Palestinian boy, 12, describes how Israeli forces killed his family in car

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c70n2x7p22do

by tartoran • 4 months ago

1256 186 4 months ago

bbc.com

zingley• 4 months ago

* * *

bhouston4• 4 months ago

My understanding if you read the Israeli news articles is that the justification is that the car was going fast:

https://www.timesofisrael.com/israeli-forces-kill-west-bank-...

Given that the IDF involved were undercover agents (according to the reports), it seems unlikely that this family knew that driving fast would get them killed.

oa3354• 4 months ago

From the article, an eyewitness account:

He told us the family car had just turned left into his street, facing uphill, and had come to a complete halt before any shots were fired, contradicting the Israeli army account. I asked if he had heard any warnings given by the Israeli forces, or any warning shots fired. "No, nothing," he said. "The firing directly targeted the car. I just heard the woman in the car screaming. The little kids were crying before they were killed."

Stevvo• 4 months ago

Indeed. Often one of the key details omitted is that Israel has been illegally occupying the west bank since 1967 as part of an apartheid regime.

Daishiman• 4 months ago

The BBC had a literal Israeli officer as the head of their Middle East department. https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/high-court-rules-favour-j...

monegator2• 4 months ago

If anything, it's refreshing to see something that isn't about the latest apple / llm / current techbro trend bullshit

pipes• 4 months ago

I can go to Reddit for that.

layer83• 4 months ago

You can go to Reddit for everything. There’s even r/hackernews.

handfuloflight• 4 months ago

You can also not click on links you are not interested in. Is that difficult?

monegator2• 4 months ago

nah, leddit can collapse any day and i would not even notice.

bhouston4• 4 months ago

For those wondering, it is verifiable story, it is covered as fact in Israeli newspapers:

https://www.timesofisrael.com/israeli-forces-kill-west-bank-...

https://www.ynetnews.com/article/p7mq5k5bs

The main justification floated is that the car was "going fast" and thus made the undercover Israeli soldiers feel unsafe.

The New York Times describes it as such:

"Ali Bani Odeh’s wife and four young boys hadn’t seen him in a month and a half when he came home to Tammun, in the West Bank, from his construction job in Israel late on Friday to spend the last few days of Ramadan with his family.

On Saturday night, the boys persuaded him to take them out for a drive. Eid al-Fitr, the end of Ramadan, was coming, so there were new clothes to buy. The day’s fast had been broken, so there were sweets to be had, too.

They picked up fried doughnut holes in Tubas, saving them for later, but the clothing shop they went to in Nablus was closed. It was already past midnight, so they headed back to Tammun: Khaled, 11, the oldest, in the back with Mustafa, 8, and Muhammad, 5. Othman, 6, blind and incapable of walking or feeding himself, was in his mother’s lap in front.

As they rounded a corner slowly, a few minutes from home, young Khaled and Mustafa recounted on Sunday, their mother, Waad, 35, asked her husband to pull over and take Othman from her so she could get something from her bag on the floor. Suddenly, the boys said, they saw laser pointers shining on their family from every direction, heard their mother scream, heard their father say “God is great” — and then heard a deafening fusillade of gunfire."

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/03/15/world/middleeast/palestin...

jll29• 4 months ago

A certain amount of politics should/must be tolerated on HN, because you cannot compartmentalize technology, politics and morality.

No-one, not even people who say they like technology but do not care about politics, should be able to live their life wihtout knowing that we live in a world where six-year old blind children are murdered with automatic assault rifles.

(For the same reason that no-one should be able to live not knowing that jewish once were murdered in the millions in gas chambers.)

oulipo24• 4 months ago

Technology IS politics.

Technology is a form of control. And in the capitalist system, this control is mostly exerted by private companies, on which the rules of democracy do not apply.

There must be guardrails

wk_end2• 4 months ago

The situation in the West Bank (and similar forces are at play in Gaza, too) remind me of what's wrong with American policing, at a far more extreme scale.

The people charged with enforcing the peace deploy lethal force with near impunity at the slightest "provocation" (a child throwing a stone, a car driving too fast); I wouldn't be surprised if IDF forces deployed to the West Bank are trained much like American police officers are, to operate in constant fear and perceive absolutely everything and everyone as a deadly threat to be neutralized. The soldiers themselves are raised in a culture with deeply racist undertones, making them all too ready to view any random Palestinian as a terrorist. Meanwhile, the bureaucracy that should be overseeing them works only to protect them. It's no surprise that things like this happen as often as they do.

Reform in the US is imaginable, I can and do believe, but it's much harder for me to imagine it in Israel - even much of the so-called left in Israel is too radicalized against Palestinians after 100 years of conflict, the Second Intifada, and October 7.

