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US views skew pro-israel, and GenZ is closer to 50/50, so if there's something going on online, it's not in favor of Israel.
It's probably relevant that there are 1 billion Muslims to 16 million Jews, and that the largest relevant population of pro-Israeli internationals is India and Indian Hindus, and they are not on TikTok (blocked in India).
I think the fundamental assumption of the analysis that there are two mutually exclusive groups, 'pro-Israel' and 'pro-Palestine' is flawed. It is possible to simultaneously support the interests of Palestinian and Israeli civilians (and support a peaceful Israel within the 1967 boundaries), while condemning the massacre of civilians under the orders of Likud (and other far right parties) and Hamas.
I think it is currently about an order of magnitude more civilians deaths have resulted from the actions of Likud (Netanyahu etc..., who control the government and hence the IDF) than from the actions of Hamas. IDF is apparently disrupting civilian aid, destroying infrastructure including hospitals, and causing mass population movements into areas that cannot support them, so the risk of death from starvation and infectious disease at a massive scale as an indirect result is high. The Likud-controlled IDF are also apparently enforcing a 'lock down' of Palestinian civilians in the West Bank while allowing Israeli citizens to seize land by force and further expand the occupied territories.
So the scale of the atrocities seems to be much higher on the Likud side than the Hamas side, covers both the West Bank and Gaza, and it makes sense that the Palestinian victims of those atrocities would receive more support. That doesn't mean that all the people who care about the plight of the Palestinian population are anti-Israel (they are just not posting about it because they are likely prioritising issues).
I think that forcing this dichotomy is part of the deliberate pro-Israel media strategy - if you despise Hamas inhumane acts, then of course you need to be pro-Israel. They want you to focus on Hamas to steer away your attention from what Israel has been doing. (this is also one of the reasons why Hamas has historically been an asset for the Israeli right)
I have nothing to add here, other than to thank you for expressing this so cogently.
It’s not always “right” to measure just action in terms of lives saved or lost, but it’s hard for me (and so many other American Jews) to see anything right or just about 10 dead Palestinians for every dead Israeli.
I don't support how civilians are being treated in Palestine whatsoever, but:
>while condemning the massacre of civilians under the orders of Likud (and other far right parties)
When has Likud ordered massacres of civilians? Or when has any modern Israeli party? I also don't believe Likud is considered far-right in Israel; just "right". There are parties far to the right of them. Not that that's necessarily a good thing, but it's a relative designation.
Why does the scale matter? In the
legal codes with which I am familiar mens rea matters.
Murder is not just worse than manslaughter it is on a different level.
Western criminal codes generally allow for no punishment, perhaps even no guilt, for a manslaughter. If Israel could remove Hamas without injuring any non-combatants I think they would. It makes a difference. Almost by definition suggesting that scale is a factor is implying that collective punishment is acceptable.
I think it's incorrect to frame every action in Israel as the actions of Likud. That's not at all how the Israeli government works. It's a coalition government in which, yes, Likud is the biggest party, but made up of many other parties as well, and for the purposes of this war includes a party that was previously an opposition party to this government.
For better or worse, the Likud-led coalition is the current government of Israel, and Hamas is the current government of Palestine.
> while condemning the massacre of civilians under the orders of Likud
This is a surprising statement as I haven’t heard of such an event happening and I’ve followed these events fairly closely.
When was the civilian massacre? Do you have a source? Or did you make it up?
> peaceful Israel within the 1967 boundaries
Israel was previously peaceful within the 1967 boundaries, in 1967. Arab states tried to destroy it in 1967 and again in 1973, resulting in Israel gaining land, something arab states now blame on Israel.
I've noticed quite a bit of propaganda which is intentionally conflating these two pairs. That is, those who are advocating for Gazans are referred to as Hamas supporters and those advocating on behalf of Israeli citizens are accused of supporting genocide, etc. This is done to polarize both groups, encourage strongly negative emotional reactions, and prevent anyone from taking a more reasonable perspective to address issues on both sides of this complex situation.
The problem is, as we all discuss frequently around here, when it comes to this sort of issue social media is optimized to suppress nuance, boost controversial takes, and generate engagement through anger.
So there is a very real sense in which there _are_ two mutually exclusive groups. There is also a third group wishing for nuance and understanding and thoughtful discourse of the historical context, but that group gets coded as the “other” by both of the black-and-white groups.
I think this position is a small minority in the public opinion, and is virtually non-existent in Arab countries. It doesn't help that moderate supporters of two state solution make little effort to distance themselves from the "from the River to the Sea" Israel hating crowd.
"I think the fundamental assumption of the analysis that there are two mutually exclusive groups, 'pro-Israel' and 'pro-Palestine' is flawed." This is a fairly nail-on-head distillation, and that it exists exacerbates any attempts at substantive discourse that follows.
"massacre of civilians under the orders of Likud"
"scale of the atrocities"
* There really isn't any better deathrates when the other side is explicitly based on indifference to its own civillian casualties. Mosul had 40K civillian deaths in a 2.5x smaller city (by population)[0]. I fail to see why Israel can't use the same legal tactics** the US used to defend itself versus jihadists, except the Israeli death rate is lower and the US had far less justification.
* Focusing on the Likud is a mistake. Every Israeli political party would have counterattacked at Gaza, with about the same (legal) tactics, but probably much more aggressively. Leaving next door to a genocidal terrorist regime was unacceptable, actually moreso to the Israeli Left. After all, what's the point of two states if the other side can do _anything_ and get support afterwards?
And I mean anything - the attack was into 1967 lines, deathrates much higher than in Gaza. The irony is that many people that say they support 2ss are trying to enshrine impunity here, basically destroying any hope that either side will support 2ss. That's why Bibi was the pretend 'cautious' here, because of very cynical calculation - Hamas staying weakened but alive lets Bibi kill 2ss - WB Palestinians flock to 'victorious' Hamas, while Israeli Left approach is discredited - but his hand was forced.
* Focusing on Hamas is also somewhat of a mistake, given polls show widespread crosscutting Palestinian support to Hamas action[1].
** When we ignore scaremongering about 'starvation/disease at a massive scale' when it's not happening, the only thing the list has are actions into hospitals which even the US believes are used by Hamas.
So a bunch of terrorists murder 1400+ Jews and commit unspeakable acts against them, and then run and hide in pre-prepared positions behind the civilians that they have been forcibly governing and abusing since 2006, and they are on record as saying that they prepared all of this on purpose, and somehow the civilian casualties are the fault of Israel? Give me a break.
Britain killed a lot more German civilians than Germany killed British civilians in WWII. Does that make the British the bad guys?
I’m not sure how all this can be said with a straight face; that you are “pro-israel” you just think the borders should be set back over 50 years and that a democratically elected government’s actions is worse than those of a terrorist organization.
Not once did you mention what atrocities were committed on Hamas’s side and instead you spent all your effort justifying Hamas by arguing how you think Lukid is worse.
What actions in your opinion would be an appropriate response for people (& government) of Israel to respond to the targeted rape, murder, beheadings of the elderly, men, women, and children, which was filmed by Hamas and sometimes live-streamed on the social media accounts of their victims to show off what they have achieved?
I’m not sure you can claim to be in the middle or support ‘both sides / both peoples’ when you only have bad things to say about one of them.
I don't think any other government in Israel would respond materially differently to Oct 7th. The only response Israel has to this scale of event is to re-occupy Gaza and the only way it can be accomplished without larger casualties on both sides is more or less what is transpiring today. I'm sure there are details that would be different but I don't think the script would be materially different if Likud was not in power. The military plan for re-taking Gaza is from the IDF, not the government. Likud-controlled IDF isn't really a thing, the government gives a target (removing Hamas) and the IDF executes. Any other government would give the same target.
What I would and do blame the current government for is that Oct 7th even happened, the scale, and the immediate response.
EDIT: I also blame the current government for trying to eliminate any possibility of a two state solution and effectively supporting the Hamas rule in Gaza as means of accomplishing that. I can probably blame them for lots more. That said the actual Oct 7th attack is all on Hamas and the response is pretty much the only response you'd have seen from any Israeli government (or anyone else in that position for that matter). We're in a place today that is a different place and we can talk all we want about what other possible places we could be.
I'll agree with you on the west bank policy being a Likud/right-wing policy in general. We can also talk about why the Israeli public is more right wing leaning and the left has all but disappeared.
I think those two groups are really more mutually exclusive than what you're trying to portray. At least to most Israelis they are. Because for most Israelis, when you say "peaceful within 1967 borders", it reads as "kill all the Jews in Israel". Many (most?) Palestinians will also not accept this statement because they consider Israel in the 1967 border to be the Palestinian state. If there was an overlap we wouldn't really be where we are, we'd have peace. I have not met many people who are in this overlap, i.e. they're both "pro-Israel" and "pro-Palestine" in a meaningful way. Most people do not hold nuanced views at all, don't know that much about the conflict, don't really understand what's going on, hold on to simplistic narratives and "windows" they get from the media and social media. For me as an (ex-) Israeli your equating the response of Israel to the Hamas puts you squarely in the anti-Israeli camp. You blank statement "massacre of civilians under the orders of Likud (and other far right parties)" feels like a blood libel. This is just my emotional response to how you phrase things. So that doesn't seem to be an overlap of pro-israeli and pro-palestinian.
>I think the fundamental assumption of the analysis that there are two mutually exclusive groups, 'pro-Israel' and 'pro-Palestine' is flawed. It is possible to simultaneously support the interests of Palestinian and Israeli civilians
That would be a nuanced view. The reality is that most people and especially most people who post their views online are not capable of seeing things that way.
> Pro-Palestinian views outrank Pro-Israeli online by around 36 to 1 on TikTok and 8 to 1 on other online platforms.
