Discussion

'My mother cried out one last time': Palestinian boy, 12, describes how Israeli forces killed his family in car

HotGarbage: This will be flagged for being "political" but everyone here needs to be reminded that they may be complicit in this via the tech they work on and/or the companies they work for.

kome: this is a discussion that is impossible to have here, but it would be so so needed - we are in "just following orders" territory...

0x3f: If I worked at [supposedly evil company], I doubt this largely unverifiable story would cause much turmoil. I'm sure at work I'd be hearing about much worse and more concrete stuff already.

kshacker: We (and I) have become desensitized. When I saw one of these for the first time about 25 years ago, I was thinking about it for a week. Maybe longer. Because it was new, internet was new, and the video (not the same but it really does not matter) was the first time I saw it for ... real, felt it for real.But after seeing a 100 of these, after knowing some of these are AI, after seeing news of a 1000 more ... I mean how is columbine or sandy hook different ... you see these but you eventually scroll up, sometimes immediately sometimes after a few seconds.I am not making light of it just saying ... a lot of people at evil companies are also tuned out.

0x3f: Well, it's also compartmentalized isn't it. It's happening remotely, even if you're buliding the targetting systems or something like that. It's still all abstracted.And as sympathetic as I might be otherwise, everyone is prone to dramatization and histrionics, which has a numbing tendency too. On both sides.

mygooch: It never fails if you share something like Israel bombing hospitals in Gaza, or murdering the Palestinian boy on the beach, the Zios will always say it's unverified, or because they were hiding missiles there, etc.Nobody ever believes it.All the low quality Zionist propaganda of late is only making people more anti-Israel.

GalaxyNova: Zionism is the idea that the Jewish people deserve a national state. Being anti-Zionist is equivalent to wanting Israel to not exist as a national state.

zingley: There's probably more to this story than meets the eye. It's usual for key details to be omitted or downplayed. Unfortunately, the BBC are particularly credulous when it comes to repeating Hamas-influenced narratives.

bhouston: 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.

vybandz: Why is this on Hacker News? this isn't Reddit.

vybandz: After looking at OP's post history, they seem to flood this site with a bunch of irrelevant nonsense.

JohnMakin: > largely unverifiable storythere’s literally pictures in the article of the bodies

0x3f: Merely that someone died seems to be a tiny fraction of the claims here.

adamhartenz: DIfferent people have different levels of empathy. If you can live with these things happening in the world, let along being involved even in an extremely minor way then fine, but don't try and downplay it.

Daishiman: 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...

Stevvo: [delayed]

GalaxyNova: this story doesn't belong on HN

IAmBroom: Flag and move on.

bhouston: 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/p7mq5k5bsThe 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...

handfuloflight: Hacker News cares about Palestinians all of a sudden?

beepbooptheory: [delayed]

ipv6ipv4: It’s an interesting look into HN.Charitably, this is an astroturf that accumulated 200+ upvotes in about 20 minutes, which I suspect is highly irregular for HN. Along, with a very clear concerted effort to quickly downvote anyone pointing out this is isn’t HN. If this is the case, what is HN admin doing about it?Less charitably, HN is not where hackers hang out anymore. The hackers have moved on and HN is now this.

asdff: Interesting how this highlights a philosophical conundrum here that I'm not sure I have the answer to that goes beyond just forums. Do people make the community, or do rules make the community? I can envision arguments for both sides.

itsangaris: 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?

itsangaris: why not respond instead of downvoting?

haunter: 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.

twiclo: 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.

ahf8Aithaex7Nai: 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.

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

longislandguido: The fact this is still on the front page is indeed a tragedy.

olelele: The israeli army are famous for their tech?

xyzelement: To add something other than the totally predictable on this thread.- Surprising (if you didn't know any better) how light-skinned all the Palestinians are in this article. I bet the average soldier in the involved IDF unit was darker. Only relevant because the conflict is often portrayed in terms of European Colonialism or US race dynamics.- Good that Israel is investigating this, seems like it's a thing they don't want (though perhaps are less eager to prevent this sort of incident at additional risk to themselves now vs years earlier.) Hard to imagine that any loss of innocent Israeli life would be investigated rather than celebrated from the other side.- If I were Israeli, I would be bemused and flattered by the attention and relevance the country seems to have from random people on the internet with no skin in the game. It would be wild to find random stories about an incident involving New Zealanders and Maoris (or whatever) on the front page, yet here we are.

xg15: > Only relevant because the conflict is often portrayed in terms of European Colonialism or US race dynamics.What do you want to tell with this? That there are no race dynamics because some people have a lighter skin color?No "Judeo-Christian civilization", no "Villa in the Jungle", no "Light unto the nations", nope...

fourseventy: Collateral damage is inevitable in any war. We don't need a HN post every time an innocent person dies in one of the wars in the middle east.

ErroneousBosh: This isn't a war, though. This is an extermination. This is an army with effectively limitless power against unarmed civilians.

delecti: 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.

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

tastyface: "I don't give a shit about dead Palestinian kids" is... quite a flex. Just chipping more pieces from a damaged soul.

