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Comment by dijit | Hacker News Reader

That's really sad.

The Isreali man really should not have been there, but I have to recognise a couple of things.

1) I don't know what anyone is saying except, ironically, plea's of someone near the camera man asking the Israeli man to "Shoot me".

2) I do not know what lead up to this confrontation

3) I have been in a circumstance before where a large group of people are acting frantic and in a threatening way and it's genuinely terrifying, so much so that you will act irrationally - this might be something others on this platform might not be familiar with.

The circumstance could have been avoided by Israel not having any settlers in the west bank, for sure, and it's a tragic situation.

However, I'm sitting here, in Sweden, behind a computer on a site about entrepreneurialism and technology.

I can't possibly say anything on the subject that's meaningful, none of us can. Why is it here?

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From watching the video it doesn't appear although anyone other than the settler was armed.

Being armed is not a requisite.

If anything being armed in that situation is incredibly stupid, because you'll still panic and now you're acting irrationally with a deadly weapon. The weapon can be used (as this example) or taken off you.

I speak from experience, I got mobbed upon by a local gang, thought it would be smart to arm myself with a prop sword in order to stop them advancing.

It didn't stop them, and in fact the sword was taken off me (because it was a prop, and I wouldn't have used it even if it wasn't to be honest) - and they proceeded to smash it over my head sending me to hospital.

All of this is only obvious with a clear head, and in hindsight. Being in that situation as a human being is just.. awful. I don't recommend it.

EDIT: I'm getting flagged a lot from emotional people; I think this is part of why I really dislike this topic, we know nothing except how we feel and refuse to look at things objectively - and we're not even qualified to do that anyway. So everything becomes pornography to confirm our biases and to drown out anyone who doesn't immediately call for the end of Israel.

You brought a fake sword for protection?

No, I grabbed a fake sword as a deterrent, it was on hand.

The settler was in someone else's land, and actively participated in displacing the people that were "terrifying" them. An easy way would've been to just leave. It's not even controversial, almost every country on earth recognizes that the settlements are illegal.

If a Russian soldier in Ukrainian territory shot some civilian in the face, I guess you'd also have put yourself in their shoes and given them the benefit of the doubt? I mean, they were terrified!

As you ask why this is here. Copied from the guidelines of this site: “What to submit? On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes more than hacking and startups. (…) anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity.” So it’s fair to say that this site is about more than entrepreneurship and tech.

Perhaps we need to make some mapbox visualizations about the devastation in Gaza. Then we'll be on theme, but the topic is not going to change. Maybe someone should make a game about it and put it on Steam. Maybe it'll get banned. Then we can have the PERFECT discussion on HN, as so many want:

- About tech

- About a current event

- About censorship

Genocide by itself, that's just not good enough apparently. That's very weird because there's tons of serious discussion on HN about history. This place cares a lot about history. Whatever is happening right now is just real-time history.

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