> In the town of Abu Falah, near Ramallah, at least 80 settlers, some of whom were carrying firearms or clubs, gathered to stop Palestinians from harvesting their olives, using slingshots to hurl rocks at the farmers in view of Israeli military vehicles. When some of the Palestinians then picked up rocks to defend themselves, the Israeli military fired teargas in their direction.

This has become beyond ridiculous. I have personally gone from full support for Israel to now not even supporting Israel's right to exist. And I can't be the only one. I feel sorry for the (clearly increasingly rare) "normal" people of Israel but they will soon need to move out of Israel to not be bundled in with the crazies.

I get that this is a hot take, but where are the "normal" people of Israel going to move to exactly? Remind me which group of countries are offering to take in 10 million immigrants?

That's the population of Israel, not the number of Israeli citizens opposed to the current government and the actions of the settlers.

Fair enough, so make it 4 or 5 million or whatever number seems reasonable, but I would still like to know which countries are going to accept these millions of people.

You think fully half the population of Israel opposes the current government and the actions of the settlers?

That seems ... unlikely.

Call it a million, maybe, at most, that might want to move .. pragmatically a hundred thousand per year over the next decade.

Currently

   304 million people—3.7 percent of the world's population—lived outside their country of birth in 2024, nearly double the 153.9 million in 1990, per UN Population Division data. 
  The United States hosted more than 52 million migrants in 2024

~ https://www.migrationpolicy.org/journal/feature/top-statisti...

so the precedent is there to absorb another million across the globe, although realistically the US in its current state is unlikely to welcome "peaceniks" who'd be accused of supporting Hamas.

I was replying to a comment which stated that they didn't support "Israel's right to exist" and suggested that Israelis move. I interpreted the comment as saying "we can solve this problem by moving the Israelis out of Israel." But this is dumb. It's not like anyone can just go move to another country because they feel like it. You generally need a spouse, a job, or some other wedge to get into that country. And there are no countries volunteering to make a special exception and take in Israeli's, even at "only" a hundred thousand per year.

Of course, they also might also not feel like it. I was born and raised in the US. I strongly oppose almost everything President Trump does. I don't see why that means I should have to move.

I suggest you carefully reread the original comment:

  This has become beyond ridiculous. I have personally gone from full support for Israel to now not even supporting Israel's right to exist. And I can't be the only one. I feel sorry for the (clearly increasingly rare) "normal" people of Israel but they will soon need to move out of Israel to not be bundled in with the crazies.

> I interpreted the comment as saying "we can solve this problem by moving the Israelis out of Israel." But this is dumb

You're correct here - it was dumb to interpret that comment as you did. It specifically talked about the small numbers of citizens opposed to the current arc of the state.

> You think fully half the population of Israel opposes the current government and the actions of the settlers?

Well we know with a certainty that more than half of Israelis oppose this government by quite a majority, the current government can't get re-elected. As for what Israelis think about the violence in the territories - I don't have numbers but yes I think the vast majority opposes it. It might surprise you but it is being reported on almost daily in the major Israeli news media with an extremely alarmist and negative tone (which it should). Perhaps it's self serving (every Israeli with 2 brain cells understands what this is doing to our reputation and our longterm ability to survive) but I truly believe it just contradicts most Israeli's morals.

You will find very few people say it's cool to attack some elderly reporter or some shepherd kid just tending to his goats. They exist for sure but I don't think they're that many.

BTW I'm even surprised to see opinion pieces by very prominent and quite radical figures in the settlement movement (Hagai Segal, Benzi Lieberman to name a few) calling to stop with this shit.

Thank you for the thoughtful comment.

In the context of the upthread comment made not by myself which I appear to have taken on the task of clarifying as best I can ... that quoted statement probably really should be about the percentage of the Israeli population that { oppose the current government AND oppose settlement (not just the extreme actions) AND are prepared to leave and move elsewhere }.

It's good to see a growth of internal opposition to the extremes of Israel action against Palestine; that's something that in an ideal world should have been far stronger a good many years past.

Arguably both sides here have been guilty since the get go of not reining in their more extreme and likely more traumatised members; both understandable and escalatory in an arc that has lead to where things are today.

