I guess the Israeli government's original plan to arm and support drug gangs and literally ISIS (euphemistically called 'clans') as "aid security" wasn't working out? Especially after it was revealed said "security" was stealing and reselling the food aid under the protection of IDF while the Israeli govt. and media blamed the looting on Hamas.
And after the Israeli opposition leader exposed the whole charade and Netanyahu defended it saying “On the advice of security officials, we activated clans in Gaza that oppose Hamas. What’s wrong with that? It only saves the lives of Israeli solders, and publicising this only benefits Hamas.”
To be honest, I do prefer drug dealers over Hamas islamists in general. And where exactly is the proof the gangs are connected to ISIS?
"The basis for Lieberman’s allegation of ties to IS was unclear."
It is easy to throw dirt and hope something sticks, but the main thing speaking against his group seems Netanjahu's support in my opinion. But otherwise I don't see the scandal so much here. Especially not compared to the scandal of intentionally targeting civilian population and indiscriminate killing of starving people like the article states.
And well, that is indeed better to show who we are dealing with
ben_w · 15m ago
> To be honest, I do prefer drug dealers over Hamas islamists in general. And where exactly is the proof the gangs are connected to ISIS?
A simple dealer vs an armed wing of a religious theocracy who think people like me are the devil incarnate, I'd pick the dealer.
An organised armed drug network that necessarily has to be at least comparable strength to an existing network of religious theocrats who are obviously getting external support owing to the ability to continue fighting despite the evidence of systematic destruction of their civil environment that satellite imagery shows has been in aggregate comparable in scope and depth to a nuke going off…
I don't want either of them anywhere near anyone I care about. Even if the latter wasn't associated with a different group of religious zealots.
fakedang · 35m ago
> To be honest, I do prefer drug dealers over Hamas islamists in general. And where exactly is the proof the gangs are connected to ISIS?
This is like the equivalent of "Tbh, I do prefer ISIS over Saddam Hussein". Or "I do prefer cancer over heart disease".
lukan · 30m ago
No, because drug dealers by definition mainly sell drugs to people who want them.
A subset of them indeed engages with dark methods like mixing highly addictive drugs into harmless ones and turf war, but the majority just sells things.
Before weed was legal in germany I engaged with quite some of them and they were mostly decent people all in all. Not the greatest and often messed up themself a bit, but otherwise no danger to me or anyone else. My choice if I damaged myself with their products.
A islamist on the other hand is buisy by definition with spreading the rule of Islam over everyone, everywhere.
Dangerous to any non muslim.
fakedang · 24m ago
So you're equating the drug dealing "clans" in Gaza to your local streetside dealer in Germany?
Both Hamas and the clans are cancers to society, and it's abhorrent that the IDF is dealing with them to distribute aid, instead of being directly involved (which they can easily commit to).
lukan · 21m ago
My main issue was equating the term "drug dealer" with something worse than a terrorist.
Now as my edit above hopefully made clear, apparently they ain't just "drug dealers", but ruthless criminals who loot and shoot a UN aid convoy for profit.
And abhorrent are indeed many things about the whole situation.
austin-cheney · 3h ago
The biggest problem with this isn’t the horror of the actual war crime. The far more serious concern are the lengths the government will go to avoid holding anyone accountable. That is so much worse because it unintentionally endorses future crimes and challenges the offenders to take ever more offensive actions without fear of consequences.
lucubratory · 2h ago
I do not believe it is unintentional.
originalvichy · 41m ago
They can take out nuclear scientists thousands of kilometers away by either planting bombs in their cars in traffic or firing accurate munitions through their windows when they sleep.
Thousands of kilometers away.
The IDF can be highly sophisticated in their plans and methods when they want to.
austin-cheney · 2h ago
Until corrective actions with criminal penalties occur incidents like these almost certainly continue with possible increases of frequency and severity. More importantly though when this becomes a matter of conduct and military discipline is that it will spread to other areas even outside Gaza.
This isn’t just a matter of vague speculation as there are historical cases outside of Israel on which to see how things like this develop and what the consequences are both for the victims and the soldiers. These historical accounts also indicate soldiers committing these sorts of actions become victims themselves with catastrophic mental health disorders.
throw9032093 · 1h ago
The idea Israeli government would hold anyone accountable is a laughable.
Israel got in trouble with ICJ court, because of quotes from top government officials. Government of Israel was very specific what they will do to Gaza! This was even full scale bombing started!