C6JEsQeQa5fCjE• 4 months ago

I wouldn't be surprised if IDF forces deployed to the West Bank are trained much like American police officers are

IDF trains them.

https://www.amnestyusa.org/blog/with-whom-are-many-u-s-polic...

ryandrake• 4 months ago

That's a huge problem (immediate, unjustified escalation to violence becoming the norm) and:

The main justification floated is that the car was "going fast" and thus made the undercover Israeli soldiers feel unsafe.

"I feel unsafe" has become the catch-all excuse for everything in the recent decade. It's used to justify everything from Karen complaining about someone's behavior in public to people calling the cops on someone for looking at them wrong, to making a scene on a public bus, to police officers jumping the gun and escalating to violence, all the way to war crimes. When did "I feel unsafe" become this ultimate i-can-do-anything-and-avoid-responsibility card? Like a magic spell that you can cast before doing something crazy. It's like that old "He's coming right for us" South Park joke, but instead of being a joke it has real life and death consequences.

dustractor• 4 months ago

I wouldn't be surprised if IDF forces deployed to the West Bank are trained much like American police officers are'

American police officers ARE trained much like IDF forces. By the IDF! https://jinsa.org/jinsa_program/homeland-security-program/

6510• 4 months ago

Their media is non stop hammering the citizen with scary Muslim stories since the beginning of the country, every day since birth, with a density as if nothing else ever happened in the world.

Deprogramming is possible. Just tell them it is impossible to argue it was their own idea. They know how hard it was rubbed in their face.

DiogenesKynikos• 4 months ago

The IDF is a foreign occupation army, not the police.

At least in the US, the police come from much the same communities as they patrol, and there's some sort of democratic accountability. Don't like the police? You can vote for local government candidates who will implement reforms.

In the West Bank, Palestinians are subject to arbitrary violence at the hands of foreign soldiers. The IDF is not there to protect Palestinians. It's there to protect the Israeli settlers who are taking Palestinian land. If Palestinians don't like how the IDF behaves, tough luck. Palestinians can't vote in Israeli elections, so they have zero say in the government that exercises ultimate authority over their lives.

This is a fundamentally different situation from policing in the US.

igonvalue• 4 months ago

I'm wondering about the broader context here: Are stories like this rare or common? Are they increasing or decreasing in frequency?

bhouston4• 4 months ago

Yeah it is getting worse. This was written 3 days ago before this event by Human Rights Watch:

https://www.hrw.org/news/2026/03/13/in-the-shadow-of-war-set...

jazz9k• 4 months ago

"The main justification floated is that the car was "going fast" and thus made the undercover Israeli soldiers feel unsafe."

Funny way of saying trying to run someone over.

alashow• 4 months ago

I just know what type of person you are from this comment

oa3354• 4 months ago

An eyewitness account from the article:

(The eyewitness) told us the family car had just turned left into his street, facing uphill, and had come to a complete halt before any shots were fired, contradicting the Israeli army account. I asked if he had heard any warnings given by the Israeli forces, or any warning shots fired. "No, nothing," he said. "The firing directly targeted the car. I just heard the woman in the car screaming. The little kids were crying before they were killed."

itsangaris4• 4 months ago

I see people saying this story doesn't belong on HN. genuine question, if this story were about a german national would it be considered as political? is palestinian existence inherently more political than other peoples' existence?

dijit2• 4 months ago

I'll bite: If for any reason, probably because it's neither technically interesting nor entrepreneurial in nature.

US Politics seems to get more of a pass, probably due to Silicon Valley being there (and nearly all the major tech outlets), similarly some China news gets a pass, also largely when it relates to supply chain and Taiwan.

MisterTea• 4 months ago

US Politics seems to get more of a pass,

This goes beyond US politics. The US and Israel do not exist in a bubble. This conflict can and will have big repercussions which will impact our technical and entrepreneurial institutions.

polski-g• 4 months ago

News not connected to technology or VC doesn't belong on HN.

itsangaris4• 4 months ago

is that an opinion or a consistently enforced policy?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45202200 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47136179 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46543457

twiclo• 4 months ago

From the guidelines:

What to Submit On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity. Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, or celebrities, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic.

If the story was about a German national then yes, I would still say this is political and doesn't gratify my intellectual curiosity.

haunter• 4 months ago

I'm saying this as someone who doesn't really care about this certain topic:

Either we allow _all_ political content or nothing.

The HN guidelines are incredibly grey and handwave-y

Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, or celebrities, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic.

To me HN became to big for its own good since the Covid days. It's like the reddit front page except there are no subs with mods but one big flood (basically /r/all).

If I got to /r/linux, /r/selfhosted/, /r/networking/ or other tech subs I'll probably find what I saw on HN 15 years ago. But less and less here.

itsangaris4• 4 months ago

bingo

crote• 4 months ago

Banning all political content means banning all mention of open-source software, self-driving cars, anything involving a Big Tech company, anything concerning AI, anything to do with EU or US legislation, anything involving hacking or right to repair, anything about copyright...