> If anything the skew within the platforms is to prioritize pro-palestinian views.
That platforms prioritize one over the other is just one possible explanation. An alternative explanation is that more people already have those views. And it's dishonest to present one explanation and omit the other.
> An alternative explanation is that more people already have those views.
Treading a fine line here between Bayesian priors and stereotypes, but the worldwide Muslim/Jewish population split is something like 112:1. Obviously that's not going to be the same proportion on a given media-service, but it should still inform our expectations of what is the "default" state before theorizing about platform algorithm-tweaking or propaganda-campaigns.
I don't think that parent is suggesting that platforms are actively prioritising one over the other.
I think they are saying that the composition of users of these apps skews one way rather than the other due to pre existing stances, and the fact that the apps are not available in some markets.
As a result, certain views are prioritised as a byproduct of the fact that all modern social media apps have an algorithm that shows you more of what you already agree with, in order to maximise ad profits.
A platform with a proprietary algorithm which ranks and boosts content does not get the benefit of doubt.
They are per se responsible for what people see. If pro-Palestinian views are on TikTok at 36:1, that's what TikTok wants, they could easily promote content at a different ratio.
The alternative explanation seems unlikely. I'd think that if it were true, there'd be even one single instance of that having come up in conversation prior to bad graffiti and printed propaganda showing up all over my neighborhood. Getting a glimpse of what people allow themselves to be subjected to on the various platforms seems to indicate it's younger, easily influenced, volatile reactionary people suddenly being inflamed by whatever hot conflict of the day it is; people I wouldn't normally talk to anyway and who wouldn't have any authentic connection with it. The only time it's come up in real life was when I bumped into some Israeli guests at a hostel, and they were talking about what their families were going through and whether they'd have to go back and serve.
It doesn't come up on my Instagram presumably because I had previously unfollowed everyone who posted about whatever other injustice they'd been told to be pissed about, and shockingly I don't feel the need to go and vandalize property to spread the word.
The simple explanation is that the "Free Palestine" posters just post more. If you look at Internet posts, you'll find a lot of people talking about being vegan, even though vegans are vanishingly rare in real life. Practically every American media outlet that isn't explicitly socialist expresses more sympathy for Israel than Palestine, so people holding contrary views may feel the need to voice them more acutely.
I'm not sure that fully explains it. There is incredible amounts of anti-Israel disinformation as well, that would be easily debunked with a reverse image search if anyone could be bothered.
If you want to start counting drivers, there are at least three
1) The algorithms of the platforms
2) The disinformation / astroturfing / asymetric warfare, driven from Russia, Iran, CCP, and many other 'interested parties'
3) The actual organic opinions
The drivers are in about that order of force. The point of #2 is to make it appear organic, so people can make the argument that 'it's just people's opinion', even when it is wrong.
And where do you think that comes from? Some coherent well researched culturally deep understanding of history and the current status of things by the entire population? Of course not, it’s propaganda. There are ethnic conflicts worldwide that often have more bloodshed, many occurring simultaneously right now, but this gets all the rhetoric and attention.
Another possible explanation for this skew is that TikTok and IG are primarily video platforms.
The videos of destruction and death in Gaza are far more horrific than corresponding videos in Israel, because the scale of what Israel is doing to Gaza is so much greater than what Gaza has done to Israel.
Another way of saying it is, it makes sense that someone who spends hours on apps optimized for empathy-based addiction would be more sympathetic to Gazans than someone who reads the newspaper or watches talking heads on TV news, since the latter portray the occupation as a two-sided tit for tat.
It's also the nature of the violence. It's generally acceptable to show shots of bombed-out buildings and the like, or even display injured or dead bodies. The footage we and Israel have from Hamas depicts first-hand murder, rape and torture - all things which are going to violate TOS.
> The videos of destruction and death in Gaza are far more horrific than corresponding videos in Israel
Maybe you haven't seen enough of what happened in 10/7 then. I would rather get hit by a bomb then tortured to death in the most horrific way possible.
Criticizing the actions of Israel is not anti-semitic, and many Israelis and Jews are critical of the Israeli government and its actions (even more than usual during the ongoing political crisis). Many of the critics I see lack nuance (basically, "rooting for the underdog"), but that's a different problem. The problem is complicated, and there is no simple solution (some kind of two-state may work after many years).
But chants like "from the river to the sea" (meaning destroying Jewish country) and calls for an intifada (de facto violence against Jews) are anti-semitic. Supporting Hamas, whose goal is to kill as many Jews as possible, or saying Israel shouldn't defend itself against Hamas attacks is anti-semitic (Hamas is also bad for Gazans, but that's another story). I can go on and on. People holding these views may hold them not because they hate Jews (for example, I don't think that people removing posters of kidnapped Israelis necessarily hate them), but the result is all the same. There is also obvious anti-semitism unrelated to Israel, like attacking synagogues, drawing stars of David on Jewish houses, etc., but that's not what I'm talking about.
And the most vocal anti-Israelis are naturally the most extreme ones and usually include some of the stuff I mentioned. As a result, people call out anti-semitism, usually not referring to anti-Israeli critics you are talking about.
Couldn't agree more. It's a common misunderstanding, perhaps because there has always been a powerful campaign to equate any criticism of Israel to antisemitism.
It's dangerous, tricky terrain. Regardless of your beliefs, anti-Semites benefit.
* The anti-Semites are not idiots, mostly; they don't spew anti-Semitism publicly but say what is acceptable, which is to criticize Israel, and obviously anything anti-Israeli helps their cause.
* There's an implication whether people like it or not: Israel defines itself as The Jewish State. Also, many people are unware that Judaism is non-hierarchical overall; there's no pope-equivalent in Israel to which Jewish people have some allegiance (remember the old Papist accusation against Roman Catholics for dual loyalty); though Israel has some special things and history, it has no other role in non-Israeli Jewish people's religion, but people make that association regardless. Also, many are unaware that most Jewish people in the US oppose Netanyahu and the Israeli right, and afaik are sympathetic to the Palestinians. Anti-Semites will benefit from that implication, even though you don't want them to.
* Not everyone will respect that essential division between anti-Israel and anti-Semitic speech, and there's a significant risk that large-scale anti-Semitism could spill over. It was already at the highest levels in recent history (like other prejudices). It's easy to dismiss as as unlikely when you aren't at risk; a small risk of catastrophe is a big issue when it's your life.
People absolutely need to be able to criticize Israel, but I hope they are careful (not silent) and aware that there is no easy answer. You are anti-Israel (in this case, at least) and not anti-Semitic, but you will help the latter to some degree - hopefully a minimized one.
I think the major problem is that we've abandoned and actively attack the former social prohibition against prejudice, stereotypes, intolerance, race/sex/gender/religious discrimination, etc. It used to be verboten, but then we are all familiar with the contemporary reactionary attack on it (however you perceive it, whatever words you use), which seems to have been very successful. A very major loss is that without that high wall between us and the bad guys and bad behavior, without that bright line, there is much more spillover in what we do, and much more risk of them walking right in.
The term "anti-semetic" is in and of itself "anti-semetic". It obfuscates the fact that palestinians are true semites by conflating itself with any anti-jewish sentiment or criticism.
The modern israeli's are not semites. Those that settled after WW2 were eastern european converts, khazars, with no genetic ties to the middle east. Those that are not ashkenazi are migrants from the surrounding countries, who largely did not move to the area until after the occupation of palestine.
The term "anti-semite" was invented to reinforce the lie that the ruling class of israel have some ancestral claim to the land. Using it is playing into that propaganda.
Yup, that's exactly the reason why I don't treat the term seriously any more. Same with "racist" or "nazi". If it means anything these days it's that those using the words disagree with someone.
> But conflating anti-Israeli views with anti-Semitic views does a disservice to Jews and Palestinians alike.
Anti-Israeli views are anti-Semitic views when criticizing Israel and Israel only, for actions that are done by dozens of states over the course of decades.
If the people spouting anti-Israel sentiment spouted the same sentiment for the same actions done a dozen times over by other nations, then they would not be anti-Semitic. In fact, I would agree with the vast majority of them. But when they ignore the 300,000 killed in Syria, or the 600,000 killed in Ethiopia, or the situations in Yemen, Mail, Turkey, or even Gaza when Hamas murders hundreds of Palestinians, or in Syria where the regime kills thousands of Palestinians, then it is clear that they are not stewards of "human rights" or "civilians" or even "values". Rather, they are abusing these ideas to promote an anti-Semitic agenda. These people actually need dead Palestinians to further their agenda.
There's all kinds of propaganda from both sides all over the internet. But the linked article is about organized pressure campaigns.
It's been interesting to observe that various official Israeli accounts have taken to posting tik-tok-like videos that quickly show images, footage, text commentary, all with very little context.
Of course pro-Palestinian people/groups are doing the same thing, but it feels odd to see a first-world government engaged so directly in pushing that sort of propaganda. I can't imagine the US army directly tweeting this kind of stuff. The US, I feel, would do it through proxy groups.
I don't have much to add about any of this, only that you clearly cannot trust the sort of videos, images, and statements all over the internet. As they say, in war, truth is the first casualty.
Clips of bodies being buried in mass graves, of corpses with maggot-infested wounds, of limbs scattered in shopping bags, of children screaming in terror as their city blocks gets bombed, or of soldiers stripping civilians naked are not "pro-Palestinian" per se. But they show the terrible brutality of this "war". That may cause people with some empathy and with hearts not cold as stone to demand an end to the terror. That is "pro-Human" not "pro-Palestinian".
>That may cause people with some empathy and with hearts not cold as stone to demand an end to the terror.
Well this should have caused those people to do something with Hammas controlling the area long before recent events. Isn’t it?
This would have be much more Pro-human don’t you think?