Trying to reinterpret this as a problem of "military discipline", and "soldiers are victim as well" is just another level of cynicism!
ajb · 1h ago
Even ignoring primary crimes, under Israeli law, even incitement to genocide is punishable by death. But so many members of the political and media elite have made inciting statements, that the rubicon is crossed; the political class cannot allow any serious, independent consideration of war crimes to ever occur, because that would risk them all facing the firing squad. This in turn signals to individual soldiers that there will be no accountability, even in the absence of directives.
roshin · 49m ago
Regarding the risk to Israelis facing the firing squad, you do know that Israel only executed Eichmann (and one other person in a field court) since the founding of the country?
When it comes to the list of things that Israelis fear, being sentenced to a firing squad is very low down.
ajb · 43m ago
Fair enough, but I don't think that makes the incentive much different. If you are convicted of a crime punishable by death, your actual punishment is not likely to be trivial.
basisword · 1h ago
You mean the government whose leader is facing a corruption trial?
FranzFerdiNaN · 1h ago
Why would the government hold someone accountable for its own actions? Let’s not pretend that this is just some random soldiers doing this, this is exactly what the Israeli government wants.
austin-cheney · 1h ago
Soldiers shooting at civilians is a war crime. It does not matter what the intentions of the soldiers are. It doesn’t even matter if the civilians are also armed up until the point they display violent intent according to a common person standard. Shooting at a crowd is a crime.
That said the soldiers pulling the trigger are committing crimes. These are patently illegal actions to a common person standard which eliminates any defense of following military orders. That being said the soldiers, at least, are committing crimes. Accountability starts at the source of the crime.
If the government is ordering these actions then those are illegal orders, according to international standards of military conduct. The soldiers on the ground must ignore those orders on the basis of patently illegal conduct according to a common person standard and the officials facilitating those orders can be investigated for issuing war crimes.
NATO was conducting defensive operations against Yugoslavia around that time. It isn't clear that war crimes can be committed so easily by US allies. It'd be nice if they can be recognised though.
xorcist · 22m ago
Because "the govahment" is not a singular entity. In functioning democracies, by popular definition in large parts of the field, legislative and executive powers are kept separated from the judicial powers. So the executive power can not interfere with being held accountable. That's not fullt implemented everywhere, but that is the general idea how it is supposed to work.
fzeroracer · 1h ago
Well, there is actually a reasonable reason. Typically you'd want the government to hold people accountable so you could have the thin veneer of operating by the rules of warfare and not committing war crimes. That's usually been a popular strategy of the US for when someone goes a little too far (or gets caught).
As far as I can tell Israel doesn't particularly care for even looking like it's trying to behave responsibly. I don't think they've held anyone responsible for even some of the most obvious war crimes we have evidence of being committed.
tkel · 3h ago
We already knew this was happening from testimony from Gazans, it was obvious that the new US-Israeli monopolized "aid" organization was running the Hunger Games, with dozens killed by Israelis (+ US contractors) every time there was a distribution day, and horrific pictures and video of it. Entirely predictable too when the genocidaires are controlling the aid. It is good there is now proof from the inside as well.
No comments yet
lucubratory · 3h ago
This isn't ambiguous. This is really clear evidence of (at minimum) an atrocious and continuing war crime with full intentionality. Realistically, it is more likely explicitly genocidal in intent.
This genocide has, for many people, burst any illusions of a "rules based world order".
There multiple EU signatory countries of the Rome Statute (pledging to cooperate with ICC) that have welcomed these war criminals... who have warrants out by the ICC.
And the same war criminals are invited to give a speech at the U.S Congress to near unanimous applause. It really makes you wonder if we're the "good guys".
-- edit -- If you're curious how much your congressperson receives from AIPAC (Israeli lobby) this website is a great resource:
https://www.trackaipac.com/congress
o999 · 1h ago
Indeed, the leading countries of so-called "free world" are willing to commit and support war crimes and break the intl law as well as DPRK or Iran when it serves their intrests, all while signaling virtue and progressiveness.
stavros · 42m ago
If you're still wondering if you're the good guys, you haven't been paying attention. I don't think there are any "good guys" when it comes to nations, but for the US it's not even close.
Theodores · 22m ago
In the world outside the West, 'rules based world order' does not mean what you think it does. To them 'rules based world order' means that the UK/USA/Israel/NATO/EU do whatever they want rather than go through the UN. Going through the UN would be 'international law', which is not to be confused with 'rules based world order'.