Ban all politics, and you ban >99% of HN content. Heck, the very concept of HN itself is political!

lenkite• 4 months ago

What about AI slop causing the Iranian school-children strike ? US military confirmed that they are using AI to identify targets and provide coordinates. Will you ban that because its "politics" ?

_DeadFred_• 4 months ago

Every time these sorts of articles get posted people that express a differing opinion from the standard get flagged (making it so you can't read their post at all) pretty quickly making it seem more like the intention isn't to start discussion. It seems like it's gotten to the point that the people that just get flagged into oblivion stopped trying to post.

layer83• 4 months ago

FWIW, you can read flagged posts and comments by turning on “showdead” in your profile.

iinnPP• 4 months ago

It's not just these articles. Having any differing opinions on basically anything now.

It's as far from hacking interest as it gets for me.

avazhi• 4 months ago

I wouldn't care about it being a German or American or Chinese national any more than I care about it being a family of Palestinians, and more importantly it wouldn't belong on HN in any of those cases.

This has nothing to do with tech, isn't something hackers would find interesting, and doesn't satisfy intellectual curiosity, end of story. It's generic run of the mill nightly news slop that I could get from literally anywhere else if I wanted to waste my time reading/watching uninteresting news that doesn't affect me.

beepbooptheory• 4 months ago

Reminder that whatever you think, war, terrorism, questions of "the right/wrong target," etc are all insperable from AI and technology these days. These soldiers were where they were for concrete reasons dictated across vast automated networks; their choices of engagement are insperable from the tools either side (army and occupied population to be clear) here has or is perceived to have. War is simply many different "user stories," to put it coldly, and there is ethical and/or practical reasons, as technologists/scientists/academics, to see it that way (even if the goal is to just know thy enemy).

This is all why Anthropic is now a "supply-chain risk", why Thiel and Musk are particularly powerful persons-qua-tech-CEOs, why embedded microcontrollers getting so cheap (or whatever) enables drones instead of suicide bombs.

ahf8Aithaex7Nai• 4 months ago

I am German. My government does not acknowledge the tragedy that has been unfolding in Gaza since the Hamas attack in October 2023. It’s absurd. Since then, Jewish people in Berlin who were demonstrating alongside Palestinians against the war in Gaza have been beaten down by the German police. In 2021, Esther Bejarano, the last survivor of the Auschwitz Girls’ Orchestra, passed away in Hamburg. Whenever she commented on the culture of remembrance, the media was eager to report on it. Whenever she commented on the situation of the Palestinians, it was not reported in the media. People sometimes ask how it was possible that the vast majority of so-called ordinary people in this country back then could simply tolerate these crimes against Jews and look the other way. Now that should be clear to everyone. The Max Planck Institute in Rostock estimates that well over 100,000 people have been killed in Gaza. But nobody here gives a damn (at least not publicly). We’re even supplying weapons there. Everyone acts as if they’ve forgotten what was written in German newspapers about the current Israeli government when it took office, and as if there were no connection to what’s happening in Gaza right now. I am deeply and profoundly disappointed in the elected officials and public servants of my country. They have learned nothing from the atrocities committed by their grandfathers.

iwontberude• 4 months ago

It's even more insidious, I know activists in your country and they not only abhor the current support for Israel's genocide but they are terrified of their activism being criminalized under anti-nazi laws. How ironic.

olelele4• 4 months ago

I live in DE too, it's terrifying. I didn't realize the extent of the armaments shipped to Israel from Germany until recently.

The Israeli navy ships were built in German shipyards and subsidized 30%...

shdudns• 4 months ago

I find this bewildering. Im not German. Im not Israeli.

Yet I have known that Israel sails German subs (the best in the world) since.... the Greek financial crisis (the subs were part of the scandal) ? Certainly since the mid 2010s.

Why is this?

thot_experiment2• 4 months ago

It's terrifying everywhere, really shines a light on the insane levels of propaganda we live under. I don't really know what can be done about it, it's really just hard to wrap my head around living in a country that so explicitly and directly supports an ethnostate and their active genocide.

noworriesnate2• 4 months ago

Auschwitz Girls’ Orchestra

Is this something from the post-war or did that really exist?

layer83• 4 months ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women%27s_Orchestra_of_Auschwi...

“The Germans wanted a propaganda tool for [SS] visitors and camp newsreels and a tool to boost camp morale.”

There were also several men’s orchestras.

busterarm• 4 months ago

The last time I was in Berlin (2018), I was actually somewhat shocked by the amount of antisemitic graffiti that I saw just about everywhere (especially on lamp posts). Especially given the strictness of the laws against such speech.

riedel• 4 months ago

While I agree with you on the case of Esther Bejerano (a recent example from public broadcasting shows that her own communist beliefs and support for BDS are seemingly 'censored' [0]), I find the general situation complicated. Although it should be easy for any half intellectual being to contextualize the recent Israeli aggression by mentioning October 7, like you did, this is often not done. At the same time I think that the coverage of likely Israeli war crimes also happens in German media and I think nobody is looking away. Still Germany is the reason why the whole mess exists in the first place. I feel, that Germany, has quite some problems like many other countries to find it's role in a world where particularly the UN is failing and international law/human rights seem not enforcable.

