[ameminator]

I honestly don't think this subject should be on here. I don't think it's possible for a coherent or respectful or even useful conversation to happen here. I haven't seen any conversation about this topic that hadn't gone to hell.

[dang]

Yes, you're of course right—and at the same time, if I ask myself how to follow HN's core principle [1] in relation to this topic, I can't see "don't touch it at all" as right either. It may be an impossible quandary—but it's not in the spirit of this place to take an easy way out; or to put it differently, the easy way out (if one exists) is not in the spirit of this place.

What does "curiosity" mean in a context like this? It certainly needs to be more than just a technical dissection of details. I think it has to do with being open to learning. For that we have to be open to each other. And for that, we have to first find some space for the other within ourselves. Comments that have to do with annihilating the other (including in virtual form, such as by defeating them in internet battle) are therefore off-topic in a thread like this, as I posted above.

(Edit: there's also a kind of curiosity in walking into the impossible to find out what's doable; and also in taking a different approach with each attempt—which is why my pinned comment in this thread is different from last time.)

[1] https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...

[ameminator]

You're also absolutely right - I hadn't considered that point of view, and that we also shouldn't be "de facto" censoring subjects. I implore the community here to not ruin the general HN forum with the usual insanity around this subject.

[anovick]

I'm sorry, but even if I concede the notion that this piece promotes "intellectual curiosity" in some amount (how much?), this news source is highly biased and has been found to spread fake news especially on the events since October 7th including current war in Gaza.

There is real harm in spreading this information. As you may or may not know, mobs and individuals around the world are fed such false narratives that demonize Israelis/Jews. Combine this with either mental illness or religious fundamentalism and you get the kinds of lynching, hateful speech, violence threats, etc. against Israelis/Jews and sympathizers.

Is whatever "intellectual curiosity" you think you're promoting with this piece worth the health and lives of innocent people?

[dang]

I attempted to answer that question here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38617464, but to add a bit more: the idea on HN has always been to go by article quality, not site quality (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so...). An article appearing on HN is by no means an endorsement of the site as a whole, nor of anything else appearing on that site.

[chacham15]

I would disagree with that policy in this case. In most other articles, the reader has a much better ability to understand the quality of the article from reading it. This audience is primarily technical and not political. This topic has such a long history and so much nuance to it, that an article about this topic can uniquely spread a false narrative to a non political reader. That being said, not every reader has little political understanding which makes having a discussion even harder. Imagine a physicist, electrical engineer, mechanical engineer, and artist trying to have a discussion about "reflections in time." With that topic, while a discussion may be difficult, it at worst isnt harmful. In this case, a false narrative can and has been used to further hateful ideas, hate speech, and actual crime. With those negative possibilities here, I think we should be erring on the side of caution and not on the side of curiosity.

A smaller reason why I disagree with this is that the responses to this topic are uniquely capable of alienating large quantities of people which is counter to what we'd want for a community like this.

[lostdog]

With respect, Al Jazeera is one of the most biased sources covering the conflict. They are still lying about the rocket explosion at the hospital for example.

[awesomeMilou]

Even without lying, even if this article had been published by the Guardian or Atlantic this wouldn't be a quality article. It's a one sided witness statement with no information on wether Al Jazeera reached out to the IDF to obtain some sort of aknowledgement (which you'd do if you're confident in your story, just so you can say "IDF denied to comment").

I have compassion and sympathy for all victims of this war, including the kids interviewed in the article, but as of right now, the information presented is dubious at best.

[JoshTko]

Are you saying this article is dangerous because it may further engage folks that have been already enraged due to having been misinformation elsewhere to the point it could result in violence? Also how does that compare with the actual harm and health of innocent people mentioned in the article?

[dang]

Please see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38616662 and https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38618540. We're trying for a different spirit in this thread.

[anovick]

> Are you saying this article is dangerous because it may further engage folks that have been already enraged due to having been misinformation elsewhere to the point it could result in violence?

Yes

> Also how does that compare with the actual harm and health of innocent people mentioned in the article?

Even if the events as reported in the article are true, they are part of war. Like it or not, Gaza's citizens chose Hamas as their elected government. Said government chose to go start a war with Israel. War is not elegant, and unfortunately innocent citizens on both sides pay the price.

[biorach]

> Gaza's citizens chose Hamas as their elected government

Well... They got 44% of the vote in 2006 and have refused to hold elections since

[shashashasha___]

so? one hostage was able to break free and run away only to be taken back by gazan civilians to hamas. sp hamas support is high there still

https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.cnn.com/cnn/2023/11/27/midd...

[pbadams]

I think you might be right that encouraging curious discussion of these topics is important to the mission of HN.

However, if the moderation approach is going to change, I think it would be better to do so explicitly through changes to the site guidelines rather than in an ad-hoc way. I don't think that this article is covering an 'interesting _new_ phenomenon' (emph. mine) as discussed in the guidelines, and indeed most of the comments are talking about moderation policy or the conflict in general as opposed to the details presented in the article. Perhaps it would be better to have a thread explicitly focused on members of the community engaging with each other as individuals, such as a hypothetical 'Ask HN: How has conflict personally affected you?' or 'Ask HN: How/why have your views on this conflict changed over time?'

The stories that the article has to tell are important, but they aren't the thing that people are discussing here. And moderating submissions instead of explicitly discussion-focused posts invites some of the concerns about sourcing and bias that have been raised in other comments.

[dang]

It's not ad hoc, although I realize it looks that way, because the guidelines only cover a few of the principles we go by. The rest are described in the endless (and admittedly rather tedious) stream of moderation comments that I put out, which is why I link to HN Search queries so much.