With 'rules based world order', there is one rule for the West and one rule for everyone else. Hence it is okay to have a referendum in Kosovo for Kosovo to split away from Serbia, but not okay for a region of the Ukraine to have a referendum, to break away from Ukraine. So Crimea, where everyone speaks Russian and identifies as Russian, with no interest in the Ukraine or the EU, can't get the treatment that was afforded Kosovo. This is because 'rules based world order', and how the global majority sees it.
ahartmetz · 2h ago
Why though, what does it achieve? Do they want to make sure that there will be terrorists / freedom fighters in the future so that they have a reason not to negotiate? Because they expect to "win" if violence continues?
tveita · 1h ago
You can't kill 2.1 million people by bombing them.
And when allied countries got too uneasy about them just blocking all aid trucks at the border, they set up their own aid organization to trickle out nominal amounts of food while they take pot shots at people desperate enough to show up: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c74ne108e4vo
They didn't just make this up as they go, presumably the plans have been sitting around for a long time waiting for a suitable moment.
perlgeek · 1h ago
From Israel's perspective, Palestinians are a problem. Long term, they have a few options:
1) Give them their own state. This is difficult for quite many reasons, and Israel (by which I mean the current government) doesn't want that
2) Give them full citizenship rights equal to Israel's citizens, make sure they have a proper minority representation, and let them participate in the regular political processes. The current government certainly doesn't want that, and I have no idea what part of the Palestinians would want that.
3) Continue to treat them as sub-human, and deal with the consequences of the hatred that fosters. That seems to have been the "strategy" before October last year.
4) Try to exterminate or exile them, or at least decimating them to such an extend that the problem becomes smaller.
Since 1) and 2) are (again, from the perspective of Isreal's government) undesirable, and 3) has stopped working, 4) seems to be their current strategy.
rgblambda · 1h ago
>Give them full citizenship rights equal to Israel's citizens, make sure they have a proper minority representation
As the Palestinians are the majority, the Jewish Israelis would become a minority in terms of citizens and votes. This is very much akin to Apartheid South Africa, where a minority ethnic group rules over the rest of the population.
msgodel · 1h ago
You'd think given Israel's history they'd do everything they could to not make 4) acceptable.
ben_w · 3m ago
It's very common for people to treat their own side as naturally right, and excuse anything their side does, simply *because* it is their own side.
For a commonplace example, look at a soccer match, fans screaming at the referee whenever a decision doesn't go their team's way.
tradethedelta · 1h ago
I think it's the contrary. "Never again" means by any means necessary we will prevent another genocide of our people, even if it means committing genocide unto others. That much has become clear.
xorcist · 12m ago
Or exile is probably the key word. There are more historical examples of exoduses than genocides.
The problem with understanding this situation is that it probably has more to do with Israel's internal politics than what the situation looks like on the ground in Gaza and elsewhere. Just a quick read from the wikipedia page should give an idea just how corrupt the situation really is.
There's also the fact that Palestinians aren't a homogenous group in any sense of the word. That makes it hard for them to unite under any political flag. It also doesn't help that the borders are all closed, from both sides, and no neighboring country are willing to accept them.
From the outside the situation certainly looks very bleak.
wordofx · 1h ago
Palestine rejected statehood 5 times. Nothing to do with Israel. Nothing you said is even slightly true.
andrepd · 2h ago
Netanyahu has privately expressed preference for terrorist Hamas over political Fatah, and Israel has propped up those terrorist groups in the past (this is well documented not a conspiracy theory).
Why? Because Netanyahu and a good chunk of the Israeli population want the Palestinians to cease to exist and its territory to be part of Israel. An opponent that wants to achieve its goals through political action and appeals to the international community meant that there was a risk of Israel being dragged into a two-state commitment. A terrorist group attacking civilians gives those hardliners a perpetual excuse to go to war.
In short: the answer is yes, that appears to be precisely the point: to prevent any possibility of peaceful reconciliation and drive the Palestinians to eventual expulsion or eradication.
AndyMcConachie · 2h ago
Israel wants to kill all Palestinians. This helps achieve this. They're committing genocide.
polotics · 2h ago
You do realise that the people writing for Haaretz are also nationals of that country right? Maybe learn to be precise, helps in all situations.
SiempreViernes · 2h ago
When asked, in an representative online, poll, 47% percent of Israeli agreed that the IDF should kill all the inhabitants of cities it conquered[1].
So sure, workers at Haarez probably don't, but when the extermination feeling is widespread enough that 47% feel they can openly agree to a question proscribing the killing women and children, then insisting on the insistence on precision comes across mostly as an attempt at distraction.