> It's probably relevant that there are 1 billion Muslims to 16 million Jews,
Anecdotally, all of my friends here in the EU are pro-Palestinian, and none of us is Muslim. It's also relevant to consider the context of Israel's occupation of Palestine and illegal settlements in light of the UN General Assembly's pro-Palestinian votes.
One of the examples from before current conflict[1]:
Approve 128 nations.
Against 9 nations: Guatemala, Honduras, Israel, Marshall Islands, Micronesia, Nauru, Palau, Togo and United States.
Today, there was another vote in the UN Security Council regarding a ceasefire. Thirteen nations voted in favor of it, the UK abstained, and the US vetoed.
>US views skew pro-israel, and GenZ is closer to 50/50, so if there's something going on online, it's not in favor of Israel.
That could also mean that Israeli online propaganda is ineffective, not that it doesn't exist. Even if they haven't made ground online, pro-Israeli views are universal in the mainstream media, with pro-Palestine reporters being fired.
Many black Americans hold pro-Palestinian views because of the perceived similarity to civil rights abuses in America and South Africa, as well as Palestinian support for Black Lives Matter. Brown Americans for similar reasons. American youth cohorts (under 40) are blacker and browner than its elderly, and the most likely to use the platforms in question. The oblique suggestion of shadowy puppeteers tricking minorities and youth and whipping them into a mob that's rallying against their own interests is an old racist and ageist canard, and disappointing, if unsurprising, to see conjured here.
> Pro-Palestinian views outrank Pro-Israeli online by around 36 to 1 on TikTok
Judging this by the method used (counts of uses of top 5 hashtags associated with the conflict) is ludicrously bad as a methodology, because, aside from not looking at sentiment, its prone to being radically wrong if one side is more consistent in hashtag use than the other.
There is also the likelihood that even those ratios are like that after the pro-Israeli factor.
They could very well be more than that but you can't shut them all up. So that 36 to 1 might be after the fact.
Just from the populations you mention, which is obviously a super rough calculation, if we assume all Muslims to be pro Palestine and all Jews to be pro Israel, we would be expecting something like 60 to 1 ratio.
So the existence of that 36 to 1 might even be the result of the bias.
I am not saying this is the case, I'm just saying don't dismiss the claim simply based on the ratio you see.
There’s a reason why Goldbloom charted “change in likelihood” instead of simply showing sentiments in the chart. The reason is that if you look at the raw data he made available[0], the differences in sentiment between platforms are statistically insignificant.
To say nothing of conflating anti-Israel sentiments with antisemitism.
> US views skew pro-israel, and GenZ is closer to 50/50
The latest Gallup[1] says it’s about 50/50 in the US across demographics and almost 70% disapproval of Israel in the 18-34 age range (so a little bit of Gen Z and a little bit of Millennials). No polls specifically and exclusively break down responses to the exact Gen Z age range, but I doubt that would bring it closer to 50/50.
Now, there’s, of course, the chicken and egg debate. Still, explicitly on TikTok, I’ve seen Goldbloom-esque studies that document that the algorithm is led by the user’s preferences instead of the other way around. I’ll see if I can find the URLs in my history.
The poll asked if they backed their current military action. That’s not the same as being pro- or anti-Israeli.
In fact, less Israelis support the war than any of the American groups you mentioned. Only 29% support the war, with 49% against.
(Note: the poll you cite doesn’t allow for unsure, making the numbers incomparable. I worded the above to count unsure as “not supportive of”. If you count them as “supporting”, then Americans are still about as supportive as Israelis.).
If, generally, 99% of people are in favor of X, and 1% of people are in favor of Y, but on some platform 70% of posts are in favor of X, and 30% in favor of Y, which way does that platform skew?
I'm skeptical that hashtags are really a good way to measure these things. They seem rather arbitrary in some cases (particularly that second link). It seems like it would be pretty easy to selectively choose specific hashtags to give any impression you want.
Cherry picking a few hashtags is not a credible analysis. That being said, it’s well known that millennials and gen z support Palestine so it’s not surprising a platform with those demographics would have more pro Palestine content.
I'd assume the anti-Israel views could be caused by the actions of Israel.
Is that not a reasonable interpretation? Normally a country killing many thousands of innocent children, women and men, in an act of bloody revenge is not thought well of.
That's not to condone Hamas's acts on October 7th, but to point out that indiscriminate violence is usually not an answer to anything.
The skew is just from that view being much more popular. It's organic content.
The pro-israel side is from heavy manipulation of the recommendation algorithms and billions of dollars worth of propaganda investments (including paying people to post).
Also worth noting the strong pro-israel sentiment in India is only amongst extreme far-right Hindus.
I think of this more as a distinction between exercising "platform power" versus "real world" power. #freepalestine is not an issue like #metoo, in that the court of public opinion does not really matter for the former, since Israel is a sovereign nation. The state of Israel is not going to get cancelled for toxic behavior. I think this was the argument framed in the article: despite popular support for the Palestinian cause, you are more likely to lose your job for stating pro-Palestine views. This is one probably reason that those without even enough clout to get fired for an opinion are even more rabid and vociferous. I understand your doubt of the organic pro-Palestine content, and I'm agnostic about it, but it is an easy train to get on right now regardless of the actual depth of your beliefs.
This conflict (and the press/social media sentiment) seems to be going exactly as planned by both sides of the conflict.
According to Israeli intelligence, Hamas’s primary goal was to cause as much death and destruction in Gaza as possible. The Israeli civilians were just collateral damage.
They needed Israel to over-react and commit so many war crimes that it would force other countries into the conflict, and also get a new generation of Palestinians to sign up for the cause.
Not only did they achieve all their goals, but they did it in one day! They had budgeted for three days of slaughtering Israeli citizens, since they thought it would be harder to force a response. Since they called it off early, they presumably have more resources in reserve than expected.
As it usually goes with these conflicts, Hamas and the Israeli hardliners won on day one, and literally everyone else lost:
The strong anti-Israeli sentiment online will just justify more military investment in Israel, and might even help them use fear to win an election or two.
At the same time, Hamas recruiters can again use rational arguments to get people to sign up.
The frontline of the Israeli military (including many draftees) get screwed, as do all the people that live anywhere near the conflicts.
What is your specific assertion here? Are you saying something about the article? Does it demonstrate that this group has not suppressed pro-Palestine speech in places in the US?
> there are 1 billion Muslims to 16 million Jews
The vasty majority of Muslims are not in the US, the area relevant to the article. Also, to complicate things, afaik most Jewish Americans oppose Israel's right wing, especially the current government, and are sympathetic to Palestinians. And afaik most Israeli support in the US is right-wing evangelical Christians (if I am defining the subgroup accurately), a much larger group than Jewish Americans.
Well, that’s not a fair comparison. Palestinians may have a lot of muslims on their side, but the whole western world—-or more precisely: their media and people in power—-fully support anything Israel does. No consequences. Au contraire:
Looking at Germany for instance, anyone remotely criticising Israel for even gross violations of international human rights or Geneva Conventions (for instance for withholding water, food, medicines, and electricity for 2.2mil civilians in Gaza) will be attacked, silenced, stigmatised, smeared by the majority of media, politician, police, attorneys, etc. Many artists, intellectuals, activists, thinkers, academics have been cancelled, smeared (for instance Greta Thunberg, Ai Wei Wei, Candice Brice, Ilan Pappe, and many many more). And even more people are afraid to speak about Israel critically, fearing to lose their job or called antisemite, when in fact Zionism is not Judaism and the state of Israel does not represent all jews around the world, and cannot be sacrosanct.
In the US the support is even larger. Just today the US vetoed a Security Council decision for a ceasefire in Gaza. And this inspite of many people in the state department internally rebelling against this blind support for Israels retaliatory move in Gaza.
Disclosure: I have family in Israel, some of them went to the streets in Tel Aviv every week for months to protest against the judicial overhaul. And who are in panic mode seeing the right wing coalition partners of Netanyahu getting stronger and stronger. And I have family members in the military who after 7/10 want to „kill arabs now“. I just do not think flattening Gaza and/or dehumanising Palestinians will make Israel any safer.
I would take the "Pro-Israeli" views coming out of India with a heavy grain of salt.
The tweets you see of "India Israel" and the like are largely from troll farms intending to use the event to antagonize local Muslims that fall on the opposite part of the political spectrum they support. The average Indian is neither aware of the nuances of the overall conflict nor does he care, since it actually has extremely little to do with his daily life.
> so if there's something going on online, it's not in favor of Israel.
More people live outside the United States and Israel than in them, and they use these platforms. Many of those people have been out are descendants of subjects of colonialism and Imperialism, whether at the hands of Europe or America. Many of those people view Israel as a colonial project.
And yeah, as you mentioned, a large portion of the world is Muslim.
FWIW a recent YouGov poll[1] found that 20% of 18-29 year-olds agree with the statement that "the Holocaust is a myth," with an additional 30% neither agreeing or disagreeing. Compare this to 0%(!) of 65+ year-olds agreeing, and a mere 2% neither agreeing or disagreeing.
To put another way, the oldest generations are in 98% agreement that the Holocaust happened, compared to 50% of young adults.
A better polling company would use more objective language, such as :
"Millions of Jews were targeted for persecution, imprisonment and extermination by Nazi Germany"
It's fine for people to use the word 'Holocaust' to reference that history if they want to but it's also a word that carries some baggage and some assumption of 'specialness'. A polling company shouldn't use it, in my view. I think they would have got a (much) higher degree of agreement if they had used my suggested phrasing (or something like it). People have become increasingly wary of the way that the persecution and genocide of the Jews in the 1930s and 1940s has been elevated (e.g. by Hollywood) above the many other great persecutions and genocides that also occurred during the 20th century.
(Also, getting young people to respond to a statement such as "the Holocaust is a myth" is unnecessarily provocative and will incentivise a certain proportion to agree to it, just 'for the lolz').