[0] https://www.ndr.de/geschichte/koepfe/Esther-Bejarano-Das-Erb...

gorgolo• 4 months ago

Germany is the reason why the whole mess exists in the first place.

I think this is the most unfair thing about it; Germany might be the reason, but it’s not Germans paying the consequences. It’s not 70k dead Germans, but 70k dead Palestinians (a Semitic people).

I can understand thefeeling of wanting to make amends for their crimes, but they are making amends by now allowing a whole new genocide to occur, against a completely unrelated people.

mfru• 4 months ago

Same thing in Austria, everyone in mainstream politics basically ignores the topic and when pressured parrot something like "Israel has the right to defend itself" or "It is very complicated"

Repression against students and demonstrators is happening regularly

jiaosdjf5• 4 months ago

Germany is cucked, what Hitler did was outrageous and destroyed any rational ability for generations - and yes while I am heavily critical of Israel and the demonstrably true supremacy and nepotism they have created outside of Israel, I am strongly against the "rounding up of Anne Franks". Germany must now tread the difficult tightrope between standing up for themselves and going full-on loony right, and every time they fall they simply reset to loony left. This is why the establishment just puts their head in the sand.

ngcazz2• 4 months ago

The tragedy in Gaza, the tragedy in Srebrenica, the tragedy in Rwanda? Genocide is the word.

lucyjojo• 4 months ago

i am honestly puzzled as to why germans, with all the educations they have received during decades, are letting this rock as is. or maybe disillusioned would be a better term...

deaux2• 4 months ago

They have learned nothing from the atrocities committed by their grandfathers.

No no, they have learned from them. That's why they are the biggest backers of these new atrocities on the whole continent - they learned exactly how it's done.

perfmode• 4 months ago

It’s hard not to wonder whether better technology could someday help stop tragedies like this.

noumenon11112• 4 months ago

No. Better technology is only making it more efficient. We need better humanity, better morals, better policing of criminals in power.

delecti• 4 months ago

The Holocaust was built on IBM, the genocide in Gaza is built on Azure. Technology won't be on the side of stopping these tragedies.

itsangaris4• 4 months ago

nothing has changed https://www.972mag.com/lavender-ai-israeli-army-gaza/

gambiting• 4 months ago

Well, right now the "better technology" is Israel's use of the "Lavender" AI to designate people to kill because they are "likely" to be hamas supporters.

And yes, probably they could have used better technology to realize that people in the car are not a danger to them. But that would immply they actually want to avoid killing civilians instead of looking for any excuse to shoot them.

olelele4• 4 months ago

The israeli army are famous for their tech?

otikik• 4 months ago

That's misguided. Technology is a tool. Tools can be used for good or bad. The hammer that builds a hospital can also crack a skull open.

No, we need better people controlling the tools.

olelele4• 4 months ago

I have followed this conflict since Operation Cast Lead and the beginnings of the siege on Gaza.

Israel has been using enormous amounts of force against the Palestinian people since then, with death tolls of _at least_ 100 dead Palestinians for every dead Israeli.

For a very good account of life in Israel around the time of Cast Lead I recommend Guy Delisle, brilliant diary in comic form.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jerusalem:_Chronicles_from_the...

His partner was working for Doctors Without Borders, the Israeli Army refused to let them enter Gaza to help the people suffering under their bombardments.

quirk2• 4 months ago

[flagged]

surgical_fire• 4 months ago

[flagged]

tomhow2• 4 months ago

The same reason your inane question is on HN.

When disagreeing, please reply to the argument instead of calling names. "That is idiotic; 1 + 1 is 2, not 3" can be shortened to "1 + 1 is 2, not 3."

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

tomhow2• 4 months ago

Mainstream world news has a place on HN if it contains "significant new information", and as much as this site is primarily for curious conversation and gratifying intellectual curiosity, we don't want to pretend that horrific events like this aren't happening.

quirk2• 4 months ago

Horrific events happen almost every hour of every day. This is political, and the events that are upvoted are always from the same political perspective. If you don't see this, you're blind. But from my perspective, mods do see it, are ok with it, and that is unfortunate. There are few places left online without explicit political bias. HN used to be one of them.

drraah• 4 months ago

and your comment is flagged, as is mine. This article has no relevance to HN, just more political activism

jenders• 4 months ago

As was mine. HN: a place for technology (and Palestine)

xg152• 4 months ago

https://www.haaretz.com/west-bank/2026-03-16/ty-article/.pre...

urig• 4 months ago

As an Israeli, this is an inexcusable crime by IDF soldiers. Appallingly, I expect them to receive no punishment. My country's government is criminally racist.

ignoramous2• 4 months ago

IDF soldiers

Hopefully, such trigger-happy soldiers are in the minority.

oulipo24• 4 months ago

They are not. And they are incited by their hierarchy to commit more crimes, because they are not held accountable

forgotTheLast• 4 months ago

It's hard to claim ""bad apples"" when the top brass acquits soldiers who get caught on camera sexually abusing a prisoner and instead prosecutes the whistleblower for leaking evidence of the crime.

