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...
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.
> 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.
It's impossible to overstate the influence of Dragnet (the OG police procedural from the early 50s) alone on the widely held idea that police are mostly heroic and good. Police procedurals are still extremely popular, they overwhelmingly portray law enforcement in an extremely idealized way.
There are exceptions (The Wire, The Shield), but they are noteworty in that police are not heroes.
IDF trains them.
https://www.amnestyusa.org/blog/with-whom-are-many-u-s-polic...
The Amnesty article that you're citing is a post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy. The Baltimore Police Department did not need to learn about constitutional violations from the Israelis.
Where do think US police get all their fun toys to play with?
"How 9/11 helped to militarize American law enforcement": https://www.brookings.edu/articles/how-9-11-helped-to-milita...
American police officers ARE trained much like IDF forces. By the IDF! https://jinsa.org/jinsa_program/homeland-security-program/
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.
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.
Is that it though? When one has historical reasons to expect being attacked, one must be vigilant and one must be trigger-ready.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Palestinian_suicide_at...
The reality is, if you have soldiers mowing down children throwing rocks, mowing down families driving around, mowing down kids playing football, mowing down toddlers in their bedrooms, mowing down hundreds of people each year [1], you've over-indexed on vigilance and under-indexed on the value of human life. You're not trigger-ready, you're trigger-happy.
[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S6jhru-EqDA
[1] https://www.un.org/unispal/document/ohchr-press-release-17oc...
Be calm. Do not run. Talk clearly. Keep your hands visible. Did your parents not teach you?
But unless you are suggesting that laws should be not applied to those with kids, I am not sure why that matters? What do you suggest? I cannot wait for "kid" to be a number one accessory to bring to a heist then.
Your rationalization is nothing more than a product of a failed society. Bringing it up as pragmatic advice might make sense, although still not for this incident where the "offense" seems to have been merely stopping a car on the side of the road. But invoking it as some universal value of "what ought" is a pure crab bucket mentality.
Comparing the IDF to law enforcement in a democratic country is not relevant.
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.)
Arabs are not responsible for WW2. Germans should give up their land!
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
Trying hard to embellish your language I see. Might I suggest "military style automatic tactical assault rifle"?
My impression is that topics that involve politics are tolerated, even encouraged. It's politically charged discourse such as yours that's not welcome. It's near impossible to have an intellectual exchange with a political pundit.
I wonder if any VC out there would fund my pitch for an AI enhanced military style automatic tactical assault rifle with a copilot 360 targeting integration to ensure our troops can noscope420 at all times as well as a blockchain layer for auditing discharge events.
It's certainly mocking. The subject matter is overly political. It's even plausible that it strays across the line laid down by the HN guidelines, although personally I think it's acceptable given the context. Something about fighting fire with fire.
https://www.hrw.org/news/2026/03/13/in-the-shadow-of-war-set...
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.
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.
HN being HN: this is a verifiable fact at any source you name.
While there was rejectionists in the past, Netanyahu has been the rejectionist for the last two decades. He says so himself:
https://www.timesofisrael.com/netanyahu-boasts-of-thwarting-...
He and his cronies boosted Hamas in part to split the Palestinians so as to avoid having to negotiate a two-state solution:
https://www.timesofisrael.com/for-years-netanyahu-propped-up...
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.
HN is one of the most informative and least toxic communities and I’d appreciate if it would stay this way.
I don't think that's an accurate framing of the situation. It's a single post that enough people decided was worthy of being upvoted to the front page. I think allowing the community to decide is far more inline with the spirit of hacker news than the outright banning a category of posts.
It's a large part of the idea behind countries having constitutions for example.
(The 10x coverage number is from algolia hn search, the 10x worse number is from reported killings in the past year)
If Microsoft, Meta, Palantir, OpenAI, etc, were complicit in genocide in Sudan, Sudan would have much more attention.
The aggressor in the Gaza genocide is also pulling the rest of the west into new wars in the region. The war is also deeply connected with our defense and tech industries.
There is plenty of reason to discuss this war.
Generally, I think it's reasonable to pay more attention to conflicts where the own side is in the wrong. I don't need to demonstrate or raise awareness if my government is already acting like I'd want it to.
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.
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.
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?
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.
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cm2xrz71zm3o
> Israel's most senior military lawyer has said all charges against five soldiers accused of sexually abusing a Palestinian detainee from Gaza have been dropped.
Don't worry, they punished someone.
> It later emerged the CCTV video had been leaked by the then-Israeli Military Advocate General, Maj Gen Yifat Tomer-Yerushalmi, leading to her resignation and arrest.
Whereas I feel pure, hot rage at the lack of coverage, the lack of anybody caring. Raped men being offered paracetamol because the clinics after only for women has been seared into my brain for a long time now: https://www.theguardian.com/society/2011/jul/17/the-rape-of-....
Nothing has changed since then either.
https://mondoweiss.net/2024/08/the-main-suspect-in-the-sde-t...
Hopefully, such trigger-happy soldiers are in the minority.
The Israeli navy ships were built in German shipyards and subsidized 30%...
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?
Is this something from the post-war or did that really exist?
“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.
[0] https://www.ndr.de/geschichte/koepfe/Esther-Bejarano-Das-Erb...
(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."
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.
Honestly, it looks like a lot of you are.
The ZGF, zionist genocide force are the most ethical perverts in the world.
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.
Ban all politics, and you ban >99% of HN content. Heck, the very concept of HN itself is political!
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.
It wouldn’t make the front page. Like the Iranian massacres. No jews, no news.
It's as far from hacking interest as it gets for me.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45202200 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47136179 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46543457
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.
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.
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."
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.
or just recycled points?
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.
You would think Israelis would already know this very well.
No, we need better people controlling the tools.
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.
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.
> 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."
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.
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.