world that it has said weapons. Israel has always said it doesn't have nuclear weapons. They would have absolutely zero sympathy going forward from any major nation if they decided to drop a nuclear bomb on Gaza, and they want that land so rendering that land uninhabitable might not be a good idea. The argument conveniently always goes such that Israel is the baddie. Curious how that goes, especially since Israels ulterior motives are always implied, they're not taken by their word. And Islamists, who share their motives openly with anyone willing to listen are ignored. Genocide was literally in Hamas’s charter and yet somehow they’re the good guys because modern leftists can’t think past “colonialism bad”. I never said they were the good guys. Fuck Hamas. But let's not equate an inexperienced group of starved and impoverished guerilla fighters with a first-world, nuclear-armed genocidal ethnostate. by dumb munitions I mean older bombs vs JDAM and alike. Anyone who seriously speaks words 'nuclear weapon' and 'gaza' together is basically admitting he has 0 clue about the situation and is uninformed larper for either side. Yes, there is a long term effort by the State of Israel to remove Palestinian life from Palestinian land. The term "genocide" noes not mean "kill every single member of a group", it refers to the destruction of the group itself by whatever means. > you’re just repeating what you read unthinkingly if you say genocide. Your policy of deeming everybody who does not have the same opinion as you to be too stupid, is smug, self serving and lazy. See, I could just also go ahead and tell you that you are too "unthinkingly" to know that "ethnic cleansing" is a euphemism for "genocide" and that "long term ethnic cleansing" is exactly congruent in meaning with "genocide" (look it up). Instead of doing that, I would like you to consider that when I say that the state of Israel is committing a genocide against the Palestinian people, I have thought long and hard about whether that is the appropriate term, and without taking it lightly, I have for myself concluded that that is actually the correct term. why is this flagged ? I'll give you the "party line" (i.e. best-effort understanding of HN-moderators perspective) for why articles like this are frequently flagged: 1) The entire discussion is a rehashing of the exact same points every time the topic is posted, and not very insightful 2) The participation rate for experts (or even authors) in the discussed field/topic is very low (compared to programming topics) 3) The discussion rarely stays civil and requires excessive moderation An observation (have no verbatim quote, but believe from dang) is that there is a significant base of "anti-political", otherwise "known-good" HN participants, that flag topics like this preemptively pretty much regardless of perspective and exact topic (presumably for above reasons). You can certainly still blame the flagging on bots or Zionists, but it's almost certainly not only those. You left out the parts about how and when we turn flags off, about how a certain amount of political overlap is both necessary and inevitable, but that it also can't be too much. All of those are important factors, and I've posted many explanations of them: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so... https://hn.algolia.com/?query=flags%20off%20turn%20by%3Adang... We can't, however, turn off flags on threads we don't know about. You guys (I don't mean you personally!) unintentionally assume that we're omniscient. We aren't, so we need people to tell us about cases like this. In this case, no one told us; I ran across it randomly. Randomness is only good for partial results. For reliable message delivery, someone needs to email hn@ycombinator.com, and please remember that it takes time to work through that (er) rather active inbox. I literally can’t say anything pro humanity without it being flagged even if it hints negativity towards Israel. Can you remember any pro-Israeli posts you turned flags off for since the October 7 attack? I can't remember virtually anything - this is not a joke - having one's brain be sandblasted by the firehose every day turns memory into a dodgy thing (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...). I believe there have been some, though not as many. That's largely a function of the submission feed, i.e. which articles the community submits, upvotes, or flags. All we can do is respond case-by-case, and we try to do that in a principled way. The principles we apply (or try to) have been explained many times and can be found via https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so... and links from those comments. If you feel like the submission feed and/or the moderation decisions on top of it are biased, all I can tell you is that everyone feels that way, especially on any topic they are passionate about. You needn't look far for examples of commenters complaining that we're suppressing and censoring the Gaza story - there are some in this thread. What I feel a lot more confident talking about, in terms of balanced moderation, is the comments. We've moderated, warned, and banned many accounts for breaking the site guidelines while posting anti-Israeli (and sometimes even anti-semitic) comments, and we'll continue to do that. That's something we take very seriously, and of course, we do the same the other way round as well. Thanks for the answer (and what seems to be unflagging the comment). Having some experience moderating (of course, much smaller) communities I understand it's impossible to keep everyone satisfied. I, of course, can't judge the intent or the effort. What I can say is that I read all captions of 150+ votes submission, rarely skipping any, and I saw 20+ pro-Palestine ones and zero pro-Israeli ones. I think this is quite objective measure. At some point I thought it might be intentional but now I think it is just bias amplification: these submission are flagged too fast and upvoted too slow to