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cm2xrz71zm3o

morgengold• 4 months ago

I have no doubt isreali forces are responsible for a lot of war crimes. At the same time i see how one they cannot think and feel clearly anymore if your neighbours dream constantly about your elimination. All sides just need to stop with that hatred. It leads to so much pain.

wreath• 4 months ago

i see how one they cannot think and feel clearly anymore if your neighbours dream constantly about your elimination. All sides just need to stop with that hatred. It leads to so much pain.

I think by now we all know this is a straw man, considering the disproportionate amount of power both parties have. There is absolutely no excuse left for what Israel has been doing in Gaza.

adrian_b• 4 months ago

This will never stop, because on both sides there are people who benefit from the existence of the conflict and they are the ones with power.

The last time when Israel had a PM who was willing to find a way for ending the conflict, he was murdered and replaced by those who want a perpetual conflict.

I have worked in Israel for some years, and the vast majority of people that I have encountered were very nice, but I have also seen a few that were definitely evil, and of course, the evil ones were concentrated in positions like the government or the management of companies.

Because most Israelis live in constant fear that if they would ever lose their technological and financial superiority their neighbors will come and cut their throats, when I was there, and I assume that also today, the majority of the population was exploited in a way that would not be possible in any other country.

Everybody had to work very hard, much harder than in any other country, and prioritize work over anything else, because this was a patriotic duty, like one might have worked in USA during WWII or in Ukraine today or in any country that is at war and its survival depends on how everyone works, except that in Israel the war has been continuous for three quarters of a century.

For the elites of the country this war economy is extremely desirable because they can demand any sacrifices from the workers, since those are supposedly not for increasing the profits of the company owners, but for ensuring the survival of the nation, and anyone who would not want to do what is required would be seen as a traitor.

For ending the conflict, it is not possible to just say that from tomorrow the parties in conflict should stop hating each other. Reparations would be necessary, like Israel itself has received plenty from Germany and other countries.

However, it is very unlikely that Israel will ever have a government willing to end the conflict, instead of keeping it alive as long as possible, to have something with which to scare the population.

burnt-resistor• 4 months ago

Even post Epstein revelations, Chomsky's core thesis in The Fateful Triangle from 1983 still holds. A minority of hateful, brutish war hawks and crazy people on all 3 sides perpetuate a never-ending cycle of violence. The challenge is removing them from power and holding them accountable.

hjkl0• 4 months ago

they cannot think and feel clearly anymore if your neighbours dream constantly about your elimination

This is the biggest lie of all.

Israeli Jews constantly dream about eliminating the Palestinian people. We talk about it openly and without shame.

We discuss pros and cons in terms of security, legality, world public opinion, etc. These are the only considerations. We don’t see any humanity there. We just need their land.

That said, it’s true that some Palestinians have dreams of defending themselves from us.

I believe they need all the help they can get.

poisonarena3• 4 months ago

Israeli Jews constantly dream about eliminating the Palestinian people. We talk about it openly and without shame.

We? speak for yourself loser

mattfrommars• 4 months ago

This is incredibly heart breaking, but unfortunately, in war, there are always casualties. This is the grim reality of war.

jakeinspace• 4 months ago

Wasn't aware Israel had declared war on the West Bank.

gravisultra2• 4 months ago

There is no war in the West Bank, this is ethnic cleansing.

noumenon11112• 4 months ago

"Ethnic cleansing" is such a nice word. "Etničko čišćenje" is what the Serb paramilitaries called raping and murdering a population to make them leave. "Remove kebab" as the later meme culture would call it. It's so trite, and a little funny it seems. We should call it what it is: *genocide*; thereby robbing the perpetrators of any semblance of cleanliness or propriety.

Monsters are filthy. Let's call them the filthy monsters they are.

shell0x• 4 months ago

I think the middle eastern conflicts are a tragedy. That said, this story does not belong on HN. As others called out this is a tech community and while there is sometimes an overlap with politics, it should at least be somewhat related like mass surveillance or AI being used for war.

HN is one of the most informative and least toxic communities and I’d appreciate if it would stay this way.

diego_moita• 4 months ago

and least toxic communities

Your comment sounds toxic to me. It endorses silence in face of a genocide.

We discussed a lot other wars here without immediate technological or economic consequences: Ukraine, Iraq, etc.