It won't work to add all of them to the guidelines list because that would make the list so long that few would read it, and (worse) it would make it a bureaucratic sort of document that would be most out of sync with the intended spirit. In the long run I (think I) intend to compile those explanations into short (perhaps one paragraph each) glosses on the guidelines, and make it easy to link to.

As for most commenters not discussing the details of the OP: you're right. But that may be too much to expect in this case. To be able to discuss this topic at all without combusting is already a lot. That's also, btw, why I left my pinned comment open to replies (something I never do), and why the meta (why is this on HN, etc.) discussion is not downweighted the way it normally would be.

[awesomeMilou]

> What does "curiosity" mean in a context like this? It certainly needs to be more than just a technical dissection of details.

But then allowing this discussion on here is already misguided. Call me biased, but I don't think you're going to find a ton of experts on international law and the law of nations on a site aimed at technical discussion. Even in qualified circles, this discussion is already heavily biased.

I'd argue that in order to discuss topics like these, you ought to have a guided discussion, with experts present to correct polemic statements. (such as the 2nd top comment, that is currently trying to compare international law with laws affecting individuals, which is a gross misinterpretation of the legal situation of this war.) This is how well respected journalists and news outlets do it in my country.

[dang]

I don't think a topic like this can be left to experts, and in any case we don't treat any other topic on HN like that. Of course that means people can be wrong; most of us are mostly wrong about most everything.

[drc500free]

Al Jazeera is state propaganda run by the Qataris, who also fund Hamas. The one topic that they absolutely cannot provide unbiased commentary on is Israel-Palestine. Picking an AJ article as the jumping off point is akin to picking a Pravda or RT article as the jumping off point to discuss Ukraine-Russia.

I think this community is better than most at keeping things analytical, and you're better than any other moderator I've encountered in decades on online communities. But it's not exactly a neutral framing to kick off the discussion. An article about the numerous rapes and tortures committed by Palestinians during October 7th and on the hostages afterwards would likewise not be the most neutral.

[r00fus]

This is conjecture, not facts. Please provide some actual reason why one should see Al Jazeera as a non-serious source.

btw, the same was said about the Al Jazeera's reporting on the Iraq occupation, and it was equally false.

[h3rsko]

They still claim the al-Ahli hospital explosion was an Israeli strike where "hundreds were killed."

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/10/20/what-have-open-sou...

[megous]

Said article is not a commentary. It's pure reporting.

[doom2]

> I don't think it's possible for a coherent or respectful or even useful conversation to happen here.

I've seen some variation of this sentiment both here on HN and elsewhere. It makes me wonder: is the topic so toxic that no conversation can happen at all? If that's the case, what's the appropriate forum for debate?

I'd argue that meatspace gathering places tend to not be much better (see: current debate about how this is playing out on college campuses), which has the net effect of chilling any discussion anywhere. That leaves op-ed pages, blog posts, Substacks, places where people can broadcast their opinion to the world...but not have to engage on it whatsoever. That doesn't feel like a great alternative to at least attempting to create space to talk about it.

[ameminator]

Believe it or not, you're argument strongly resonated with me. However:

>It makes me wonder: is the topic so toxic that no conversation can happen at all?

I believe that the topic is so toxic and emotionally charged that it's almost impossible to have meaningful conversation about it. It's the "abortion" of geopolitics, where everyone is emotionally invested in their own way, distrusts/hates the other side or has such absolute positions that there is no point in arguing.

Now, it may still be worth the attempt (which I believe is the HN moderators' position on this matter). You have a really strong point that we should put in the effort to make space for this type of conversation. Unfortunately, all the evidence has convinced me that "polite, productive conversation" and "Israel/Palestine conflict" are mutually exclusive.

I see Hacker News as a tech-related with some general interest forum. I appreciate the high standards of dialogue and commentary on this website as well as the "intellectual exploration"-esque philosophy behind it. If a topic cannot conform to the above standard, I don't think it should be here - and that's out of necessity, to protect the environment of intellectual openness here.

Unfortunately, it may also be true that it's hard to find an alternative space to discuss this in society, that perhaps friends and family or your local community is not open to this discussion. That sites like Reddit are not great places for this discussion.

But HN cannot be the "everything" place and it's in this spirit that I think we should strongly consider limiting how much of this topic we welcome here, in the interest of protecting at least one great place for tech-related (with some general interest) intellectual pursuits.

I will let you be the judge - do you really find the rest of this thread constructive?

[doom2]

> I see Hacker News as a tech-related with some general interest forum. I appreciate the high standards of dialogue and commentary on this website as well as the "intellectual exploration"-esque philosophy behind it.

I think this is a more convincing argument to me of why a topic may not be appropriate for this forum. As for the rest of the thread, there are obviously some very low quality comments/sub-threads. But overall I've found these to be a lot less emotionally charged.

[lolinder]

I suspect that's largely because of the flagging system and constant moderator attention, not because we're naturally doing better than other forums.

That said, it doesn't especially matter why it's better—it is better here than elsewhere. But that's a separate question from whether it's on topic.

[emmelaich]

Mostly agree but this particular discussion seems ok. Well done @dang.

[93po]

As long as it's contained to a single place, people can choose to not click it and read other stuff and i think that's fine

[_HMCB_]

I disagree. Bringing this to light even without discussion has merit. We are all members of the human race and I for one am grateful it was posted.

[aluminum96]

Absolutely agree. Civil online discourse about the I/P conflict is impossible, and at this point we're just beating a dead horse.

[neonsunset]

Many of us are with you but mod staff and PG have a different opinion :)