get anywhere. Coincidentally, I just used hn.algolia to look up one of your old comments where you describe being sandblasted, and was surprised to find the most recent use of "sandblasted" on HN is by you, linking to an algolia search of you saying "sandblasted". Thank you sincerely for your sacrifice, Dan. Whenever I have an urge to flame, I picture my impending comment as one more grain of sand speeding towards your cranium, and instead I step away from the keyboard. Can you point to any pro-Israeli posts on HN since October 7, flagged or not? They don’t get flagged though. Yes they are, just like the comment you answered to will. This is such a garbage assessment. I have don't see post of pro-Israel companies and startups that fund/enable this massacre being flagged for political content? What is this facade of impartialness and too much politics? Tell that to the people massacred. > there is a significant base of "anti-political", otherwise "known-good" HN participants, that flag topics like this preemptively pretty much regardless of perspective I'm always sceptical of this given it doesn't happen to similar posts about Iran. What are you talking about? Iran topics get flagged at least as often as Gaza (in proportion to the amount to posts on the topic). https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46599742 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46849715 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46553599 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46839106 > 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. This is most certainly not something that is covered on TV news. Seems on topic to me. I think it also touches on issues of interest to the hn crowd (it's being reported on a YC-incubated platform!), and one especially unique things about the reporting is the spatial reconstruction of the scene, which is not a degree of detail you typically get, and limits the number of variations of interpretations possible. I also think issues of censorship are very high on the list of topics of interest on HN and few topics are subject to more extensive censorship than reporting on events in Israel and Palestine. Israel and Palestine is one of the most obsessively covered topics in every form of western media. All the more the reason it doesn’t belong on HN. I’ll grant that there’s a tech angle to this specific story, but past experience with such articles on HN is that they reliably devolve into endless repetition of fixed talking points on each side. No useful information or opinion is conveyed, just endless insinuation and infective. Furthermore, there are handful of accounts who sole purpose seems to be to pump the HN feed full of Israel and Palestine. People who want so badly to talk about a single political topic should probably go to Bluesky. I agree that Bluesky is a great place to go into more depth about it, and in many respects a better place than HN to get good discussion. But I think there's equivocation going on here. Framing it as "obsessive" is an attempt to shift away from subject matter toward an attitude of journalists or consumers, like it's borne of the same attitude as paparazzi. But I think it merits significant coverage not for that reason, but because it so frequently meets criteria for meriting journalistic attention. I agree that comment sections can be bad, but they aren't always, and to some degree I would rather trust moderation than suppress reporting on a topic of legitimate interest. You're exactly right that a lot of reaction is toxic and politicized, and sometimes the way that manifests is by trying to cook up rationales to suppress stories by flagging them. Out of respect for the concern you've identified, it would be a huge mistake to let politicization win by allowing politically motivated abuse of flagging. The forensic reconstruction to this level of detail is novel and interesting, both for the methods deployed and for the likelihood that the half-life of unsolved war crimes appears to be decreasing. @dang any explanation for this being flagged? Am I still allowed to ask why the moderators don't want people to read and discuss this particular technology story? (@dang doesn't work. I only saw this randomly.) Your question is answered here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47141443, but the short version is that your assumption that we see everything is incorrect. I also would appreciate knowing if the mods see this. I'm worried that flagging is possibly automated and vulnerable to campaigning. We eventually saw it, but only randomly. In case you didn't see them yet, here are some of my other comments in this thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47141443 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47141678 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47141517 Re the concern about flagging, the situation is much as I've described in these past threads: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que.... Specifically, when I looked through who had flagged the current post, I saw the usual coalition between users who appear to be consistently flagging for political reasons, and other users who have quite different flagging patterns than that. In any case, virtually all of the accounts that flagged the thread were established HN users. Sometimes when people bring this concern up, I go through and make a list of other stories that the same accounts had flagged, to illustrate the point that their flags are not exclusively targeting one specific topic or vector. I've done that here in a collapsed reply, if anyone wants to take a look. I hope this explanation helps - your posts in this thread seemed to me to be in good faith so I wanted to respond in kind. If you still have a question that my comments and links to past explanations haven't answered, I'd be happy to take a crack at it. Here are some stories that flaggers of this submission also flagged. I have no idea why, except for the handful of