Israel here obviously standing for "the current government of Israel" (with presumed majority support), not "every single Israeli person".
Fortunately many Israelis are against the ongoing genocide, but powerless to stop it.
tfrutuoso · 1h ago
There's a palestinian guy living in the US making the rounds on tiktok, talking to random israeli people on something like omegle. The amount of hate he gets is nothing short of depressing. Children cursing at him, IDF soldiers saying they want to kill every single person in Gaza, calling them sub-humans... sounds like the fourth reich is here already.
All this to say you're right, but the government is indocrinating more and more people for these views.
polotics · 1h ago
Be very wary of any such weaponized truth: you don't know how much selection bias is at play, how much confirmation bias is requested, you don't even know if the interviewees are what they say they are.
tfrutuoso · 37m ago
You raise a very valid point, which i will take in consideration. I don't believe it to be the case, since the person in question also shares positive interactions, and i believe some of the worst "contacts" have been doxxed. But your point still stands.
It is indeed sickening. They straight out tell you how they want all Palestinian children to die.
polotics · 1h ago
I disagree: when anything is obviously meaning what someone obviously thinks it means, then others will apply their own obvious understanding of it to justify very non-obvious behaviours.
tradethedelta · 1h ago
The perpetual fight is mutually beneficial to all. The extremist right would not have been able to claim large swaths of land had they not had the air cover to raze Gaza. Now there is serious talk of going back into Gaza. And talk by Trump to turn it into a seaside resort has the settler movement giddy.
locallost · 26m ago
The guidelines of HN, to be kind and curious in the comments, are difficult to follow in this case. Outrage doesn't bring anything either, but a polite and curious discussion is impossible. The lack of reflection in the western world on this issue is seriously disturbing.
dang · 14m ago
I hear you and I agree that there are topics which conventional politeness cannot respond to adequately, and that this is one of those topics.
If you take those words "kind" and "curious" in a large sense—larger than usual—I think there's enough room there to talk about even this topic without breaking the guidelines.
How to do this? That is something we have to work out together. You're certainly right that it's difficult.
From a moderation point of view, I can tell you that just avoiding garden-variety flamewar and internet tropes already gets us a lot of the way there. You'd be surprised at how many users who think they're taking a grand moral stand against conventional politeness are simply repeating those. Conventional impoliteness isn't any answer either.
TheGuyWhoCodes · 9m ago
Why don't you remove it then?
Time and time again you allow this off topic submission to persists on HN
dang · 8m ago
I don't agree that it's off topic, nor that HN would be better if we suppressed it and acted like this isn't happening. We're trying for a global optimum*, and the most important part of that is not to settle for local optima, such as not discussing difficult things.
I've posted about this quite a bit, since it inevitably comes up every time this topic appears on HN's front page. Here's another part of the current thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44403458.
You don't agree because you are anti Israel, the fact is that you always let this anti Israel topics to remain here and usually on Saturday when you know this discussions will be one sided.
conartist6 · 18m ago
This is a description of blackest evil.
Anyone who knows they are raising an assault rifle to a crowd of civilians and pulls the trigger is a mass murderer and a psychopath
basisword · 1h ago
I really don't think that it's a coincidence that just as this news was starting to gain traction a few weeks ago, Isreal started bombing Iran. It was the perfect distraction.
kome · 3h ago
The news from Palestine are atrocious; a genocide is unfolding before our eyes, and world leaders are doing nothing to stop it.
thrance · 51m ago
A lot of world leaders are helping speed it up.
derelicta · 2h ago
That's normal; a lot of them directly or indirectly profit from it.
The comment section in the article is revolting. I don't know if they're state actors, or if they're real people with those beliefs, but my god.
niemandhier · 1h ago
This comment thread is the most civilised online discussion I have seen in a long while about this particular topic, despite people coming from diverse backgrounds and disagreeing.
In this sense, hackernews gives me hope that online culture is not lost yet.
t0lo · 1h ago
It's because realistically hn is an oasis of educated people that has been overlooked by astroturfers and foreign interests (very strongly including the government in this piece), and hasn't expanded its core demographic for profit. This is what the rest of the internet would be like without manipulation. Imagine how much better things would be
lukan · 59m ago
If HN is so educated and civic, we would be able to have more of that sort of debate and not just once in a while.
Also note that dang is already pretty active here banning people.
