With all this brutality and dehumanisation, no wonder the IDF are seeing the highest rates of PTSD and suicide.
I guess if a massacre is a massacre then it would have a high chance of affecting those involved regardless of belief.
If you have 3 hours, there's a documentary you can watch, about a man who was part of a government-sanctioned killsquad to kill a lot of "communists" in 1960's Indonesia: The Act of Killing (available at e.g. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3TDeEObjR9Q ).
It's sort of understandable why the defenders of the genocide have to keep defending it. Stopping doing so today would mean admitting that until yesterday you've been defending utter inhumanity.
A review:
> Joshua Oppenheimer’s The Act of Killing is a challenging documentary. It is not only difficult to watch, but it also probes into one of the most grotesque aspects of human nature: the capacity for self-delusion in the face of horrific atrocities. This isn’t a film about history, facts, or statistics; it’s about the memories of the men who killed, the stories they tell themselves, and how they continue to live with the horrors they’ve inflicted on others. The film’s power lies in its ability to take the viewer beyond a surface-level understanding of evil and into the psychological abyss of those who have committed atrocities—and seemingly moved on with their lives.
From: https://docthisway.com/2024/09/23/the-act-of-killing-review/
- Flour massacre
- World Central Kitchen drone strikes
- Gaza aid distribution massacres
- Rafah paramedics massacre
- Targeting of journalists
- Forced starvation
- Crop destruction
Israel will deny all of those. But the world have seen it with their own eyes.
I genuinely don't know how to respond to this in good faith but I will still try to do my best.
Previous discussion (at edit 27 points): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47553964
Unless someone gives me a genuine reason as to why people are flagging it and the people who are flagging it can come state the reason publicly, just as how I am able to defend that this should be talked about and discussed publicly. I will continue to re-post this.
I just want to raise awareness and not let censorship win.
This post is beyond political, its a humanitarian post. I hope I can convey that and I hope that the streisand effect plays a part here and people become well aware of this post.
@dang, can you please prevent such posts from getting flagged? Unless there is a reason as to why these might get flagged from a hackernews moderation standpoint, it feel as if a blatant misuse of the abuse feature.
Have a nice day.
Not flagging, but also not upvoting. One, it’s an ambiguous archive link. Two, I’m not getting the sense that the source is unbiased [1]. For a contentious topic, I want to form my opinions—and hear those of fellow HN users—around rock-solid sourcing.
> post is beyond political, its a humanitarian post
If it’s not political, it’s irrelevant. Gawking at humanitarian disaster isn’t a popular pass-time outside narrow bands of the internet.
If you’re posting it to effect change, it is political. That’s fine. But I’m also sceptical why this would be expected to change the balance of views on the wars in the region. IDF and Hamas—the former, probably due to resources, at larger scale than the latter—being horrible to captives is well established.
This wasn't the case with the previous post that I mentioned yet it got flagged
? . Two, I’m not getting the sense that the source is unbiased [1]. For a contentious topic, I want to form my opinions—and hear those of fellow HN users—around rock-solid sourcing.
When the post had gotten flagged/ I had thought of giving another link like msn (https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/world/gaza-toddler-released-f...) and this is a bit more in-depth (https://www.msn.com/en-us/war-and-conflicts/military/palesti...)
But I found no articles as thorough as this one. I don't believe as to if anything is factually wrong
Also oops, yea I had just the link of archive.org and not the proper link (https://web.archive.org/web/20260328122756/https://www.middl...)
I am editing this for that, thank you for suggesting this!
Edit: I can't edit the hackernews post, I am a bit sorry then to hackernews community for just sharing the archive.org link but I had accidentally pasted just the archive link instead, a bit sorry about that, perhaps moderators (if they wish) can change to this particular link or if someone wants to read it: https://web.archive.org/web/20260328122756/https://www.middl...
Did a physician ever evaluate the child? And were the neighbours’ accounts that the child was unharmed when handed over by the father to the IDF independently verified?
Torturing a toddler wouldn’t be out of character for the IDF right now. But just because something is believable doesn’t mean it’s true. The fact that nobody else is reporting on this should be cause for pause.
There are details here including quotations from an unnamed doctor. If feel you can't trust the media credentials of the Independent, you could contact them for the identity of the unnamed doctor (who they are likely protecting based on the nature of the conflict) and ask them directly.
Since people are questioning the objectivity of the other domain, we'll use this link you found for the merged thread. I'll put the original link in the top text.
All we have to go on are the photos. And they seem more randomly shaped like shrapnel wounds than the round mark cigarette burns leave.
All of this requires substantiation. Without it, a named medical professional rendering a medical opinion is credible.
> how can such claims accepted without more scrutiny?