I think there is an information war Israel is still winning just because they have more media resources. Accurate and unbiased information about what is happening in Gaza is somewhat hard to find while Israel has a lot of reliable information supporting anything they want. The information that does come out from Gaza spreads farther, unfortunately a lot of which is wrong because people spread unreliable sources, but information from Israel supporting their positions is greater and more accurate because they have more media resources.
Interestingly enough, Israel has a stranglehold on r/worldnews. You'd be hard pressed to find any news or content there that doesn't praise Israel in their slaughter of the Palestinians.
TikTok is a Chinese product, and therefore inseparable from the Communist Party. This may also be a factor. It's the safest (read: more moderated and controlled) large social media platform. Why? It may seem valuable to cause havoc in the US electorate at a critical time, splitting the age groups and driving a wedge hard.
For the terminally-online students this issue has almost become a litmus test - "If you are pro-Israel, you are not one of us. They say so on TikTok."
This is a very good example of how social media completely takes over and leads the herd blindly in one direction, either through manipulation, or through just natural hype and bandwagon effect.
In the past we had a few friends who would subject us to peer pressure and convince us to do stupid shit.
Now these kids are in global peer pressure groups of millions.
It is an interesting contrast to the situation in 'editorial rooms' (not virtual tiktok rooms) where most decision makers globally get their information. Some head of state in country X (entangled "innocent"* bystander state) is being bombarded by pro-Israeli 'official news organs' not some rando with a tiktok account.
That’s a somewhat defensible position if you compare what Hitler did to what Stalin and the Japanese did. (At least when I was growing up, the Holocaust coursework completely ignored the Chinese, and mentioned Gypsies in passing, if at all. They covered homosexuals though.)
First of all based on how this Tweet author is writing he sounds like he is on the list of those 30 CEOs that wanted to blacklist anyone from Harvard that signed a pro-Palestinian letter.
I wish they would instead release the full list of the 30 CEOs just like how they are doxxing the students or targeting anyone on Linkedin(via scraping) with a pro-Palestine view. Instead these people are cowards.
Secondly, its been quite fascinating watching over the years the pro-Palestinian view be the minority but then seeing this event finally being the one that broke the camel's back. I always knew that the pro-Palestinian view would become the majority view but there was no way I could have expected it to grow this quickly. Over the last few years, we have seen an erosion of free speech in the US with all these Anti-BDS laws and it just drove me up the wall seeing the right cry about free speech yet have no problem with these laws. It really felt like we were going back for a decade before we could move forward.
But this reaction is just another way that Gen-Z has really surpassed my expectations. Before this event, it was like screaming into the ether but you know what can't be faked or gamed by the Chinese or whoever else hates the US? The enormous protests occurring in the West. These are people making their own decision to go out and spend their time. Thats when I knew this isn't just another internet manipulation hogwash.
Now the powers that be are brushing off all these Gen-Z people by complaining that they have a negative mindset of the world and using protest as a coping mechanism. Elon said this nonsense the other day and I couldn't believe how little he understand Gen-Z. These are the people that watched their older siblings get taken as fools by Obama's "hope and change". They entered the world on the cusp of post-9/11, watched the GFC take hold during childhood and then graduated with loads of debt into the COVID market. Of course they have a pessimistic outlook.
Eventually a Millenial or Gen-Z will take the white house and then things will get really spicy. This really does feel like a generational divide.
Regarding the Indian support of Israel: Now THAT definitely feels like internet manipulation nonsense. I have been following the conflict for over a decade on sites like Reddit, Twitter, and HN and never have I seen so much content from India over this. All of a sudden this is super important to them. Yeah right... :/
My subjective experience is that since Elon Musk visited Israel and met with the government a week ago, Twitter has started heavily promoting pro-Israeli accounts.
Of course, Elon Musk decided to visit Israel after he came under criticism for agreeing with a blatantly anti-Semitic Tweet,[0] so some may question how sincere Musk's sudden change of heart is.
Even if you're legitimately attempting to analyze political preferences or skew on social media, it seems incredibly inappropriate to be basing that analysis on someone who makes purely biased claims in all of their social media posts. There are so many analytical flaws in the graphs he provides, that they really shouldn't be used for anything.
They've selectively[1] searched for multiple Palestine hashtags, which all show up under the same base hashtag[2], but then count all of the hashtags as separate data points -- and then compares them to a singular Israel hashtag that includes an emoji, which won't include most results regarding Israel. What's worse, is that including a Palestine hashtag doesn't remotely guarantee that the post is pro-Palestine or anti-Israel, and the same is true for posts including Israel hashtags not necessarily being pro-Israel, which can also be seen in [2]. In reality, the #palestine hashtag is used in pro-Israel posts all the time, so the sweeping generalizations made by Anthony Goldbloom aren't based on any legitimate statistical methodology.
Instead of echoing Goldbloom's manipulation of data as factual, it should be used as an example of pro-Israel disinformation and entirely backs the article's claim. In fact, even Goldbloom admits that he made mistakes[3], and the other graph was made by him and not the company who conducted the survey, who actually disputes his claim.
I think it could even be argued that your comment, without any supporting facts other than a very pro-Israel Twitter pundit who already debunked himself, is contributing to the misinformation discussed in the article, even if you're doing so unintentionally.
"That’s where the efforts of J-Ventures’ hasbara WhatsApp group come in. The group, which also includes attorneys and individuals affiliated with the influential American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), has tirelessly worked to fire employees and punish activists for expressing pro-Palestinian views."
Is that even legal under US law? Apparently it is in some states. Federal law does not, apparently, prohibit political discrimination. But some states do - California, New York, DC, Colorado, and North Dakota.[1]
This should be reported to the FBI's Foreign Influence Task Force.[2] Anyone involved in such suppression activities may be considered an "unregistered foreign agent".[3]
Anyone or any organization attempting to influence US policy on behalf of a foreign government is supposed to register. Here's the database.[4]
AIPAC itself is a result of the President Eisenhower and later Robert F Kennedy (DOJ) demanding the American Zionist Council (AZC) register as foreign agents. Because of this, the AZC rebranded to AIPAC with the same leadership and the issue seemed to have fell off the high priority political radar since.
Incidentally, the founder of AIPAC, Isaiah Kenen registered twice with the U.S. Department of Justice under the Foreign Agent Registration Act (FARA) as an agent for Israel. Prior to leading AIPAC, he was the leader of the American Zionist Council. He was also chief information officer for the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
AIPAC's mission is pretty clear: to promote the interests of Israel. This is fine, and not unique, but that seems to me to be the textbook definition of a foreign agent, and it should be registered as such.
AIPAC has a very large budget and will be spending over $100M in 2024 to defeat any candidate for US Congress that did not align with their pro-Israel goals.
The documentary "Boycott" explores the legislation passed in several U.S. states, including Arkansas, Arizona, and Texas, that requires individuals to pledge not to boycott Israel as a condition for receiving government funds. This legislation emerged in response to the Palestinian-led BDS (Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions) movement against Israel. The film follows individuals who challenged these laws, including a publisher in Arkansas, an attorney in Arizona, and a speech pathologist in Texas, highlighting their legal battles and the implications for free speech
There have been many arguments that AIPAC should register under the Foreign Agents Registration Act but my understanding is that in it's current form AIPAC doesn't qualify.
I see this as a reason to strengthen the Foreign Agents Registration Act.
That issue came up regarding China's Confucius Institutes.[1] There's been something of a crackdown on those.
Politico has some coverage of the current Israel-related lobbying push.[2] There are a lot of players. "An unsanctioned coterie of pro-Israel quasi-lobbyists has descended on D.C." Some have formally registered as agents of Israel. Some haven't.
The big issue here is when activities go beyond lobbying. Anyone can lobby Congress; that's a constitutional right in the US. Getting people fired on behalf of a foreign power, though, is a legally questionable activity.
In this context, 'foreign agent' means 'agent of a foreign power', not that one is a foreigner. This is what US Senator Bob Menendez is being prosecuted for; it's alleged that he was an undeclared agent of the Egyptian government. AIPAC is run by Americans, but it does advocate on behalf of the state of Israel; I'm unclear to what extent it is financially supported or directed by the government of Israel. Having IDF people advising on information war strategies (as described in the article) does make it seem official though.
AIPAC is the American-Israel Political Action Committee. "The largest pro-Israel PAC in America", their web site says. They are, quite openly, a lobby for Israel's interests in the US.
Israel and pro-Israel commentators have spent a lot of time and effort trying to ingrain the idea that Israel == Jews. Of course, not all Jews are Israeli, and not all Israelis are Jews. And there are many Jewish Israelis who are critical of the actions of the Israeli government.
Of course, a lot of criticism of Israel is rooted in antisemitism. But saying all criticism of Israel is antisemitic deflects legitimate criticism, and makes it harder to identify legitimate antisemitism.
I feel like this a great point. As an American, I’m not labeled as any particular religion. I honestly wish there were no labels at all. I would much rather look at things as right and wrong based on the specific situation.
The goal, in my opinion, is division. Without it, they have nothing.
While that is definitely true and an important distinction, I will say that unfortunately all too often as discussions on the topic deepen there's a troubling correlation between the most vocal voices engaged in criticizing Israel and legit antisemitism views creeping in.
Which isn't a one sided phenomenon. The reverse is true as well, where often the most vocal voices rationalizing Israel's actions and behavior around civilian casualties often have anti-Muslim perspectives crop up as back and forth conversation goes on.
One of the litmus tests I've noticed is the capacity to acknowledge and condemn the civilian suffering of both sides. The commenters who recognize and condemn both the Oct 7th terrorist attack and the targeting or indiscriminate killing of civilians in the response to it tend to be rational and level headed driven by humanitarian concerns.