It is a topic where deep emotions come up and where fanatism is widespread. Also among educated people. Also not sure if you have not noticed before, but HN is part of a profit orientated venture capitalist company. Still, I also do enjoy this Oasis here. But I don't see how it can scale in any way you seem to imagine.
t0lo · 48m ago
I think people understand there's a time and a place for important political discussion on an otherwise tech community, especially because the quality and insight tends to be better than other places.
I don't have any delusions about ycombinator seeing some of the things it has supported recently, but in this laughably dumbed down world you take what you can get.
As for new communities I believe in being selective and restrictive- based on location, education, or interest and think it's the only way we can get smart communities again. Think how the tech barrier and slow adoption in the 90s/2000s resulted in a smart bubble online, and how covid was the death knell for distinct non homogenous smart online spaces because it brought everyone further online. It's discriminatory but look what we've become.
intended · 36m ago
This is at t= 3 hours, and large swathes of people asleep on a weekend.
These types of topics pull themselves apart VERY fast, as the homogenity of discussion norms / definitions, shared by users decreases.
amriksohata · 1h ago
Horrible, you see wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and this is what US/UK soldiers did too. Its the inevitability and sad state of any war - so what do we do to prevent it? Will they return the hostages? Will Iran be stopped? Will US imperialism stop?
alkhatib · 1h ago
US/UK, Iran?
Notice how israel (the country currently committing the genocide) is not even mentioned in your reply.
spacecadet · 2h ago
If we look at history, do the oppressed always become oppressors?
perlgeek · 46m ago
I'd say it's very hard for a powerful nation to not suppress somebody in the long run.
Just think of any powerful nation (or group of people, or whatever), and try to think of somebody they have oppressed, or are still oppressing. It's typically not hard to come up with examples.
locallost · 21m ago
I don't know if it's always the case, but it's true if given the opportunity. In the end all people are the same. Cultures may be different, but our lizard brains are the same. Us vs them, and dehumanizing others into something less than humans, whose suffering does not concern us.
meindnoch · 1h ago
Mostly, yes.
Christians were persecuted by the Roman Empire, then became conquerors of the world.
Russians were oppressed by the Mongols, then became conquerors of Eurasia.
Communists were oppressed by Tsarists, then became ruthless oppressors themselves.
Protestants were oppressed in Europe, so they set sail to America and became oppressors of the natives.
mikevm · 2h ago
[flagged]
dang · 2h ago
No racial flamewar on HN, please. I realize this topic is fraught with it but that's no reason to jump straight in—it's a reason to do the opposite:
"Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive."
Edit: yikes—quite apart from the current topic, you've been breaking the site guidelines a lot with flamewar posts and personal attacks. We ban accounts that post like this:
I'm not going to ban you right now because you've also posted good things, but if you want to keep participating in this community, it would be good to review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and stick to the rules from now on.
Dettorer · 1h ago
Is this a new karma system where for each post that doesn't break the guidelines, you're allowed one that does?
dang · 1h ago
No, this is how HN moderation has worked for over a decade.
Dettorer · 1h ago
Wait, my message was obviously intended as a bit sarcastic (which isn't very smart, I'll admit). But are you actually saying that I'm now allowed two racist comments without risking a ban? (three, counting this guideline-abiding comment?)
dang · 1h ago
I'm not saying that, no.
Dettorer · 57m ago
Then I don't understand what you were saying by "this is how HN moderation has worked for over a decade", wasn't that a response to my previous comment that said exactly that?
dang · 45m ago
Oh, I see. Let me try to be clearer.
It's not the case that "for each post that doesn't break the guidelines, you're allowed one that does", and that's not what I was doing. When I said HN moderation has worked the same way for over a decade, I didn't mean that the description you gave was accurate—it isn't. (Nor, I assume, did you mean it to be, since you were being sarcastic.)
We try to persuade users to follow the site guidelines, and tend to give warnings and make requests before banning accounts, especially if they are active participants who have been around for a while. We don't rush to banning such users; we try to explain the intended use of the site and convince them to honor it. Sometimes that works, sometimes it doesn't.
tfrutuoso · 1h ago
We appreciate your biased comment, aimed at portraying Palestinians as terrorists and non-indigenous to the area, cherry-picking history as it suits your narrative. We're not interested, though. Thank you.
dilawar · 1h ago
The strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must. -- Thucydidus
palmfacehn · 3m ago
It is descriptive, but not prescriptive.
If neither side can agree on peace, if neither side has objectives which the other will accept, if neither side is willing to compromise; What other outcome is possible in terms of realpolitik?
