Ask HN: Has the Gaza war affected the HN crowd?

I admire your courage in asking these questions.

I don't consider myself part of the HN crowd, rather just someone with a waning tech background and persistent interest in many things. I'm unaffiliated with any identity regarding the conflict. A mere American, dizzy and uneasy.

Personally, the effects for me, coupled with Ukraine, instill a sense of illness. I deliberately avoid the numbers as I would the flu. My delusions of a wonderful world are presently reserved for intoxicants and occasional suspensions of disbelief which come sparsely. The tension surrounding the topic, however, is palpable.

I wish you the extensive discussion the subject deserves.

On october 8th there was already anti-israeli sentiment at work (i am Israeli, living currently in USA). The only person that asked me for my well being was Palestinian guy who lives here as well.

Foreign Students are come and go anyway. Unlike in USA they can't stick around in Israel.

Israeli tech companies raised record amounts in Q2

https://en.globes.co.il/en/article-israeli-tech-companies-ra...

It has made it clear to me that humans do not have any real ability to act on morality in our advanced society. I actually thought that in a sufficiently advanced society, like the one we have today, that we would be beyond certain things. I've gotten the lesson that this iteration of humanity really is forked from that previous iteration of humanity, and that the "moral" part of the codebase was never actually enhanced.

But I also thought we were kind of beyond outright corruption and jingoism too. That these societies that you think are sophisticated and educated are actually not different at all from the sensibilities of societies that crucified people, enslaved people, wholesale eradicated people, economically suffocated people ...

There's nothing about our advanced society that has markers of advanced character, certainly not advanced moral character.

To be fully clear, if you show me a cohort of high school graduates from this year, with wonder in their eyes and a lot of talk about "the future will be good and just", I will absolutely give no credence to it. They are branch of this long torrid code base, and the romance of us as a species is mostly over in my heart (IDGAF how many rockets we launch into space, and how cool AI is). This is not a new type of epiphany, as I'm sure many people were broken throughout history exactly like this. If you believed the young people of 20-40 years ago that their innocence would persist and they would truly build a better world, you got catfished. None of us were ever going to be really different than the shitheads from yesteryear, and the dark truth is this will probably be the case long after our current iteration has mostly passed on.

In short, human innovation and energy is something I no longer believe is sufficient enough for building a sound world anymore. I falsely believed scientific and infrastructural advancement would be enough to keep lifting society. It's clear we morally platued quite some time ago, while technology has trended way way up.

Gaza Sky Geeks [0] is/was a startup accelerator or tech hub in Gaza, with backing from people from Mercy Corps, Google and Microsoft. Needless to say, their activities have been severely interrupted by the violence since October 7th, 2023. I'm subscribed to their email newsletter, and the updates are heart-breaking.

If anyone from Gaza Sky Geeks is reading this, please consider sharing those updates on your blog as well as on your email newsletter, so that they can be shared more widely.

[0] https://gazaskygeeks.com/

My workplace has become very tense as most of us are pro-Palestinian and anti-Zionist, but our CEO and investors are very aggressively Zionist. Internally we debate if we should quit, or stay and "fight" the best we can. I think in general there's the sense that we shouldn't let the Zionists chase us out of our jobs, especially when most people don't support their cause.

On a personal level, I boycott all Israeli products and companies, including companies that do business with Israel (to the best of my ability, I still need an alternative to NVIDIA).

Personally it impacted me in a way that I have lost faith in humanity.

Everybody talks, but no body cares, no body takes serious actions. Kids, women, elderly, whole families are being killed for almost two years and no body gives a shit.

Millions of people trapped in a land and moved from north to south from south to north like animals, have you seen videos of starving people running in masses to get food from aids thrown from the air? I can’t beilieve such things are happening in 2025! Sometimes I think, what would I do if I was put under such circumstances? How much hate would I accumulate? What if something happens to my kids? What if I see my kids starving in front of me and I can do nothing about it?

Also big companies, they only care about money, ethics and morale do not exist, they only care about money money and more money.

Countries fighting for women rights in Iran and Saudi (which I agree with) but at the same time, those same countries don’t say anything about the killing of innocent people, pure hypocrites.

It really opened my eyes to the lack of actual interest in reality. The number of people willing to believe what they're told by social media or by the popular kids far exceed those who would try to understand the situation.

It fascinates me that it's become so popular to defend people from reprisals for their own elected government's actions.

I also found it really interesting that over a thousand Israelis were killed, yet the people I work with immediately started saying that any kind of response was totally unfair to the Palestinians. Not a single word of compassion for the Israelis who were killed. But I guess that's not a trending thought.

In my personal life, it has had a rather significant effect; although still trivial compared to those in the region.

I'm Jewish, and opinions in my extended family about Israel have always been in tension; but this war has brought it to an untenable level. I've stopped going what had previously been the normal Shabbat and holiday dinners, in favor of smaller ones with family that is less pro Israel (and very staunchly anti Netenyahu). Even there we more or less avoid the topic. Our less Passover sedar involved a very thinly veiled discussion about the war, which did not go particularly well.

Professionally, there has been much less of an effect. I work for a US defense contractor. For the most part, we avoid talking about it. From the little conversation, I have had, there seems to be a general morale drop; but that might be a selection effect with who I am willing to talk to about it.

The only time Israel became an open topic of discussion was after the pager bombs. Even then, it was pretty much a professional "and this is why we have so much red tape around supply chain management".

Not that Im surprised, but most people who "care" about Gaza or Israel are really just doing the thing where they pick their side. The amount of false facts about the conflict being thrown about is insane just because it fits the narrative of their side.

The Israeli stock market is at a high, GDP per capita is growing, etc. I am not Israeli, just giving the other side of the doom and gloom

https://tradingeconomics.com/israel/stock-market

No major changes professionally other than that I have become a bit more careful about keeping my geopolitical opinions to myself. Also having some coworkers living in the Middle East makes the two recent Qatari strikes feel scarier. I had a lot of trouble doing anything during the week of the Iran war besides refreshing the news. I felt quite awkward around my Iranian coworkers knowing that my tax dollars were funding the bombing of their families.

It has taken a small but noticeable toll on my personal life. Amongst my family we find ourselves talking about the state of the occupation and how hopeless it makes us feel about humanity probably once a week. I can see my liberal Jewish friends having a lot of trouble being criticized and rejected from both sides of discourse in USA. I recently saw two jewish people shouting obscenities at each other while waiting to get off a plane and talking about Israel. Antisemitism on the street seems to be increasing -- I met someone a few days ago who started saying baseless hateful things minutes into our first conversation.

Probably like other people here I've spent a lot more of my free time in the last year learning about the history culture and politics of Israel, Palestine and Iran.

Russia's invasion of Ukraine, mass kidnappings of children, etc have had much more impact on me. So many people defending Russia, trying to justify Russia's position, or wave it away. If we can't take care of people in the heart of Europe we definitely can't begin to touch things in the middle east.

I don't understand why so many in the west get upset by the Gaza war but are so indifferent/don't care about Ukraine or actively hand waive away concerns and/or loudly say 'I don't care about Ukraine'.

I have seen lot of propaganda and misleading statements floating around