Nice blanket condemnation. Ther are 3 million children in Israel so apparently you believe 2 millions children are irredeemable if they don't move away from the only country they have ever known?

I also thought the talking point is 'israel discussion is relevant because of US aid'. But those same people now say Israel has no right to exist, not calling for an end to aid (again the reason the discussion is supposedly relevant above other worldwide horrible actions).

I suppose to the same place Palestinians are supposed to go..

Palestine? That's not moving; they are there now.

Are you aware this is a thread concerning Israeli settler violence? The settlers are not settling on empty land..

I am aware of that.

I responding to a comment suggesting that Israelis (not settlers, but Israelis in general) should move to another place, but the comment did not specify where they should move to. Where is this place that the Israelis can go?

And my response was highlighting the fact that Palestinians are being slowly displaced, with no alternative location to move to.

Right. Just like it makes no sense to suggest the Palestians be moved somewhere else, it makes no sense to suggest the Israelis be moved, for the simple reason that is is not possible.

I feel like people get caught up with notions of what would satisfy their sense of cosmic, historical justice without paying any attention to what can actually be done in reality.

For sure. However, where this tangent started was that GP suggested that the people displacing Israelis would be other more extreme Israelis. Hot take or not, crazy times.

Frankly, current Israel was not really built on top of empty land either.

Large numbers of Israeli Jews are currently settling Cyprus and Argentina. Zionist President Milei even changed the law to allow private ownership of public land in Patagonia, if the lands had burned. The Israeli invaders then ensured that Patagonia is on fire. Not sure what is happening with the indigenous (pre-Columbian) population that resides in Patagonia. Cypriots are unhappy with the influx.

Internal polling in Israel had percentage of Israeli Jews who support the genocide and mass targeted murder of children as high as 98%, and 85% Of Israeli Jews want more brutality and cruelty. Even the internal polls showing the lowest percentage of support for the genocide show support by Israeli Jews greater than 90%.

> This has become beyond ridiculous

It always was, but things are now coming to light because their war crimes are being broadcast live for everyone to see from first person point of view.

Thank you for siding with the right side of history.

> their war crimes are being broadcast live

Always have been, it's all over media in Arab countries. It's just western media that is glossing over the genocide.

the same Arab countries that ejected their long-established Jewish populations en-masse in 1948? I wonder where they thought those people were going to go. In 1948.

I wonder what happened in 1948. And I'm sure you know of the israeli false flags that took place in the 50's in Arab countries to push migration to the entity.

It's not just Arab countries. I remember being on a business trip 20 years ago in France and the news channel on at the airport was matter of factly showing Israili soldiers with rifles shooting (rubber?) bullets at Palestinian teenagers. The same scene was on every day. It was disorienting to see because I had never seen these scenes once on US news channels.

The whole purpose of Israel existing is to have a western-adjacent country wedged in the middle of Arab area, so that military missions can be carried out from/by Israel. As much as I hate how Israelis behave, Israel needs to exist until Arab countries become developed democracies - so far, not a single one fulfills this criterion.

> Israel needs to exist until Arab countries become developed democracies

A country engaged in genocide needs to exist for your personal benefit? To carry out an obviously failed dream which was sold to the masses as the only viable option to be "safe" from extreme regimes and beliefs?

The West created and supported terrible individuals and dictatorships in the entire region, publicizing them to craft false narratives as a means of controlling the masses, despite it giving these people more power and connections. This fueled instability and showed how to become an effective enemy. It's beyond irony that the most dangerous of these threats have roots from direct funding and weapons from the USA/West, while groups and civilians became more organized and extremist directly in response to Western interference over decades. The evidence is clear, modern "wars" are driven by vain political "optics" and individual enrichment. You can't think outside the narrative and rhetoric of these systems and then conclude external action is going to make you safe.