Why not the genocide in Gaza & West Bank?

oulipo24• 4 months ago

HN routinely talks about politics. Thinking that technology and politics can be understood in isolation is a pipe dream

Sparkle-san3• 4 months ago

At the same time, there must be a point where general humanity overrides community guidelines.

therealdrag0• 4 months ago

Why? Everyone has alternative news sources where they can find such stories, and there’s nothing new here. There’s always some tragedy that you could argue deserves more attention, I don’t think we should hold our guidelines hostage to pleas for the heart.

IncreasePosts• 4 months ago

Why does Gaza get 10x the coverage on HN and other social media well, when what has been happening in Sudan in the same time period is 10x worse?

(The 10x coverage number is from algolia hn search, the 10x worse number is from reported killings in the past year)

sreejithr• 4 months ago

Exactly! Don't bring politics into HN. Everyone and their dog have grievances. There's a time and place for them.

Ar-Curunir2• 4 months ago

Exactly, we shouldn’t waste the precious time of HNers so that they can instead… checks notes… read about the nth vibevcoded side project!

crawfordcomeaux• 4 months ago

The tech community props up these regimes by continuing to serve their tech needs. Everything is political in this day.

Toxic is saying politics needs to be kept separate. If we can't discuss how tech is literally fueling genocide, enslavement, and exploitation of people, then all other discussions tacitly serve those functions.

selcuka• 4 months ago

it should at least be somewhat related like mass surveillance or AI being used for war

Sure. Let's spin the story on developments in laser-guided sniper rifle accuracy:

Suddenly, the boys said, they saw laser pointers shining on their family from every direction, heard their mother scream, heard their father say “God is great” — and then heard a deafening fusillade of gunfire.

fud101• 4 months ago

I disagree with this. The tech bros building these dystopian systems for big paychecks need to be informed somehow, this is the best way to reach them. They do care what their peers think of them and if we can reach their conscious in between bouts of agentic blogs and vibe coded hopes and dreams, then that is what we should do.

proshno• 4 months ago

These are not even a isolated or a new pattern that Palestinian people are enduring such atrocities by the rogue israeli regime with full impunity from the western super powers. In fact, the Palestinian people have been suffering such oppression and injustice everyday at the hand of zionist society on a regular basis since 1948.

In fact, here are some more such equally horrible actions of the israelis just in the recent days that you may not find on the western media ever.

1. Either the illegal settlers or the israeli occupation force themselves set a Palestinian boy on fire in Ramallah: https://x.com/dillyhussain88/status/2033528694833127569

2. An israeli ran over a 6 years old in front of her home in Hebron while she was playing: https://x.com/anadoluagency/status/2033226719986069866

3. Another israeli settler deliberately ran his car over a Palestinian child in the Nablus: https://x.com/angeloinchina/status/2033402402062434589

Historically, the western news media have always downplayed or completely ignored the persecution of Palestinians at every cost. Now due to rise of social media and citizen journalism, the israeli and zionist atrocities are coming out every single day hundreds of times, causing the abysmal distrust in these media outlets across the globe. To salvage their credibility, the western media now picking up some stories here and there, yet use the very artistic and convoluted language not to damage the image of the rogue zionist regime as much as possible. Journalists with conscience, who could not take anymore such order from their bosses, kept resigning from these news outlets:

* The New York Times - Anne Boyer: The Pulitzer Prize-winning poetry editor for The New York Times Magazine resigned in November 2023. In her resignation letter, she wrote that she could no longer work for the publication amidst the "reasonable tones of those who aim to acclimatize us to this unreasonable suffering" and "verbally sanitized hellscapes."

- Jazmine Hughes: An award-winning staff writer for The New York Times Magazine resigned in November 2023 after signing an open letter by "Writers Against the War on Gaza." The outlet stated the signing violated its policies on public protest.

- Jamie Lauren Keiles: A frequent contributor and writer for the magazine also resigned in solidarity with Hughes after signing the same open letter.

* BBC (British Broadcasting Corporation) - Karishma Patel: A presenter and journalist who walked out of the BBC in October 2024. She later published an essay in The Guardian criticizing the broadcaster's "obstructive editorial policy" and its decision to shelf the documentary Gaza: Doctors Under Attack.

- Bassam Bounenni: A veteran North Africa correspondent for BBC Arabic resigned in October 2023. He announced his departure on social media, stating it was for the sake of his "professional integrity" regarding the coverage of the escalation in Gaza.

- Noah Abrahams: A freelance sports reporter for the BBC resigned in October 2023 in protest of the broadcaster's refusal to use the word "terrorist" to describe Hamas, highlighting the internal friction over language and terminology.

* Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) - Nour Haydar: A political reporter in the Canberra bureau resigned in early 2024. She cited concerns over the broadcaster's coverage of the Gaza conflict and its treatment of culturally diverse staff as primary reasons for her departure.