It is upsetting to observe. We all want better for humanity.
oulipo · 1h ago
Israel is knowingly committing a genocide, and there will be a Nuremberg 2 for the perpetrators and the people supporting it
forinti · 51m ago
There were Nuremberg trials because Germany capitulated. We don't even have sanctions on Israel and the people responsible will only be jailed if they step outside Israel.
I am not optimistic at all and I am very afraid for Gazans.
submeta · 1h ago
377,000 people in Gaza are missing. A few thousand fled to Egypt while they could. The rest: Under rubbles, propably.
When Netanyahu talked about Palestinians in Gaza being Amalek, about the necessity to destroy Amalek, he meant exactly that. And when the defense minister Gallant said: They are human animals, and then he said „no food, no water, no electricity“, he punished 2.3 mill people, half of them children. That’s why both have arrest warrants from ICJ.
Over 90% of Israeli population want more death and destruction in Gaza. Netanyahu and Gallant are no single incidents. The whole Israeli society knows what their soldiers are doing in Palestine. And they are ok with it.
This article and my comment will be flagged until dead. Just like anyone speaking about Israeli Apartheid, genocide, oppression in Palestine. But things are changing. Hasbara troll farms can’t keep up.
closewith · 2h ago
This is important and relevant to forum because there are people who will read this who work and/or invest in companies who are profiting fro, enabling, or in some cases directly supporting this genocide.
ahmetcadirci25 · 1h ago
A street in Gaza, a map of dreams, and the people desperate to live
And after the Israeli opposition leader exposed the whole charade and Netanyahu defended it saying “On the advice of security officials, we activated clans in Gaza that oppose Hamas. What’s wrong with that? It only saves the lives of Israeli solders, and publicising this only benefits Hamas.”
[1] - https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/jun/06/netanyahu-defe...
[2] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yasser_Abu_Shabab
[3] - https://archive.is/20250606144357/https://www.ynetnews.com/a...
"The basis for Lieberman’s allegation of ties to IS was unclear."
It is easy to throw dirt and hope something sticks, but the main thing speaking against his group seems Netanjahu's support in my opinion. But otherwise I don't see the scandal so much here. Especially not compared to the scandal of intentionally targeting civilian population and indiscriminate killing of starving people like the article states.
Edit: But I just read
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kerem_Shalom_aid_convoy_loot...
And well, that is indeed better to show who we are dealing with
A simple dealer vs an armed wing of a religious theocracy who think people like me are the devil incarnate, I'd pick the dealer.
An organised armed drug network that necessarily has to be at least comparable strength to an existing network of religious theocrats who are obviously getting external support owing to the ability to continue fighting despite the evidence of systematic destruction of their civil environment that satellite imagery shows has been in aggregate comparable in scope and depth to a nuke going off…
I don't want either of them anywhere near anyone I care about. Even if the latter wasn't associated with a different group of religious zealots.
This is like the equivalent of "Tbh, I do prefer ISIS over Saddam Hussein". Or "I do prefer cancer over heart disease".
A subset of them indeed engages with dark methods like mixing highly addictive drugs into harmless ones and turf war, but the majority just sells things.
Before weed was legal in germany I engaged with quite some of them and they were mostly decent people all in all. Not the greatest and often messed up themself a bit, but otherwise no danger to me or anyone else. My choice if I damaged myself with their products.
A islamist on the other hand is buisy by definition with spreading the rule of Islam over everyone, everywhere.
Dangerous to any non muslim.
Both Hamas and the clans are cancers to society, and it's abhorrent that the IDF is dealing with them to distribute aid, instead of being directly involved (which they can easily commit to).
Now as my edit above hopefully made clear, apparently they ain't just "drug dealers", but ruthless criminals who loot and shoot a UN aid convoy for profit.
And abhorrent are indeed many things about the whole situation.
Thousands of kilometers away.
The IDF can be highly sophisticated in their plans and methods when they want to.
This isn’t just a matter of vague speculation as there are historical cases outside of Israel on which to see how things like this develop and what the consequences are both for the victims and the soldiers. These historical accounts also indicate soldiers committing these sorts of actions become victims themselves with catastrophic mental health disorders.
Israel got in trouble with ICJ court, because of quotes from top government officials. Government of Israel was very specific what they will do to Gaza! This was even full scale bombing started!
Trying to reinterpret this as a problem of "military discipline", and "soldiers are victim as well" is just another level of cynicism!
When it comes to the list of things that Israelis fear, being sentenced to a firing squad is very low down.