We covertly and overtly mess with their lives, country systems, and leadership. We fund terrorists, criminals, and mercenaries to get our desired result. We invade and fight however we please, insert whoever will benefit us, then retreat on a whim, after destroying the infrastructure and systems of democratic response except for protecting access to what we can take (oil), without a plan for the country or citizens. We leave it to fester, forget the country exists, then later wonder why a country in shock and decline ends up being controlled by violent groups. We then pretend to wonder why the hardened citizens who fought for/with/adjacent/by-proxy for us and lost everything (loved ones, community, home, sense of belonging and safety) suddenly become radicalized. Then we use that as an excuse to start interfering again, or even wipe them out, on repeat. We also respond far harsher to any perceived interference with both hard and soft-power, such as killing civilians (including children), trapped in a country now run by these terrorizing dictators that we either directly supported, trained, or influenced.

By crazy mental gymnastics, many people then believe the conclusion to this is we are clearly superior beings living in the optimal societal system, ignoring the fact that these are humans just like us doing very predictable human things. This gets extended to an extreme belief that we must (and can, and have the right to) eradicate entire groups of people or races and/or re-educate to our way of living. The hyper-rationalizations of our actions to arrive at such flawed logic appears to be a symptom of the system which has been capitalized on for decades; such a complex and abstract atomized society forces us to find a coherent internal narrative that feels safe, aligned, and connected to (the hyper-real) external reality.

Closer to home, our own citizens died in failed wars based on lies, meddling, false-flag operations, scaremongering, and fearful rhetoric. Yet we still believe what we see and fail to question how a lifetime of this leaves us brainwashed into unquestionably feeling superior. It requires active effort to critically question our beliefs in such a system. Those that can't cope watch our own politics and media become extreme, hateful, doomer rhetoric, to be angered into attacking people in our own countries for being slightly different, family even. It's an unnaturally inflated feeling, engineered to heighten the primal fears of anything "other" than what's declared to be correct.

We aren't led by example and we don't have good discussions. Education is to generate workers and self-autonomy, not to provide enlightenment or for personal development. Many never play fair and are praised for it. The past is somehow simultaneously irrelevant and yet paramount, so we are trapped in a loop of exploitation which sucks the life out of culture. We have no vision from the future that doesn't involve despair or escaping the planet. We are at the mercy of "markets" that have no centralized control, planning, or true backups and fail-safes, as the entire system is designed around the idea of self-enrichment rather than human safety and security. Safety nets are illusions or are under threat. Very few seem to know or care.

In the meantime, media institutions, information networks, technology, land, assets, and infrastructure is sold to anyone: designated enemies, adjacent enemies, known terrorists, convicted criminals, dictators, psychologically unsound individuals, etc.

Evidently it's never about making life better for people in the world, never mind in our own countries, and deep down we all know this to an extent. Individualism generates uneasiness from the lack of a primal sense of belonging. We try to mask it constantly with activity and thought, by seeking instant pleasure, ego-massage, and reinforcing our own narratives. Distraction, escapism, and lack of community isn't a model to force on the world. We aren't developed or psychologically sound so much as simply being rich, which allows some self-autonomy - both things we refuse to export anyway as we want money and power. So the whole set of arguments that we are spreading the means of being "stable, civilized, democratic democracy" is absurdly illogical and hypocritical.

Structured systems, open information, and collective action are the foundations of democracy. All have been under constant threat, from dismantling "bureaucracy", attacking access to information and banning/shaming protests to outright murder. With less restrictions and oversight, the scope and scale of power increases, reducing inherent stability and increasing the risk of collapse. The foundational aspects of modern democracy such as freedom of information and communication (without monitoring) is either a farce or constantly under threat.

We have not learned to be critical and aware vs being naive and ignorant, probably because it's scary and highlights how much energy will be required to change. Most choose to instead engage with the controlled reality, which bombards us with crafted actions and media to fuel the primal fear of any "otherness" being a threat, which justifies it to be controlled, exploited, or destroyed. They can then declare to you _why_ you are scared, and how it justifies whatever action that benefits them personally. The outcome doesn't matter to most, anywhere near as much as being told "it was a success" or "we are safer now", "don't worry we have all the answers" etc. Even if we don't believe, we are forced to listen because they hold access to the critical information and means of accessing it to make a decision either way, whilst they actively spread misinformation to deceive us. Our current "democratic" are more rotten and corrupt than the Soviet era.