* Reuters - Valerie Zink: A Canadian photojournalist who resigned from Reuters in August 2025. She publicly denounced the agency's coverage as a "betrayal of journalists," specifically citing an instance where the outlet allegedly published unsubstantiated claims from the Israeli military to justify the killing of a Palestinian colleague.

js2125• 4 months ago

Did you have this pre written for HN or is this just AI slop?

plutokras• 4 months ago

Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, or celebrities, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

fennecbutt3• 4 months ago

Eh, tbh I've given up. Can't point out the terrible things that the IDF are up to without being labelled an apologist, or terrorist supporter, or just getting a massively negative reaction.

Now I'm not one to fall prey to the conspiracy theories around Judaism...but like...is it not possible to say that both hamas and the IDF do terrible things? And that innocent civilians are caught in between, with the usual bad faith reasons of "they were hiding hamas members" aka the exact same rhetoric that Russia used when accused of something terrible that they obviously did, deflection and formal outrage.

The very fact I feel I have to tread so carefully with my comment is an indication that something is seriously, seriously wrong. I don't live in China, I don't live in Russia. But when speaking about Israel or the IDF, I feel like I do.

bhouston4• 4 months ago

is it not possible to say that both hamas and the IDF do terrible things?

I agree. Hamas and IDF do terrible things - the ICC issued warrants for the leaders of both. This is why an external party has to impose a solution and it should involve in my opinion separation (two-states.) Both parties are radicalized at least for now and need to be separated and allowed to manage their own affairs while allowing the other to exist.

catlifeonmars2• 4 months ago

If you feel the need to temper your speech to avoid offending people you are using the wrong moral compass.

There are plenty of good reasons to speak carefully, thoughtfully and compassionately, but avoiding criticism is not a good reason.

fennecbutt3• 4 months ago

I'm not avoiding criticism, I'm avoiding very real legal repercussions by treading so lightly. Lest I get caught in the crossfire.

Traster2• 4 months ago

I feel something very similar. I have strong views that what Israel is doing is wrong. But I look around at our politics (in the UK), and there is such a well oiled Israeli PR operation that is very happy making career ending accusations that talking publicly about this is actually quite dangerous (Not helped by the loonies who are, and have always been disgusting anti-semites). And you look at our politician's stance on it - and the career of people like Lord Walney, and it's clear we're in a very dangerous place. I think there is a very wide gap between what the average British person actually believes about Israel and what is happening to the Palestinians, and the acceptable positions you can express in Westminster. I also fear that once the dam breaks, and it's no longer the case, that the swing back against Israel is going to be quick harsh, and that's difficult because I have friends and family in Israel - I would like to see Israel be a free and open liberal democracy that shares what used to be western values, but maybe we're too late for that.

ndbdkskk3• 4 months ago

Also to note UK is on massive rise in anti muslim sentiment in recent years. That also a major contribution

gljiva• 4 months ago

The scale of these atrocities and our governments' support are the reason why this story should be on HN. We elect people who support this, therefore it's only right it follows us and comes up often, even when it's not convenient. That "inconvenience" (skipping a story in HN feed every now and then) is nothing compared to the oppression our democracies support

jiaosdjf5• 4 months ago

Also there's barely a tech industry to talk about as our economy collapses through $100 oil and private equity backed destruction of our way of life - what else are we supposed to discuss now - it might as well be Israel.

tim3332• 4 months ago

The US economy will probably be ok. It's an oil exporter and the Apples and Nvidias are thriving.

nirushiv• 4 months ago

Sorry but this is so off topic. Does not belong here.

amelius2• 4 months ago

This wouldn't have happened if they didn't dehumanize their enemies. This should be considered a crime in itself.

Ar-Curunir2• 4 months ago

Who exactly are you blaming here, the IDF or the boys family?

amelius2• 4 months ago

Who pulled the trigger here?

alee08• 4 months ago

https://x.com/Imamofpeace/status/2033709979211886928

abcde666777• 4 months ago

Regarding rules of whether or not this should be posted here - I think it's less about whether it's important and more about whether it causes arguments.

As the saying goes, religion and politics.

People are going to have varying and at times oppositional views to things like this, and frankly the rest of the internet is often flooded with those discussions, so bubbles isolated from them can be a positive.

We don't need to mourn the woes of the world every hour of every day.

Traster2• 4 months ago

I was going to say I disagree, that I think that at least some level of discussion on HN about important things going on is important. Israel is actually a tech powerhouse and a lot of this is seriously shaping the defence technology policy and is telling a lot about how power dynamics actually can play out.

Having said that, my settings show me all comments that are flagged. HN is apparently not capable of having a respectful conversation about this. Almost anything expressed on the actual topic has been flagged. The only thing left are comments rules lawyering to say we shouldn't discuss the topic at all.