Those who only recognize the suffering of one side and dismiss, dehumanize, or rationalize the suffering of the other side - or worst of all propagandize the denial of it's occurrence or scope - tend to quickly fall into revealing rather abhorrent views with a mere scratching of the surface.
Not everyone who criticizes Israel is antisemitic nor everyone who criticizes Hamas is anti-Muslim, but many who are antisemitic or anti-Muslim seem keen to defend their respective side of the conflict quite emphatically and unilaterally.
I get your point, but at the same time dragging anti-semetism into the argument weakens the voices of those who really are not anti-Semitic at all, but genuinely question the Israeli government response to the Hamas attacks.
Which is, I suspect, the point - to weaken those viewpoints.
And to address others in this thread around US actions around the world, I am critical of the U.S. war on Afghanistan and the second Iraq war as well as the Israeli attacks on Gaza.
One can be critical of a government without despising it.
That is my observation as well. In Germany many right wing groups who have deep seated antisemitic prejudices („they control the world, they want to exchange our white population“, etc) now fully express their hate against arabs / migrants hiding / excusing their behaviour with philo-semitism or support for Israel. They apparently do not have a iota of compassion for the dying civilians in Gaza.
>Criticizing Israel’s response is not anti-Semitism- it is literally just criticizing the response.
Okay - then what should be Israel's response? For me what they are doing is the bare minimum with the minimum casualties from the options they have. Hamas is Gaza's government. Hamas has intertwined the civilian and the military infrastructure. Hamas has made sure that the civilian Palestinians will suffer if you target Hamas. And it was Hamas that made sure with organized rape, torture and atrocities on Oct 7 that it can't be overlooked or forgiven.
Here is a good rule of thumb - if you are going to stir shit - stick to just killing. Don't livestream torture and rape, so diplomacy will have something to work with.
> For me what they are doing is the bare minimum with the minimum casualties from the options they have.
Really? Israel routinely turns off Gaza's electricity (to the entire country) for days. It has also turned off all fresh water for similar durations.
I think we have different definitions of "bare minimum". That comes across looking a lot more "punitive".
In this conflict it told Gazan civilians to move to Southern Gaza because of the extensive bombing in Northern Gaza. Then it began increasing bombing in Southern Gaza.
There is a lot of Gazan support for Hamas. But Hamas also makes up a very small minority of Gazans (I believe 40,000 in a country of 2.3 million). Hamas is also the people who are armed (thanks to both Israeli blockades, oh, and when Israel found it politically expedient to encourage Hamas' militancy because a more moderate Palestinian Authority would make the far right Israeli government look worse by being more willing to compromise).
Their response should be to leave the occupied territories, which aren't theirs to begin with, and to recognize a Palestinian state. Israel has held millions of Palestinians under military occupation for more than half a century, and it's way past time that that ended.
Your comment is entirely regurgitated Israeli propaganda that has been repeatedly debunked.
I'll be as polite as I can about this, and take it one step at a time.
> Okay - then what should be Israel's response?
The world has been clear about this. Stop killing civilians and treat Palestinians as humans with rights.
> what they are doing is the bare minimum with the minimum casualties from the options they have.
That's not remotely true. Human rights groups and genocide experts around the world are screaming at world leaders to take action. Schools and refugee camps and humanitarian corridors and civil infrastructure and entire residential blocks are being vaporized without warning.
> Hamas is Gaza's government
The last election was in 2006, so this talking point is real stale.
> Hamas has intertwined the civilian and the military infrastructure.
The only proof that has been offered of that has been incredibly shoddily made, as if daring people to believe it.
> Hamas has made sure that the civilian Palestinians will suffer if you target Hamas.
That doesn't excuse war crimes, and it's highly fucked up to think that it does somehow.
> And it was Hamas that made sure with organized rape, torture and atrocities on Oct 7 that it can't be overlooked or forgiven.
The only evidence of organized rape that I've seen presented turned out to be a 10 year old photo of Kurdish women [0]. Torture? No evidence. By atrocities, do you mean the debunked beheaded babies? Or the debunked babies in oven claim? The debunked pregnant women cut open claim?
What Hamas did was atrocious, killing civilians and kidnapping people. So why embellish so devilishly? Only to excuse genocide, and grab land.
> Here is a good rule of thumb - if you are going to stir shit - stick to just killing. Don't livestream torture and rape, so diplomacy will have something to work with.
Again with the claims of "livestreamed torture and rape", which no one has actually seen.
You know who can be documented to have tortured and raped people in the last couple decades? Israel and the US. On many, many occasions. But in your view, at least they're smart enough not to livestream it - they only took photos.
The same response I have concluded should have been the US' response to 9/11: turn the other cheek, and invest heavily in reconciling with "enemy" forces while rebuilding "enemy" infrastructure and institutions, while dealing with individual bad actors on a case-by-case basis as a matter of legal (rather than martial) procedure.
And I'm not joking.
I feel bad for Israelis who have let their government doom them to a generation of government mismanagement and expensive, arduous military adventure. My single-payer health insurance and my friends' free college education went into a couple Patriot missiles, and I do wonder what they're going to have to give up.
It's intentional. The Israel lobby has worked tirelessly to conflate antisemitism with any critique of Israel whatsoever, no matter how legitimate.
It's sad, and in the long run completely self-defeating, but nobody seems to realize that. The more Israel and their lobby overreacts to honest, legitimate and peaceful critique of their actions, the more extreme that the responses will inevitably be....especially in times like these where Palestinians have legitimate reasons to be angry with Israel, and when Israel's citizenry has the right to be angry with their government.
Nobody is right, and everyone is wrong. Everyone has blood on their hands. Pretending otherwise is dumb. Likud and Hamas are responsible, not the innocent Israelis nor the innocent Palestinians.
The question is, what is so special about the Israeli/Palestine conflict that leads to these outsized protests? I do not recollect a similar response to the treatment of ISIS or the war in Yemen, even though both had the unconditional support of the US war machine. Even if the left could be absolved of antisemitism, the resistance groups it is aligning itself with clearly can not.
The free flow of information and lack of government control over access to that information. Much of the early Iraq war and even, to an extent, conflicts with ISIS and Yemen had the benefit of those citizens not having access to the internet. So any information many American citizens were getting was filtered through what the military allowed to be known, then further filtered by the news.
With Palestine and Israel, we were able to see it with our own eyes. I remember specifically watching TikToks of a teenage girl in Gaza posting about the evacuations, hearing the bombs in the background, etc. It felt "real" to us, which is a terrible way to put it, but I believe that is why the protests are much larger than other conflicts.
" The question is, what is so special about the Israeli/Palestine conflict that leads to these outsized protests? "
- Jerusalem (and more globally Israel and Palestine) is holly for Jews, Muslims and Christians ; more than half of the word population and more than 90% of US population
- Israel is a key ally of the USA, and this is a topic important in US politics for long time - including for some evangelical voters for religious question
- Westerners have colonized (or inflicted violence to) most of the non western countries on this planet in "recent" history... Israel is seen by some as a Western country colonizing just another developing country, with support of other western countries... echoing recent history for many. It is as such a symbol for a long time.
- USA, France... have had some big Islamist attack, what happened in Israel echoed to this for some people... and echoes to the clash of civilization western word vs Muslim which is central in the ideology of a growing number of westerners
- It is easier to understand, more divisive, with more people or causes we can identify with, than in Syria (everybody hates ISIS) or Yemen (arabs fighting arabs fighting other arabs in a desert ?)... And we have more images
My slightly-informed opinion? Two cooperating factors.
1. The extraordinary effective Hamas organization. Hamas has set itself up to benefit from atrocities committed upon the people of Gaza. Every civilian death is a point for Hamas, the more so the better publicized it is. A point for Hamas is obviously not a point for regular people in Gaza. And Hamas provoked Israel as much as it could manage, and continues to provoke Israel by engaging in military operations from civilian sites, leading to:
2. Israel doesn’t understand this, and is entirely willing to play right into Hamas’ hands, in the name of its own security. And it looks really, really bad.
Actions of Western democracies are usually subject to greater scrutiny. Indeed, the IHRA definition of anti-Semitism allowed for this: it says that it is antisemitism to hold Israel to a higher standard than other democracies - not than other nations altogether.
There is something particularly grating about how Israel acts with impunity on the world stage yet continues to receive unfaltering support from the US government.
They secretly introduced nuclear weapons into the Middle East and refused to sign any of the treaties which are responsible for humanities current existence.
According to Snowden the NSA provides them with whatever data they'd like, even that on Americans, without any filtering whatsoever.
Bibi clowned all over Obama for years and yet he still had to agree with nearly every policy he pushed. Biden has been practically begging them to cut back on West Bank settlements. They won't even meet us there and still we send over money for them to do whatever they please.
It went viral on social media, the other conflicts didn't. That's really it. Many people's awareness of the world and the moral weight of what happens there comes directly from social media.
A lot of people were upset about China and the Uyghurs as well, for a while, but not until after it became a thing influencers talked about. And then they stopped caring after social media moved on. Even on HN, where anti-China sentiment is rampant, people no longer seem to mention it.
It's because on the surface it's an interracial conflict (it's not really, I guess, but that is the perception for most), and lots of people are obsessed over racial dynamics and analyzing history through that lens.
There are so many other conflicts going on with many more dead, but if it's not interracial then somehow it is not talked about.
I’m sorry, people who aren’t Jewish or Palestinians are not allowed to have opinions on this?
I’m sorry, but Israel can’t just pull out their “anti-Semite” card at will and do what they want without the world reacting.
The Israeli government - like any government - can make mistakes. And can be criticized. Criticizing the government is in no way anti-Semitic. To believe otherwise would be to believe the Israeli government is divinely chosen and can do no wrong, like the Pharohs of old. Sorry, but they are people and people can make mistakes.