What does "accepted" mean in this context? I'm forming a personal opinion. Based on the preponderance of evidence–evidence you'll see, in this very thread, I was earlier sceptical of–it looks like serious people are putting their names to the opinion that this toddler was tortured.
That’s your opinion. I disagree. It’s not credible, because being a “professional” does not mean you are capable of ignoring your own biases, especially when they run deep as they do in this particular conflict. I’ll also point out that the medical opinion you’re referring to lacks any actual details. For example - if the injuries are consistent with a cigarette burn, what specifically makes it “consistent” and how does this medical professional differentiate this possibility from all the other ones? Why is anything substantial conveniently omitted from all these stories, which instead all use the vague phrasing of “consistent with”? Why are there no details on this doctor, where they practice, or their credentials anywhere?
No knock on you directly, just an observation about the attitude in our culture. If this is true a child was tortured, if it's false someone is lying and needs to be outed (with facts) so they are not trusted. Neither one is good but is no one looking into it?
Nope. Rejecting a source doesn’t mean I am obligated to investigate it. As I said, whether this is true or not doesn’t seem particularly politically relevant. It would be interesting to know. But purely for curiosity, not because I think it will have practical effects.
Its also just the fact, that a ton of things that chomsky and co supported turned out to be vile, evil and mean landempires using emotional stories to "hack" the downtrodden and hopeless of the west. The support for russias invasion comes to mind and honestly it tainted all the stories told in a similar way by parties on the same side. Sometimes, evil things just run out of credits and the mask drops. And yes, you can be poor, a underdog and still be evil. And yes you can have a volksturm and hitleryouth die in droves and still be evil.
Re-submitting links to try to force attention to it is also not the correct approach. If you believe a story has been wrongly flagged, directly email the HN administrators with a link to the original submission.
and your original comment has been flagged as well, so I am not even sure what it might've said in the first place.
>"On the contrary: The toddler was brought by a Hamas operative into a dangerous area to be used as a human shield.
Same old denials as usual, aren't they getting tired? These spokespersons don't know anything, their only job is to deny that anything happened. Which does work a lot if there are no witnesses or video. Same deal with the ambulances or journalists like Shireen Abu Akleh.
Deny. Deflect. Gaslight. Obfuscate. And if irrefutable evidence emerges, they deserved it. Weaponised narcissism by a country.
Apropos: 'Iran and Gaza Are ONLY THE BEGINNING' (Chris Hedges at Princeton) March 2026
And Honest Reporting’s description of this situation seems accurate. What evidence is there really? It seems like one person’s claim is being laundered through many pro Palestine news outlets. That’s basically what this Honest Reporting article says, and that part seems irrefutable.
Sure. I called that out, too [1]. Two bad sources doesn't a good source make [2].
> in favor of Islamism
Islamism in its formal sense [3] falls into the same category as Christian nationalism in Europe and America, Hindutva in India and the current governing ideology of Israel's government. I am not personally in favor of marrying religion and politics. But I'm not going to discard someone's opinion about something just because they believe that.
> What evidence is there really?
The Independent quotes a named doctor.
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47557483
I agree with the principle. However, the Honest Reporting article isn’t actually making any particular claim and isn’t a “source” in the same way, right? Their article is just pointing out the flaws in the widely-circulated claims from pro-Palestine news media and reasons to be skeptical of those claims.
As for your comparison of Islamism to others - I feel it goes too far in framing these various movements as the same, as these all are different in their goals and the level of intolerance against other beliefs. One key difference - Islamism (the political movement) is much more prevalent among Muslims than Christian nationalism is among Christians. And it preaches the erasure of all other religions entirely. Sam Harris has spoken about this in length if you want to hear it from others. Hindutva isn’t the same as either Islamism or Christian nationalism, since it literally means “Hinduness”. The recent reframing of “Hinduness” into a pejorative is just a vague racist-tinged political attack against a long-colonized people (Indians) trying to keep their culture from being erased by other powers. The intersection of many eastern religions with politics, to whatever extent they exist, are far less of a threat to free societies than the supremacist versions of Christianity and Islam.
Within their relevant geographies, so does, it seems, the other movements.
I agree that Islamism is currently more in power and more violent, extreme and ridiculous than those others. But again, I’m not discarding anything they say as a result of it.
> Hindutva isn’t the same as either Islamism or Christian nationalism, since it literally means “Hinduness”
As it’s practiced it has involved excusing and in many cases encouraging murderous riots. (Islamism parsed literally also sounds innocuous.)
> a long-colonized people (Indians) trying to keep their culture from being erased by other powers
This is revanchism. All extremists do it. Islamists and Christian nationalists want a return of their golden ages.