I'm appalled at the rapid decline of what made the West something I'd recommend and be proud of sharing to developing countries. What we really did was export spying, weapons, technology, information, warfare knowledge, and terrorism. We train and support populations to become militarized, angry, and poor. The shocking state of things is evident and obvious now we have access to so much information. It's becoming less forgivable to ignore the reality hiding under the surface. We only have our ongoing example of society to offer to the world, and from the outside it's a shockingly obscene, hypocritical, primal, self-interested, short-sighted, performative, based hyper-reality that claims to offer personal freedom and federated power, but actually gives corporate freedom, secret alliances rather than competition, and centralized power.

I believe it's the fear of true reality feeds a divide. The primal response to viscerally defend the existing illusions when safety is threatened seems to be strong: double down, ignore all the previous failures, ignore what we can see with our own eyes, ignore the lies and manipulation, believe the false logic, subscribe to a specific way of thinking, and frame arguments about millions of human beings right to exist outside our country through a lens of how it indirectly affects a perceived feeling of safety (and oil prices of course). This happens by giving up a sense of self and becoming part of an invisible system of directed mass psychosis, just like a cult. It's cults, addictions, criminals, and exploitation all the way down. Lucky breaks allow some to struggle less, mostly at the expense of others.

Writing this makes me realize just how screwed up the situation is.

We keep repeating that Gaza has exposed the facade of "human/women's/children's rights" that america loves to tout. Many of us knew it for a long time, but some people actually believed the nonsense that was spewed. Now, the masks have now fallen, and people are waking up.

Wow, literally out of words to appreciate for summing up the status of life. I've rarely read long comments at least in recent times, but this was totally worth it. Thanks!

There is certain art and elegance in the skill of expressing yourself in succinct, yet meaningful manner. Which is why I won't respond to your comment, but rather the summary that ChatGPT generated:

Life ain't perfect and it's never going to be. Just because someone has to choose between two evils it doesn't make them an evil person - the hippie idea "why don't we just all sit and join our hands around a camfire" simply doesn't work. So the next best thing is that I need to protect myself and the people dear to me from the externalities of, let me quote the most famous politician of 21st century, shithole countries.

What gives you the right to dictate how other nations run their affairs? Western secular imperialism alive and well I see.

In the world of jungle rules, might means right. Wherever has the bigger guns win. Period. Your voices means nothing. I learnt that decades ago. Sometime, just sway with the winds. Fortunes do change from decades to centuries. Superheroes dont exist. Justice? It is for the rich with bigger guns.

> This has become beyond ridiculous. I have personally gone from full support for Israel to now not even supporting Israel's right to exist. And I can't be the only one. I feel sorry for the (clearly increasingly rare) "normal" people of Israel but they will soon need to move out of Israel to not be bundled in with the crazies.

Israeli here. This shit is infuriating for me to read and a big shame on all of us but I don't think that's a fair take for all of us to have to "move out" (where to exactly?). Do all Americans need to move out because Trump is in power? Or because what you did in Iraq (twice), in Afghanistan, in Vietnam?

I simply don't think it's a sensible take that a whole populace is evil beyond repair and therefore must be thrown out - I don't know of such an argument ever being applied to any group - not Russia, not Hammas and not even the Nazis.

I think you make a good point about collective responsibility, and it's really quite crazy to see suggestions that a good answer to ethnic cleansing is more ethnic cleansing. This is quite literally how the whole conflict started in the first place. One would hope some lessons had been learnt since the 40ies.

However, I would advise caution in regards to historical parallels you bring up. At the end of the WW2, millions of Japanese colonists have forcibly expelled and the same happened to millions of German civilians, where at times they were displaced from the regions where they've been living for hundreds of years. Then of course you're familiar with has been happening to white population in many African countries following the decolonisation. After the fall of the USSR, Baltic countries have been doing their best to push out their Russian minorities. The unfortunate reality is that "population exchanges" and "repatriations" have been common methods of righting the historical wrongs in the modern era.

Have you been there? I have, 3 times, Tel Aviv/Petah Tikva for work. It's a strange place, I don't mean strange in a bad way, but somewhat alien compared to the US. The daily dynamic was amazing, food, shopping, the city, the sea, but then getting on a commuter train involved going through a metal detector. My coworker carried a sidearm because he commuted from Jerusalem and back, and things in Jerusalem were a bit shaky at the time, circa 2020. Ladies in camo with rifles in the shopping malls. It was really something else, like a different timeline. I'd love to go back, but being interrogated by El Al and then again at Ben Gurion is an acquired taste.