Which again does not excuse Hamas.
But Israel cannot wage unlimited war on the people of Gaza at will forever.
Criticising current Israeli government policy doesn't hold Israel to a higher standard than that of other countries.
Also Israel critics also tend to be _much more likely_ to condemn the actions of other states (e.g. Saudi Arabia in Yemen, Indonensia in Papaua, etc). The issue is that the press is less interested in this and the general American public is much more interested in Israel than they are in Saudi Arabia.
I've heard this claim, but what is your personal reasoning? It's an oddly narrow condition. Isn't 'prejudice against Israel' more general and effective? Enumerating prejudice in every possible form seems impossible and impractical.
FWIW, it's included in a definition from the last ~20 years that is favored by pro-Israel groups.
Possibly, it's just rhetorical and diversionary, putting critics on the defensive to carefully defend and establish all speech as non-anti-Jewish, which diverts time and attention.
I think those tactics work for Israel when the issues aren't so stark and prominent, and so few people see the critique of the critics (i.e., few see the accusation that the speech is antisemitic). With everyone watching closely, the apparent rhetorical tactics become noticeable.
Which other nation is allowed to literally colonize land than even itself doesn't consider to be part of their country? What other nation can get away with military enforcement of said colonies?
If anything, Israel is given more slack in the west than any other nation. More civilians died in Gaza than in Ukraine yet clearly, only one nation has been condemned officially by western states and that's not Israel
It's the same standard the entire world held the US to after 9/11. A response to the attacks by Al-Qaeda was justified, the 20 year "Crusade" across the Middle East was not. A response by Israel against Hamas terrorism is justified - a campaign of extermination and genocide is not.
It isn't even a high standard, "don't commit genocide" has been the bare minimum requirement for any modern country, much less democracy, for nearly a century. It would be antisemitic to believe that Israel is uniquely incapable of meeting that minimum standard.
Some of this information war seems to be intended from keeping the US from considering a third option - sitting this one out. One U.S. State Department official resigned over this when he saw Israel's weapons shopping list.[1]
The US could provide humanitarian aid, but not military aid. Cut military aid to Israel. Maybe still provide Iron Dome reloads, but that's about it. Bring in a hospital ship off Gaza, to care for the injured. Send a few frigates to protect it from all parties. Discourage outside interference. Then wait to see how this plays out. It's not the US's fight, after all.
Creating a lot of noise over the issue tends to force people to choose a side and eliminates middle options. That may be part of the intent of this campaign. "Are you with us, or against us". No, we're fed up with both of you.
AFAIK, US cannot just "sit out", because the Israel-Palestine conflict can negatively impact the US-Saudi relationship. Even though Saudi shares some common interests with Israel (i.e. Iran), it simply can't look away from the sufferings of Muslims in Palestine, given its role as a major power in the Islamic world.
Also, if Israel takes the control of the Gaza Strip, a lot of refugees will spread in the region, creating more tension in the long-term. I deem this more sensitive than the religious strife, because it can leave concrete, direct, and explicit marks on the neighboring societies.
I think the best scenario for US is that Israel eventually stands down and falls back to the pre-war state - that is, no Israel control over the Palestinian territories. Israel won't have much choice here.
The problem with cutting aid to Israel is that the only thing stopping Israel from committing even more violence is the western support they receive. The current Israeli government is as right wing as the country has ever seen. The defense minister is a proud supporter of terrorism against palestinians and even israeli's who support palestinians. He believes god gave the west bank and the entire levant to the jews. If Israel's international relations soured they would quickly come to the conclusion that they have nothing to lose and no reason not to enact their "final solution to the palestinian problem".
> Recall that Palestine's goal is to eliminate all Jews.
No, that's not Palestine’s goal.
Its not even clearly the goal of the Palestinian Islamist extremist group Israel fostered specifically to have a less sympathetic enemy to deflect pressure for peace with Palestine to use as a pretext for perpetual war, though it may be, and whose fault is that?
I think the behavior of the EU is more problematic TBH. Ursula VdL went heavily pro-israel the first day kind of giving carte blanche to israel for the following days
This situation is not a good look for western response in general. The world is watching. Reminder that Srebrenica was 8000 deaths, but 17100 palestinians are justified losses.
She probably destroyed her career with this, since acted way beyond her limits. I still wonder, was she overcompensating due to her being German?
It's very normal for EU to be pro-Israel, that's EU's official position and IMHO it's the correct one but EU's position is also pro-Two states solution and EU has significant humanitarian missions and political support for many of the Palestinian demands. Some EU countries are also very sympathetic towards the Palestinian cause and some countries which have huge importance for EU, like Turkey, the issue is very emotional.
Very wrong of Vdl to act as if EU is all-in for the Zionist aspirations. As EU Commission president, should have strongly condemned the terrorist attack that Israel suffered and offer any help possible and at the same time she should have pushed for a solution of the root cause(Israeli occupation and extremist antisemitic politics seeking the demise of the Israel - both unacceptable).
Maybe the bigger lesson here is that you should never go all-in on one side of a very complex issue. A kind of an issue where the rights and wrongs are quite evenly distributed and there's no way you end up on the correct side of it. Whoever-pro you are, you lose and she lost.
VdL has 'destroyed her career' many times over, during her stint. She repeatedly tried to look decisive rather than wise; sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn't.
The truth is that the Commission President continues to be a job in search of political weight and legitimacy, but you can't get that after you are nominated to the post by scheming national rulers - it has to come from the ballot box. She tries hard to compensate for what is a structural weakness that was supposed to be fixed by the spitzenkandidaten process... a process that she blew up herself.
Imho, being heavily pro-Israel on the first day was perfectly appropriate. They'd just seen a crapload of innocent civilians butchered, and a bunch of them taken hostage.
Obviously you can still think that Palestinians have legit grievances without supporting massacre, and likewise you can support the Israeli right to defend itself. But at some point the actions of the Israeli military looks less like an effort to root out Hamas and more like ethnic cleansing.
worse than anything ever perpetrated by Nazis and ISIS alike
I quite agree that the Hamas attacks on civilians that took place on October 7 were an atrocity and should be treated as a war crime. But 'worse than the Nazis' hyperbole doesn't help you make that argument. Massacres of civilians are unfortunately ordinary in wars and by no means unique to a particular region or culture.
These types of responses always skip over the most crucial parts of history:
The IDF originally funneled money to the founder of Hamas in order to weaken popular support for Fatah, and Netanyahu facilitated Qatari payments to Hamas when it seemed that support for the Palestinian Authority was rising. His far right defense minister publicly resigned, saying that Netanyahu was financing terrorism against Israel.
Including in these facts into the argument makes it seem less like Israel is fighting a terrorist group, and more like Israel tolerates a terrorist organization as their best alternative to a two state solution.
good for you, but this is not about how we feel, but about making peace. The palestine issue won't be solved this time like it was not solved in decades of war. you will just have thousands more new terrorists now, who watched family members die while trying to follow orders that israel had given them to protect them. This is a complex issue and not one for taking sides.
I want to believe that Hamas is hiding among civilians, but there has already been reported major violations where there cannot be any military benefit for Israel about this. A hospital with a children's ward was labeled to be a command center for Hamas, but when the BBC came to examine the command center, they not only found nothing to indicate a major military use but also had video evidence (from previous video taken earlier in the day by Israeli military) that what was there was actively staged for them. And then we find out that the children's ward had babies in incubators-- and the Israeli military did nothing to save those babies despite taking control of the hospital. Like, when Palestinians were able to get back to the hospital they found the babies as corpses rotting in the incubators. This was confirmed by neutral third party reporters. WTF?
How much grace can someone reasonably hold for a military force that repeatedly lies and then allows babies in incubators to die in the hospital they took over? At what point should we hold a much more well funded, a much more democratic, and a much more supposedly civilized civilization to higher standards than the terrorists they're fighting?
I don’t think that most (nearly all?) pro Palestine critics are saying that Hamas is in the right. All of the wording I’ve seen was focused on Israel’s and the IDFs response and actions. As you’ve mentioned, killing civilians is a war crime.
Many civilized nations have military installations, such as headquarters and office facilities, co-located and intermixed with civilian facilities. They also have military bases and complexes, but the intermixing is not unique to Hamas.
When the Palestinians in Gaza have been denied elections in nearly 2 decades and have expressed discontent with Hamas as well, it sounds disingenuous to characterize it as “invited […] so deeply into their everyday lives.”
I think the greatest thing the Moscow-Teheran-Beijing "bot army diplomacy doctrine" is showing us is that you can radicalize both the US right AND the US Left at the same time by speaking to each side's idiocies at full throat.
We are nearing Elders of Zion territory here where the ratio of 2 Billion Muslims to 15 Million Jews, and thus the constant stream of anti-Israeli propaganda, now contains propaganda suggesting that we are deceived and in fact there is more pro-Israeli discoursem when in reality it is being drowned out.
What discourse you see online is entirely dependent on who you follow. TikTok is not force feeding you pro-Palestine content (and pro-Palestine ≠ pro-Hamas, people who are unironically pro-Hamas are not to be taken seriously since they usually come with other nonsensical takes on everything). Neither is Twitter, Youtube, Instagram, or any other platform where content is recommended based on user preferences. Don't like what you see? Close it or use whatever feedback function built-in to strongly signal your distaste, and the algorithms will recommend less of that. My tech twitter timeline was unusable for weeks after October 7 because many people I follow started posting pro-Israel messages nonstop, to the point where I had to mute them because it's not what I followed them for despite having sympathy for Israelis after the attack from Hamas.