obvious spam, but it illustrates the point I made in the parent comment. The rise and fall of peer review - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47123133 - Feb 2026 (0 comments) Ladybird adopts Rust, with help from AI - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47120899 - Feb 2026 (692 comments) Pope tells priests to use their brains, not AI, to write homilies - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47119210 - Feb 2026 (440 comments) Music Discovery - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47114672 - Feb 2026 (56 comments) The 7-Year Bug That Took 3 Minutes to Fix - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47090261 - Feb 2026 (1 comment) AI made coding more enjoyable - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47075400 - Feb 2026 (97 comments) RFC 3092 – Etymology of “Foo” (2001) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46934499 - Feb 2026 (52 comments) Launching My Side Project as a Solo Dev: The Walkthrough - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46845567 - Feb 2026 (9 comments) There is an AI code review bubble - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46766961 - Jan 2026 (249 comments) Proof of Corn - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46735511 - Jan 2026 (307 comments) XLibre XServer 25.1 Changes - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46474846 - Jan 2026 (4 comments) Python Data Science Handbook - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46120611 - Dec 2025 (61 comments) NTSB Preliminary Report – UPS Boeing MD-11F Crash [pdf] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45995834 - Nov 2025 (228 comments) Best shipping logistic aggregator in India - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45924139 - Nov 2025 (0 comments) WebDAV isn't dead yet - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45698070 - Oct 2025 (128 comments) Unicode Footguns in Python - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45689443 - Oct 2025 (20 comments) AGI is not imminent, and LLMs are not the royal road to getting there - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45627171 - Oct 2025 (124 comments) Super Ace: Your PH Home for Jili Slots and a 300% Welcome Bonus - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45624939 - Oct 2025 (0 comments) Pkgbase Removes FreeBSD Base System Feature - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44730021 - July 2025 (42 comments) As always, thanks for the transparency. It seems that people, even "established HN users" will flag literally anything. Do you feel that there is any remaining article quality signal that can be obtained from the current flagging mechanism? If the above list gives the mistaken impression that flagging is basically random, that's an artifact of the way I cherry-picked the list. The flagging system has problems, for sure, but it's a vital part of how HN's system functions. If you squint and look closely, though, I think you can detect this in the above list. The weirdest "wtf?" cases of flagging are ones where the threads had a lot of comments and were on the frontpage. That means upvotes won the tug-of-war with flags, as they should have in most of those cases. Conversely, it you look at the submissions in the list which had 0 comments or very few, it looks to me like most were either spam, low-quality articles, or dupes. Remember, also, that some flags are just mistakes - the link is easy to fat-finger or misclick, and the UI doesn't provide feedback about that. That's likely to change soon as part of work that tomhow and I are planning. I know I'm changing the goal posts here, but out of that list, while the articles' quality does vary, I don't see much (or any) rulebreaking, besides https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45924139 and https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45624939 Are you saying that flaggers flag things that shouldn't be flagged? If so, I agree, of course. That sort of flag is usually outweighed by other variables though. Real shame this got flagged so quickly, too. This is prime HN material. this is prime material for HN to flag... Is there an HN but for anarchists? Or maybe just anti-authoritarians? There's 4chan but for leftists (leftypol) and there's reddit for leftists (lemmy or raddle). I'd also argue Mastodon is kind of twitter for leftists/hackers Yeah but I want the tech slant as well. I guess something like Chaos Computer Club? Though I don’t know too much about them. Besides, leftypol, the other 3 I mentioned already have a heavy bias towards techies. Plenty of tech+privacy related sub communities on raddle/lemmy and lots of tech-related mastodon instances The Atlantic? I kid. I really mean Al-Jazeera. There are no anti-authoritarian news outlets in Qatar, for obvious reasons. Of course, that's because Qatar actually is an authoritarian state, unlike the US. It hasn't stopped Al-Jazeera from challenging the authority of other nations or claiming that they are authoritarian. Pot, meet kettle and all that. I think The Atlantic is actually pretty close to the mark. Committed, hardcore ideologues frequently turn out to be authoritarian, even if they refer to themselves as "anarchists". Most of these ideologues are busy administering ever more stringent purity tests to anyone they encounter lest someone in their vicinity commit wrongthink. There is a name for people who build coalitions through compromise and diplomacy, and work towards pragmatic solutions to actual problems — they're called "centrists". During times of great strife, centrists are also known as “enablers”. Fence sitting only works until you realize that the Overton window has shifted a field away from the fence on which you’ve been sitting. If we can't flag it, make it disappear from the front page. Collectively done via Israel's RiseApp and similar. No, its not. And I gladly flagged it. Redirects set to: talk.politics.misc. > No, it’s not. And I gladly flagged it.