_DeadFred_: 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.

gambiting: 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.

layer8: FWIW, you can read flagged posts and comments by turning on showdead in your profile.

quirk: Why is this on HN?

surgical_fire: Because someone posted, and others upvoted.The same reason your inane question is on HN.

xg15: > is palestinian existence inherently more political than other peoples' existence?Since they are at the core of this conflict and germans aren't, obviously yes?

jll29: 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.)

kakacik: I don't see anything shocking just extremely sad, this is war 101, every day. Anybody who cares to follow whats happening will find these stories from each conflict. Ie same stories could be found on Ukraine (especially first months, sometimes with video), I personally recall few heartbreaking ones. Its civilians who suffer the worst fate in every war, innocent, small, defenseless.Given the uncritical support israel is getting from the political elites, plan will go on and the plan is nothing else than destruction of whole gaza, razing it down and building... whatever, I presume more settlers or maybe even a golf course with hotels on the beach. IDF will launch 'an investigation', that will drag for 2 years and nothing will be done at the end, like always.And the worst thing - people will forget about all this rather quickly, and much more. Maybe its coping mechanism to stay sane, but stellar behavior it isn't.

cogman10: > this is war 101The west bank isn't at war with Israel. There wasn't some conflict or event that has justified these actions.I wish people understood this better. Even if you could manage to justify what's happening in gaza as "this is war", Gaza and the west bank are separate entities with separate governments. The west bank, in particular, is more like an Indian reservation in the US, with the Israeli government effectively exercising supremacy over all aspects of the government.Theoretically, the IDF is supposed to be the police force for the west bank. That's why they occupy it.

xg15: > this is war 101, every day.Except this situation has been going on like this for 60 years - with Israel, or the other western states having absolutely no plans to change anything about it (except making it even worse).

tomhow: > 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

xdennis: > The west bank isn't at war with Israel.People insist that Gaza is not a country, but Palestine is. You can't then say that the West Bank is not responsible for what the rest of Palestine did.

noworriesnate: > Auschwitz Girls’ OrchestraIs this something from the post-war or did that really exist?

layer8: 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.

tomhow: 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.

HDThoreaun: I honestly think the gaza war was largely continued as a distraction from the true atrocities Israel has been committing in the west bank. By getting all the news to focus on Gaza Israel could trot out reasoning that many people accept, but the state sponsored terrorism they are undertaking in the west bank is the kind of stuff that is truly hard for even ardent Israel supporters to overlook.

cogman10: Unfortunately, even in this comment section, you see people conflating the two. People don't realize that Palestinians live in both the west bank and gaza or that there are 2 different government for the west bank and gaza.

surgical_fire: The people being oppressed and exterminated belong to the same group.It's not even wrong to conflate atrocities in both regions as part of the same genocidaire campaign.

cogman10: I agree, but I'd say it's important when pointing out how horrible this is you don't let the "they deserved it" narrative fly.How Israel acts in the west bank is a testament to how poor their behavior in gaza is. They have no real justification for their evictions and murders of west bank citizens. They have no justification for turning a blind eye to settler violence. They have no justification for not punishing IDF soldiers who break theirs and international law.

quirk: 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.

jokoon: I don't like the comparison with the holocaust, because this feels like opening another door to antisemitism.What is happening in Gaza is different from the holocaust. This sort of argument is called holocaust inversion.I am also bothered how the death of palestinian civilians somehow shadows the tactics used by Hamas and Hezbollah and how Iran helps them. So many died in Iraq, so many died in Iran by the hands of their government, so many are dying in Sudan, yet Israel is held to a higher standard, but why? Because of the holocaust, so Israel should know better? Because Israel is an US ally? Because Israel is the most democratic country in the middle east?Maybe I am doing some whataboutism, but so is the comparison with auschwitz survivors.I rarely allow myself to engage in arguing about this war anymore because it's just a totem now, even local politicians use it, it's ridiculous. I am just a leftist and I dislike Netanyahu as much as everybody, by the way.And none of my arguments are meant to downplay how the Israelis engaged in war crimes. I just don't like how the holocaust is brought into that, it tries to install the narrative "jews went through a genocide, but they are taking a revenge" or something.

HDThoreaun: Israel's plan to confuse people about what is happening in the west bank vs gaza is so effective that even their detractors are falling for it. Truly a genius strategy

surgical_fire: That's a good point actually.

wk_end: 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: > I wouldn't be surprised if IDF forces deployed to the West Bank are trained much like American police officers areIDF trains them.https://www.amnestyusa.org/blog/with-whom-are-many-u-s-polic...

xg15: https://www.haaretz.com/west-bank/2026-03-16/ty-article/.pre...

ActorNightly: The problem is that its not a simple conflict where one can take a moral side.Its absolutely true that Israel is definitely targeting civilians, whether due to negligence or just not giving a fuck, because of a combination of anger and fear of being eliminated.Its also absolutely true that Hamas and by extension Iran wants Israeli to target civilians because it makes them appear as the bad guys, which furthers their agenda to weaken Israel to eventually retake the land. And not only that, but the terrorist cells also are interested in carrying out attacks in countries that support or have supported Israel even in defense only.

OutOfHere: If you listen to the news, Israel kills innocent people on a daily basis in Palestine and Lebanon. It is a surprise that people choose to live in the West Bank despite such killings.

xdennis: > 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?If this was a story from Sudan or Yemen it wouldn't get a single upvote because there's no way to blame the Jews for it.Posts about Israel get posted constantly because they're a vehicle for highbrow antisemitism.I'm not saying this story is not legit, but I am saying that if this happened anywhere else, nobody would give damn about it.