That said the soldiers pulling the trigger are committing crimes. These are patently illegal actions to a common person standard which eliminates any defense of following military orders. That being said the soldiers, at least, are committing crimes. Accountability starts at the source of the crime.
If the government is ordering these actions then those are illegal orders, according to international standards of military conduct. The soldiers on the ground must ignore those orders on the basis of patently illegal conduct according to a common person standard and the officials facilitating those orders can be investigated for issuing war crimes.
As an example read about Slobodan Milošević
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slobodan_Milo%C5%A1evi%C4%87
As far as I can tell Israel doesn't particularly care for even looking like it's trying to behave responsibly. I don't think they've held anyone responsible for even some of the most obvious war crimes we have evidence of being committed.
No comments yet
There multiple EU signatory countries of the Rome Statute (pledging to cooperate with ICC) that have welcomed these war criminals... who have warrants out by the ICC.
And the same war criminals are invited to give a speech at the U.S Congress to near unanimous applause. It really makes you wonder if we're the "good guys".
-- edit -- If you're curious how much your congressperson receives from AIPAC (Israeli lobby) this website is a great resource: https://www.trackaipac.com/congress
With 'rules based world order', there is one rule for the West and one rule for everyone else. Hence it is okay to have a referendum in Kosovo for Kosovo to split away from Serbia, but not okay for a region of the Ukraine to have a referendum, to break away from Ukraine. So Crimea, where everyone speaks Russian and identifies as Russian, with no interest in the Ukraine or the EU, can't get the treatment that was afforded Kosovo. This is because 'rules based world order', and how the global majority sees it.
That's why Israel has systematically taken out every hospital in Gaza: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cdd25d9vp2qo
Has blocked and sabotaged aid at every turn, including bombing UN food trucks: https://news.un.org/en/story/2025/01/1158746
And when allied countries got too uneasy about them just blocking all aid trucks at the border, they set up their own aid organization to trickle out nominal amounts of food while they take pot shots at people desperate enough to show up: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c74ne108e4vo
They didn't just make this up as they go, presumably the plans have been sitting around for a long time waiting for a suitable moment.
1) Give them their own state. This is difficult for quite many reasons, and Israel (by which I mean the current government) doesn't want that
2) Give them full citizenship rights equal to Israel's citizens, make sure they have a proper minority representation, and let them participate in the regular political processes. The current government certainly doesn't want that, and I have no idea what part of the Palestinians would want that.
3) Continue to treat them as sub-human, and deal with the consequences of the hatred that fosters. That seems to have been the "strategy" before October last year.
4) Try to exterminate or exile them, or at least decimating them to such an extend that the problem becomes smaller.
Since 1) and 2) are (again, from the perspective of Isreal's government) undesirable, and 3) has stopped working, 4) seems to be their current strategy.
As the Palestinians are the majority, the Jewish Israelis would become a minority in terms of citizens and votes. This is very much akin to Apartheid South Africa, where a minority ethnic group rules over the rest of the population.
For a commonplace example, look at a soccer match, fans screaming at the referee whenever a decision doesn't go their team's way.
The problem with understanding this situation is that it probably has more to do with Israel's internal politics than what the situation looks like on the ground in Gaza and elsewhere. Just a quick read from the wikipedia page should give an idea just how corrupt the situation really is.
There's also the fact that Palestinians aren't a homogenous group in any sense of the word. That makes it hard for them to unite under any political flag. It also doesn't help that the borders are all closed, from both sides, and no neighboring country are willing to accept them.
From the outside the situation certainly looks very bleak.
Why? Because Netanyahu and a good chunk of the Israeli population want the Palestinians to cease to exist and its territory to be part of Israel. An opponent that wants to achieve its goals through political action and appeals to the international community meant that there was a risk of Israel being dragged into a two-state commitment. A terrorist group attacking civilians gives those hardliners a perpetual excuse to go to war.
In short: the answer is yes, that appears to be precisely the point: to prevent any possibility of peaceful reconciliation and drive the Palestinians to eventual expulsion or eradication.
So sure, workers at Haarez probably don't, but when the extermination feeling is widespread enough that 47% feel they can openly agree to a question proscribing the killing women and children, then insisting on the insistence on precision comes across mostly as an attempt at distraction.
[1] https://theconversation.com/in-israel-calls-for-genocide-hav...
Fortunately many Israelis are against the ongoing genocide, but powerless to stop it.
All this to say you're right, but the government is indocrinating more and more people for these views.