> Redirects set to: talk.politics.misc. So you don’t think anyone should discuss topics that touch on politics, including this war, on HN? Isn't this a tech news site? Did you click on the link? It's a pretty amazing technological investigation. Even just technologically it's more interesting than 90% of the stuff posted here. Isn't mass murder of civilians the most Israeli thing ever? For those out of the loop, this isn't an anomaly. It's a societal-level policy: 47% of Israeli Jews want all Palestinians killed; 82% want all Palestinians forcefully expelled (i.e., ethnically cleansed) [0] which would constitute genocide. 56% want the same for all Israeli Arabs. So, it's pathetic when Westerners act surprised at Israel's antics: you can't support a genocidal state and then be shocked when it does genocidal stuff. This is just Tuesday for them. Once you understand this, Israel's actions are not an anomaly. It's the natural expression of people who consider their neighbors beneath them, and barely even human. [0]: https://www.genocidewatch.com/single-post/poll-show-most-jew... Things are in terrible state in the world. Gaza exposed it even more: * No one accepts high western "morality" anymore * Most US politicians are blackmailed via Epstein who worked for Israel, with high probability, including Trump * ICE is just the beginning, they're trained by IDF, send more people and 1940 is not too far away from us >Most US politicians are blackmailed via Epstein ??? Most? His network was certainly extensive but "most politicians" seems like a significantly overextended extrapolation. I wouldn’t point to Epstein, but there is a very powerful lobby that will protect the image of any Israeli government. A lot of Evangelicals also consider Israel important in bringing about the apocalypse, without which they can’t access eternal life. I wish I was kidding on that last one, but there are people actively trying to bring down civilisation so they can go to heaven. Need source for the last one? Sadly I don’t. ICE is not trained by the IDF?? Not Israel, but Russia - good old KGB honeytrap. The russian bots are here too downvoting? Great. > * No one accepts high western "morality" anymore Is that an accurate trend on an individual basis? Travel to Middle East, some parts of Africa and China, ask what people think. Most say have similar opinion that west is not "morally" superior. South America as well, in particular with regard to the US. Too many coups and sponsorship of military dictatorships will do that. Travel to anywhere, anywhere at all, ask people if they consider themselves morally superior ... Well, in this case, they are correct suuure I think when people say "West", they automatically think US and UK - and given their war crimes in recent history, you do get this sentiment, yes. I suspect, however, that this view has exacerbated and now includes other "western" countries that are silent/complicit in current horrific war crimes.
https://www.counterfire.org/article/cold-blooded-murder-and-... Detainees executed, unarmed civilians killed in their sleep, a child, handcuffed and shot, all covered up by the chain of command – this is the testimony of more than 30 eyewitnesses, former members of UK Special Forces ... Panorama – Special Forces: I Saw War Crimes ... reported a series of cold-blooded murders by UK military personnel in Iraq and Afghanistan over a period of ten years, followed by years of official cover-up.
"The Israeli tank commander who has fought in one of the Syrian wars is the best engineering executive in the world. The tank commanders are operationally the best, and are extremely detail oriented. This is based on twenty years of experience — working with them and observing them."
Eric Schmidt (Start-up Nation / Saul Singer et al / pg. 41)
This comment would depress a highschool history teacher. Are the US currently illegally occupying large parts of Mexico