It's kind of an indictment of the users of HN. It might be the right move to remove the article, but it becomes the right move because the users of this site can't be trusted to actually conduct a conversation about it.

jiaosdjf5• 4 months ago

It shouldn't be on HN because it has nothing to do with tech and we come here to escape

It should be on HN because we are human and once in a while it is good to see human interest break through and calibrate the room

js2125• 4 months ago

This I came here to escape politics and the conflict. As a Jew there are not many places left on the internet for us to escape.

hersko• 4 months ago

A classic "HN is not for politics unless it is about Palestine" post.

karim79• 4 months ago

Imagine, this is just one of thousands upon thousands of incredibly tragic and similar stories of the last few years (going back much further than October 7th).

Most such stories never see the light of day. Hind Rajab is one such story which got some reasonable exposure [0]. I suppose this one will as well get due exposure at some point.

But the vast majority of similar atrocities will just vanish in the sands of time.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killing_of_Hind_Rajab

RuslanL2• 4 months ago

This is a side effect of using a guerilla terrorist tactics - normal people are start to be seen as "threat".

pickleglitch• 4 months ago

A side effect of brutal oppression is that it drives people to use guerilla terrorist tactics.

RuslanL2• 4 months ago

Yes, it is a downward spiral. How do you propose to stop it, assuming both parties want another one to disappear from reality, and see any compromise as weakness?

derelicta• 4 months ago

Remember; they are punishing Palestinian for wanting to be free and sovereign. To "LIVE FREE OR DIE" is definitively more than a motto to them.

js2125• 4 months ago

What does free mean? A state next to Israel?

jiaosdjf5• 4 months ago

This kid will grow up and fight, and I don't blame him. Gaza is a concentration camp, West Bank is an apartheid. These people have the audacity to bribe and threaten our governments to do their nationalist ethno-state bidding in one hand while pushing the narrative that the west must not have any identity or borders in the other. They fund PACs that threaten 80% of congress with "we'll front an opposition candidate and BTW 97% of them win". They fund NGOs who offload the people they don't want onto Europe and muddy the political waters allowing both far left and far right extremists to thrive. When TikTok woke the kids, they bought it. When Epstein died they fought tooth and nail to cover it up. Oil is $100, they do not understand the pure rage and anger they have dredged up.

ndbdkskk3• 4 months ago

May be they all should embrace "show the other cheek" and the suffering will stop

ngcazz2• 4 months ago

This is a joke right?

js2125• 4 months ago

Wtf is this Jew hate and why is it on HN?

dpc050505• 4 months ago

Jews aren't all zionists and it's perpetuating jewish hatred to pretend so.

jiaosdjf5• 4 months ago

I am jewish and I wrote this. If you think that's bad check out the entire state of political discourse across America and Europe - just don't look at the Middle East because you will be in for a shock

ndbdkskk3• 4 months ago

Hamas is the reason for all this. Palestine people will never forgive them

kome• 4 months ago

please...

dplesh2• 4 months ago

Sad story. War is sad. 2 countries in a war that cannot end otherwise. Its either Palestine or Israel unfortunately. Put your good will and emotions somewhere it can actually make a sensible difference guys

tovej3• 4 months ago

The West Bank is not part of the war (if you can even call the Gaza war a war, it's an extermination campaign, but still, people do call that a war).

This is just a regular tuesday massacre for the IDF, not an ongoing conflict, just occupation policing.

dplesh2• 4 months ago

Did you serve in Army? Do you know war from first account? Did your country take part in a war in the last decade? Or is it proxies who fight your wars? Its independence war for Israel everyday since its 1948.

Israel, West Bank, Jordan, Lebanon - all contain a majority/big minority of Palestinians - yet only Israel and Jordan effectively impose law and sovereignty over them.

PA cannot deal with their own radicals. I mean, they actually hand out prizes to shaheed's families. They loves this guerilla war equation. Its good for the Palestinian cause apparently cause they keep doing it for years now.

But somehow no momentum is gained by the Palestinian movement, and nobody dares to suggest its because their head is stuck we-know-where. And this applies to West Bank, Gaza, Lebanon.

Somehow most Israeli Arabs AKA Israeli Palestinians do not have a radical/resentful sentiment towards the Zionist idea. Some even serve in army, or do national service. Some have houses I can dream of. But yeah right, lets blame the Jews.

This picture you paint with big words, holds no grasp in the Middle East reality. Its a Eurocentric perspective, mostly held by people in countries which fight their wars via proxies. Its non pragmatic for Palestinians, and only serves Europeans. As evidence you can see how far the Palestinian cause has progressed in last decades.

But in the early 21st century Europe is currently in the back seat, sits, learns and questions: How does Israeli economy is thriving even though they have so many active conflicts? And I'll answer what you do not even dare to think of: only a righteous cause can fight such war and have the upper hand.

tt_dev• 4 months ago

This is outrageous. No humanity by the Israeli government and the IDF

Palestinian boy, 12, describes how Israeli forces killed his family in car

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