It is indeed sickening. They straight out tell you how they want all Palestinian children to die.
If you take those words "kind" and "curious" in a large sense—larger than usual—I think there's enough room there to talk about even this topic without breaking the guidelines.
How to do this? That is something we have to work out together. You're certainly right that it's difficult.
From a moderation point of view, I can tell you that just avoiding garden-variety flamewar and internet tropes already gets us a lot of the way there. You'd be surprised at how many users who think they're taking a grand moral stand against conventional politeness are simply repeating those. Conventional impoliteness isn't any answer either.
I've posted about this quite a bit, since it inevitably comes up every time this topic appears on HN's front page. Here's another part of the current thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44403458.
* https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...
Anyone who knows they are raising an assault rifle to a crowd of civilians and pulls the trigger is a mass murderer and a psychopath
The vast majority barely make the global news.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_genocides
In this sense, hackernews gives me hope that online culture is not lost yet.
Also note that dang is already pretty active here banning people.
It is a topic where deep emotions come up and where fanatism is widespread. Also among educated people. Also not sure if you have not noticed before, but HN is part of a profit orientated venture capitalist company. Still, I also do enjoy this Oasis here. But I don't see how it can scale in any way you seem to imagine.
I don't have any delusions about ycombinator seeing some of the things it has supported recently, but in this laughably dumbed down world you take what you can get.
As for new communities I believe in being selective and restrictive- based on location, education, or interest and think it's the only way we can get smart communities again. Think how the tech barrier and slow adoption in the 90s/2000s resulted in a smart bubble online, and how covid was the death knell for distinct non homogenous smart online spaces because it brought everyone further online. It's discriminatory but look what we've become.
These types of topics pull themselves apart VERY fast, as the homogenity of discussion norms / definitions, shared by users decreases.
Notice how israel (the country currently committing the genocide) is not even mentioned in your reply.
Just think of any powerful nation (or group of people, or whatever), and try to think of somebody they have oppressed, or are still oppressing. It's typically not hard to come up with examples.
Christians were persecuted by the Roman Empire, then became conquerors of the world.
Russians were oppressed by the Mongols, then became conquerors of Eurasia.
Communists were oppressed by Tsarists, then became ruthless oppressors themselves.
Protestants were oppressed in Europe, so they set sail to America and became oppressors of the natives.
"Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive."
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
Edit: yikes—quite apart from the current topic, you've been breaking the site guidelines a lot with flamewar posts and personal attacks. We ban accounts that post like this:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43604429 (April 2025)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43604394 (April 2025)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43596070 (April 2025)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43596065 (April 2025)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43593235 (April 2025)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43593219 (April 2025)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43322414 (March 2025)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43251495 (March 2025)
I'm not going to ban you right now because you've also posted good things, but if you want to keep participating in this community, it would be good to review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and stick to the rules from now on.
It's not the case that "for each post that doesn't break the guidelines, you're allowed one that does", and that's not what I was doing. When I said HN moderation has worked the same way for over a decade, I didn't mean that the description you gave was accurate—it isn't. (Nor, I assume, did you mean it to be, since you were being sarcastic.)
I meant that what I was doing in the GP comment (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44403362) was standard practice. As you can see from https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que..., it goes back a long time.
We try to persuade users to follow the site guidelines, and tend to give warnings and make requests before banning accounts, especially if they are active participants who have been around for a while. We don't rush to banning such users; we try to explain the intended use of the site and convince them to honor it. Sometimes that works, sometimes it doesn't.
If neither side can agree on peace, if neither side has objectives which the other will accept, if neither side is willing to compromise; What other outcome is possible in terms of realpolitik?
It is upsetting to observe. We all want better for humanity.
I am not optimistic at all and I am very afraid for Gazans.
When Netanyahu talked about Palestinians in Gaza being Amalek, about the necessity to destroy Amalek, he meant exactly that. And when the defense minister Gallant said: They are human animals, and then he said „no food, no water, no electricity“, he punished 2.3 mill people, half of them children. That’s why both have arrest warrants from ICJ.
Over 90% of Israeli population want more death and destruction in Gaza. Netanyahu and Gallant are no single incidents. The whole Israeli society knows what their soldiers are doing in Palestine. And they are ok with it.
This article and my comment will be flagged until dead. Just like anyone speaking about Israeli Apartheid, genocide, oppression in Palestine. But things are changing. Hasbara troll farms can’t keep up.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/ng-interactive/2025/jun/26...
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44387199
I am glad it is visible. And hope for some more civic debate about the topic.