This is a pattern for Israel. Settlers attack, harass and kill Palestinians with impunity and have done for decades. It’s wrong.

Flying cars, Super Duper Intelligence, AGI and yet we can't even stop these, we can't even have peace on earth, we can't avoid conflicts. What good these technological advances are if we can't prevent ourselves being violent apes?

They're very important. They help us (a small part of us) to be more violent apes, and find more targets for out violence.

Technology never changes the human nature. It only makes it more efficient.

This is a terrible issue and completely unacceptable. But do I really need to read about it on Hacker News? This is not the place for that.

Clearly defending themselves from Hamas.

Hamas doesn't rule the West Bank though.

As I said, being sarcastic.

The amount of apologism, denial and support for the horrors Israel is perpetrating, in this forum, is unreal.

A surprisingly large cohort of tech people are completely fine with fascism. I suppose it "technically" solves a lot of perceived problems in society, so it appeals to many people who severally lack in empathy or critical thinking.

And then people like you support Palestinian groups and others like Hezbollah starting wars of choice against Israel. And invariably they lose those wars and it's the Palestinians that suffer the most. And then that is used as a justification to do it yet again.

I support not decimating tens of thousands of innocents, raiding their homes, bombing their cities, et cetera.

I guess you are the kind of person that when someone says "I don't like the iphone" jumps up and says "well, Samsung sucks!", the all white or black kinda guy?

But you do support that because you support wars of choice that directly lead to that. And your justification amounts to nothing but a worthless ethnonational ideal.

Whatever makes you happy bru

Dango, I started reading at the bottom of the thread and thought you were supporting Palestinians with this comment.

I am supporting Palestinians with this comment, because being at the losing end of a war totally sucks.

i think you're being sarcastic but for others reading this without context:

- Israel has used "Hamas" as a get-out-of-jail-free card with people in the West - Hamas are not in the West Bank (which is physical separated from Gaza, where Hamas operated)

Yes I was being sarcastic.

HackerNews not the place for leftist, Islamist propaganda. That sort of stuff should stay in the Guardian, and die there.

Reporting facts is not propaganda.

Your "leftist, Islamist propaganda" is all over the "leftist, Islamist" media such as the Washington Post, the New York Times, CNN, Al Jazeera, Der Standard:

* https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2026/10/16/palestinians...

* https://www.nytimes.com/2026/10/16/world/middleeast/israeli-...

* https://edition.cnn.com/2026/10/16/media/washington-post-jou...

* https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2026/10/16/palestinians-us-jo...

* https://www.derstandard.de/story/3000000344596/nahost-verlet...

"leftist islamists" is the new "Bolchevic jews", and i consider the people using the first to have a similar* ideology to the one who used the second 90 years ago.

*Not the exact same, but the details would be lost here.

what about Palestinian settlers in Kurdish lands who occupy Kurdish olive farms? https://rudaw.net/english/categories/syria/775228

What about Turkey burning Kurdish forests for years and not a post about it? why is the world so hypocrite https://www.asparagusmagazine.com/articles/the-turkish-milta...

What about whataboutism? What about making a new thread for these unrelated topics?

Because only IP discussion have a special protected status for discussion on HN making the above comment less whataboutism and more pointing out the hypocrisy of the discussion and concern over the actions.

What's also bad about all this is that journos were told to be here by the "settlers". Big international news didn't wake up that day and all decide to go to the same place, they were invited.

The settlers know what they're doing and know how it looks internationally. While the IDF, government of Israel, and the Israelis who vote for it all vote for this, they consider themselves bulletproof. They're bragging as they ruin these Palestinians' lives.

Just like Iran, this is extremism that has to be fixed internally at a very low level, but it also looks like they're just getting started. I'd make historical comparisons but I don't need to. As standalone events, these are bad enough to require action.

We can't control terrible things that are going on all over the world. But we can decide if we want our tax dollars to be supporting it.

Why is this flagged ?

Same question.