I started getting ads obviously funded by the State of Israel and pro-Israel organizations on Youtube, on Twitter, on Instagram, and on TikTok (for a day or two). There were "Missing Person" posters of October 7th victims in my neighbourhood street which is located more than 10000+km from Israel (I feel bad for them and hope they will return home safe and sound, but what are these posters trying to achieve here in my neighbourhood? My local representative legislator is already supporting Israel and condemning Hamas). I'm not going to stop recognizing propaganda for being propaganda even if I mostly agree with its underlying message. That's a basic critical thinking skill and evidently that skill is lacking even mong highly successful and "intelligent" people on HN, tech Twitter, and so on.
Just to be clear, are you saying this article is false propaganda? Which parts, and do you have sources? I'd like to know full picture before I send this link to people.
There are ~9 Senators and 26 House representatives who are Jewish. There is only 1 Palestinian, and as the article pointed out, many from the pro-Israel faction are vying to have her expelled from congress.
Further, in the US, nearly every presidential candidate or prominent politician has staunchly taken the side of Israel, reiterating their 'right to defend' whenever the mass casualties of Gaza are brought up. Many in Biden's admin have given interviews saying this sentiment as well.
So while I'm sure your statistics are correct, I think it's a misnomer to say that there is more anti-Israel propoganda or pro-Israel or anti-Palestinian, etc. It's a moot point. The most clear point to me is that most gov't officials are supporting Israel's war no matter what.
There is no need for Russian/Iranian propaganda bots. Israel does that already for them: Seeing how Israel tries to defeat Hamas by withholding water, food, electricity, medicines for 2.2mil civilians in Gaza or by using genocidal language by Netanyahu and his war cabinet (Netanyahu: „they are Amalek!“, Gallant: „they are human animals“, Herzog: „there are no innocent in Gaza“, and then compring Hamas to Hitler/Nazis/ISIS/Satan) or by bombing hospitals, schools, ambulances, killing civilians by the thousands, then at the same time handing out guns to Settlers who loot, kill, start pogroms in the West Bank.
I could not confirm your claim that Hamas called for murdering Jews globally. Could you please share a source?
My feeling is that media controlled by people - like TikTok - tend to be pro-Palestinian, whereas media controlled by institutions tend to be pro-Israeli (with the exception of the majority of ONGs and human right organizations).
> it gets amplified by 1.8 billion people whose holy book calls for attacks on Jews
Broadly generalizing like this does border on racism, which definitely does not help defend a country accused of apartheid and genocide.
This article made it to front with 297 pts and generally it negative towards Israel. I don't think any of the articles about Hamas atrocities and their use of social media made to cause panic and fear made it that far on HN.
Back in Oct about a week after the attack Bloomberg 's reporting on the attack and the beginning of the ended up being flagged on NH and only has 23pts: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37910148
It seems that anti-Israel propaganda is way more successful than this pro-Israel information war.
It's easier for anti-Israel propaganda to be more successful here when the people leading Y-Combinator, who own and manage Hacker News, are also anti-Israel, some possibly antisemitic. If it didn't take sides and mandated neutrality, it would flag content from both sides. If a moderator on HN acts out of line with the policy or sentiments of YC leadership, they would be corrected. The battle of ideas begins with who controls the platform and what their policies are.
Ah yes, there it is. You didn't even wait untill the second sentence to use this empty term. Because of comments like yours this word completely lost its meaning. Intelligent people just ignore it now.
This article, more than making me feel one way or another about the particular issue at hand (Isreal Hamas) makes me speculate what other unknown, better coordinated, better funded, interest groups might be doing this sort of thing on a massive scale.
I'm reminded of the "Come out - we have you surrounded" meme where the mentally insane man is hiding behind a desk with a shotgun screaming "Get out of my head" or "I hate the Antichrist", because that's how thinking about these groups make me feel
It's very interesting to me that a large new org (say BBC, DW, CBC whatever) will publish some YouTube video report about some political subject (Canada and India, Ukraine and Russia, Taiwan and China), and within 15 minutes the video has a comments section containing 200+ posts in a very obvious direction. Are 100s of Canadians really awake at 5am posting on a BBC video about Canadian support for Ukraine 15 minutes after it was posted? Are 100s of Taiwanese people really awake at 3am commenting on a DW video about China-Taiwan relations? 15 minutes after it was posted? I can't tell if I've become paranoid over the last 4/5 years or if it's real, but it seems so stark to me how intense manipulation on platforms is, be it YouTube, TikTok, or Instagram.
I shift from making myself not think about it to becoming a complete paranoid nut to telling myself it probably isn't so bad and doesn't matter a few times a year. There are levels to this sort of thinking, and it exists on a spectrum. I think everyone can agree on a conceptual level that manipulation occurs. A basic, mostly harmless example would be a music star "organically going viral" and "being discovered as a result" not being quite as organic as it seems. Where it changes from healthy skepticism to paranoia is a line I struggle to draw personally.
I don't think there is a more potent example right now than the Israel Lobby.
The Holocaust and Hitler basically define modern Western morality, and Zionism's claims to legitimacy are closely related to those concepts. Associating someone with "Hitler" or "antisemitic" is worse than calling them "bin Laden" or "slavemaster".
Other popular foreign lobbies in Washington, from Ukrainian, Taiwanese, Kurds, Uyghurs, don't have nearly the same influence.
Saying this as a person that typically doesn't care at all about these things: you can't possibly compare Hitler to Bin Laden. The first is definitely worse - and I am sorry for people who lost family or friends in 9/11. But he was way worse. The guy started a world war, he literally killed dozens of millions of civilians and made life shi*ier for everyone on this planet. What he and his crew did to people, to society, and everything else - books have been written so that we hopefully, as humanity, won't repeat again.
No, when capital coordinates people get worried and rightfully so. There are a lot of non Jewish Zionists, just as there are a lot of Jewish non-Zionists. In our industry, the VCs are overwhelmingly Zionist while the rest of the industry is non-Zionist and it's the Zionists that are getting people fired and blacklisted.
This article is not about Jews co-ordinating, it's about foreign govt agents in military uniforms coordinating with powerful sillicon valley leaders to punish, among other things, American citizens for holding wrong-think.
I legitimately don't understand what you're trying to imply. As far as I can tell it's a very indirect attempt to imply that people "having a nerve struck" over "Jews coordinating", are bad in a nonspecific way. Can you state more clearly what you mean so I can consider it?
It's very unfair to say that the reaction to this is because of "the Jews" and not because a close US ally who has much of the support of its military and intelligence apparatus at its disposal is doing this.
If I'm ever fired for taking a pro-Palestinian stance, I will spend the rest of my life suing everyone involved. The capital community has crossed so many lines in their witch hunt for pro-Palestinan voices that it's not even funny. Our industry has reached a breaking point and I'm not sure what's going to happen since most of the VCs are extremely pro-Zionism and a huge portion of people under the age of 45 are pro-Palestinian, including most engineers and tech people I know.
Anyway, we can make a similar argument about the Netanyahu regime: it is actively making Jewish, Israeli, and American people around the world less safe. It is almost treasonous that our elected officials are supporting this dangerous regime so uncritically.
If the conditions in Gaza continue as they have for multiple generations now, the eradication of Hamas will just beget the founding a different group with the same approach, or near to.
Yup,anyone with a brain and access to internet (non mainstream media) is pretty much against Israel exercising ethnic cleansing on Palestinian people. And you're right, young people tend to be more empathetic and less likely to support a bully.
Which is normally a very bad thing, but during a genocide it's a million times worse. I think a lot of people can feel that they're not allowed to say something right now that they should probably say, or at least be allowed to say.
There was always going to be an opinion war after 1200 massacred civilians, when a large portion of the other side doesn't take the primary tack of "stop bombing Palestine" but instead "Free Palestine".
This particular pro-Palestinian argument being so imprecise and tactically wrong, at this crucial time to saving the lives of Palestinians, only guarantees an unsovable hurricane of noise with no outcome but more civilian deaths and more war.
As the other side can not and will not reward the spark of the initial massacre to force a benefits negotiation, obviously. Let alone one that discusses ceding territory.
It's morally logical to be aghast at the Palestinian Civilian death toll, regardless of the argument as to who is ultimately responsible.
But it is morally unforgiveable for people, living in safety and ostensibly in support of voiceless Palestinians in a war zone, to decide to put a territory argument above Paelstinian lives.
This argument further endangers Palestinian lives when it radicalizes them in a manner, within the context of an unwinnable situation, that all but assures their deaths.
Hamas has been clear about their choice of the promise of territory over the lives of the entire Palestinian population.
Less doomed and morally clearer people need to make the choice to discharge the Palestinian population from their duty as pawns. Even if it means living a long life in another desert that isn't under terrorist militia control. In the context of an absolutely unwinnable situation.
Israel is clear, whatever one thinks of the nature of that clarity. That the Palestinians are unclear is why there will be a continued "information war" until the exact point when there isn't the possibility of Palestinians tolerating a single further death. At which point the rallying cry will focus solely on Palestinian lives.
We should all hope that this mutual clarity comes in this very minute. If not in this minute, then in the next. So that the maximum number of lives can be saved.
People can rail against that reality forever, but it will remain reality.
> There was always going to be an opinion war after 1200 massacred civilians, when a large portion of the other side doesn't take the primary tack of "stop bombing Palestine" but instead "Free Palestine".
The West Bank shows what happens if they only stop being bombed without actually being free. Palestine needs to be free in order for there to be peace.
Your comment implies that Palestinian civilians can't have peace until Israeli territory is ceded back to them. This is in the context of October 7th and a the current Gaza seige. It is reflective of the loudest echo in the war zone.
There won't be a single outcome but the most negative one for radicalized Palestinian civilians as a result. Hopefully, morally clearer voices will be raised higher.
The 1200 casualties on Oct 7 included 283 Israeli soldiers and 57 policemen. 859 civilians were killed. Doesn't change anything but it's worth using the correct figures.
Coming from Europe and living in the US for the last couple of years, I'm shocked at how society here is clearly pro-israel.
It is very clear that in the US the life of an israel citizen is valued way above the one of a palestinian. It is sad to lose that level of humanity.
all of the discourse also conveniently ignores that Israel created a large-scale open-air prison in Gaza and removed any hope left for people living there.
I think a lot of Americans either consciously or subconciosuly see the similarity between Israel's situation and the US's with regards to the natives. If there was a native independence movement that resorted to terrorism the us would flatten every reservation in the country.
There's definitely a similarity, but no, modern US would not behave like modern Israel is behaving. Our response to the 2020 riots was extremely hands-off relative to the level of violence of the rioters (who, in one instance, took cobtrol by force of a section of a major US city, declared secession, and held the area for several days [0]).
For someone, who is coming from Europe it strange, that you did not notice a slow, but steady rise in right politics in Europe, but was very quick to notice the US bias.
Israel is the United States' colonial outpost and our leaders know it. Our press knows it. That influences the public discourse, especially that which flows from official channels and major news outlets. And Israel has a huge lobby here to reinforce all that.
There's a religious dimension, too. Some kinds of Protestants see a modern Jewish state in Palestine as a precondition for the Second Coming of Christ, and actively want to urge that by supporting Israel. This is very common among religious fundamentalists in much of the US.
This is, by the way, exactly what President Biden was getting at on the Senate floor decades before his presidency when he said that 'if Israel did not exist, the United States would have had to invent an Israel to protect her interests in the region'.
It seems like Hamas values one Palestinian less than one Israeli. This is based on prisoner exchanges. Hamas gives up one Israeli prisoner for more than one Palestinian. Most recently it was 2:1, but historically it was 100:1 or more.
This is silly right? It isn’t like Hamas demanded this ratio, or that they forced Israel to accept. Should Hamas refuse out of principle if Israel gave them prisoners for free?
On the contrary it seems more like a power play on Israel’s part. “Take our prisoners we will just defeat them again!”
Despite all this, as a casual observer, my general impression is Israel has done terribly at making the case for war, and specifically the kind of war their military seems to be carrying out.
The most relevant comparison seems to be with the Russians. Russia has no credibility in the West and Israel is rapidly losing any they had, at least with younger people. My general impression is of a Russian-level intensity of destruction, too.
But perhaps these impressions are wrong. I would normally assume the Israelis aren’t complete idiots. I’d like to read a “steelman” case for this military campaign, if anyone knows of one. Why are these impressions misleading? What’s really going on?
(Yes, a major difference is that this is a counter-attack, but beyond that?)
You will be made quite miserable if you find what you seek. The Israeli politicians basically see Gaza as a "problem" population which they cannot deal with and which is hampering their national goals. And it's shockingly and ironically similar to how Jewish people were looked at in another time and another place by another leader
Are you serious? They were attacked first and invaded, experiencing the equivalent of Pearl Harbor + 9/11 together in relative terms, or in absolute terms the 2nd worst terrorist attack EVER. Entire communities viciously wiped out, and hundreds of hostages taken, followed by a barrage of thousands of rockets on the cities of Israel.
I'm at a loss of words. What kind of explanation are you missing?
Yes, they were attacked first and that’s a traditional justification for war. If a government wants to go to war, this is the time to do it, while they have the support of the public.
However, as we saw after 9/11, that doesn’t necessarily mean that whatever war a government proposes is a good idea. A counter-attack could still be foolish or unnecessarily brutal (as it seems to be). It might still result in a strategic failure.
The kind of explanation I’d be interested in would be why the way Israel is prosecuting this war is something the US (and other countries) should support.
(Your comment is about what Hamas did, and that’s a different sort of thing than a justification for what the Israel military is doing.)
There are about 1.8 Billion Muslims on planet earth. There are about 15 Million Jews on the planet. There are about 120 Muslims for every Jewish person. In Israel there are about 7 million Jews. The anti Israel propaganda and blatant lies on social media is sickening. To someone who knows what's on the ground, reading countless 100% false posts from many (not all!) Muslims and Palestinian supporters is downright scary. Israelis (including myself) try to educate people about who is who and what's right and what is false. This article that singles out Israel for trying to provide its (true) version of reality and facts as nefarious-is misguided to be polite.
Why does how many Muslims there are have to do with anything? Israel is not at war with the Muslim community they are at war with a single country which is not even all Muslim. Seems like shaky rhetoric.
> Why does how many Muslims there are have to do with anything? Israel is not at war with the Muslim community they are at war with a single country which is not even all Muslim. Seems like shaky rhetoric.
But the muslim community is at war with Israel and the jews, given the rabid antisemitism in every corner of MENA and beyond, like in Indonesia and Pakistan. Antisemitism is the normal in all these places.
I guess it's also the new normal on US college campuses too.
What ground? Kibbutz Be'eri and all the other Israel towns where families are mourning their slaughtered loved ones? Or Gaza refugee camps where families are mourning their own dead children?
> This article that singles out Israel for trying to provide its (true) version of reality
Is this a serious comment, or satire? I honestly can't tell. I mean... we're talking about a country whose official social media accounts tries to pass off pics of the Lebanese war as the current situation in Gaza; who posts doctored images to try to disguise executions; who posts edited footage of their military commanders pointing at calendars saying they are a roster of terrorist names. I could go on and on, but that last bit is still too surreal.
What (true) version of reality are you talking about here? And besides that, you do realise that one of the things this article is pointing out is how certain groups work together to punish people who post things they don't like - even if it's just an opinion?
While it might be a bit dated, the leaked 2009 Global Language Dictionary [1] remains pertinent to this subject. Essentially, it serves as a manual for communication. I discovered it through another intriguing resource, the documentary "The Lobby - USA." [2] Admittedly, the perspective it offers is somewhat biased, but it provides a straighforward presentation of the situation, especially through the lens of an undercover agent who recorded behind-the-scenes discussions among advocates of the Pro-Israel Information War.
Interestingly I've seen a strong pro-Israel bias, particularly on the larger subreddits (like the default ones). Some of the smaller ones do seem to have a pro-Palestine (or pro-civilian) outlook but nothing that I would describe as "strongly anti-Israel"
The default subreddits are truly awful. r/worldnews is the first one that comes to mind. They were accusing the murdered Reuters journalist of being a member of hamas.
I decided to never look at those subreddits ever again.
What you say about Reddit is certainly not my experience. /r/UKPolitics for example - anything posted about Istael/Gaza is now moderated out. And comments are dominated by people still parroting the debunked stories about mass rapes and baked babies.
When the crisis was initially unfolding, I followed a few of the major subreddits, and it was entirely pro-Israel. It was kind of shocking how uniformly pro-Israel the comments were.
I think it depends on what subreddit you're on. /r/worldnews tends to be very pro-Israel, unless the comment are on a story about settler violence. /r/politics is more balanced.
I really wished Israel didn’t blatantly start airbombing Gaza civilian infrastructure and blockade food, water, gas.
When Russia does this on Ukraine, we call them war criminals but when Israel does it on Palestinians we call it business as usual.
The idea of military revenge doesn’t get us anywhere.
Defense is the best offense. Little gains the world made in Middle East stability have now been reversed for decades.
As technology progresses, the drones and missiles will become cheaper and more destructive.
An eye for an eye makes the world blind.
I really wished US provided weapons based on condition of only making precise targeted attacks for specific terrorists.
That means our a big chunk of $800B defense money, funded by our tax money is used to obliterate civilians in Gaza. That makes me sad.
It’s likely this turns into another Afghanistan multi decade war with trillions spent and nothing to show for it. The only winners are defense contractors.
US could have played peace maker role. Be the party to stop missiles flying everywhere. Provided humanitarian and medical aid.
Demilitarize and deescalate.
The current strategy of destroying hamas by destroying Gaza and its inhabitants is pretty stupid.
very interesting to see the contrast between the two conflicts in terms of economic sanctions, or the lack thereof.
to me this topic goes to show that if you remove the US-centric discourse out of a world event, you get to actually see the real nuances in what the direct parties are doing.
After an initial military response, take their time and specifically plan and target the terrorists who were responsible and organized the attacks on the 7.10. Yeah this will obviously take way longer and is harder than levelling Gaza but would avoid eventually bringing the entire world against you and producing much more terrorists than before. At the same time also try to make sure that the civilians in Gaza get humanitarian aid, so you remove the breeding ground for terrorism.
This approach was also suggested by Jocko Willink retured Navy Seal (https://youtu.be/3O4dW24az98)
But the mistakes happened way before by moving troops away from the Gaza border to West Bank to protect illegal settlements and also supporting Hamas as an opposition to PLO. Don't get me wrong. Don't get me wrong the world would be a better place without Hamas however your policy has to be strategic and not emotional (i.e. revenge)
It's fascinating to hear opinions on the ground from both sides. Some things I've learned or concluded:
Young Palestinians are much more radical than older ones, who seem more flexible.
I personally think the two-state solution is a non-starter, and watched these videos to see if a one state solution is at all viable (meaning make Palestinians into Israeli citizens with full rights- basically the Zionists conquered the land, but they must also take the people). The problem is that neither side wants this.
Many Jewish Israelis think the Arabs would outnumber them due to birth rate, but recently Ultra-Orthodox Jews have an even higher birth rate, and Palestinian birth rate has fallen (I speculate due to increased education). Extremist settlers absolutely won't have it, and there is rampant racism. Palestinians want the Jews gone from their lands, but when pressed would probably accept those of Palestinian descent.
Sadly, I think we are going to continue with the one state with Apartheid. And, an interesting thing has happened in post-Apartheid South Africa: the realization that they are collectively poor, and not a rich first world country. One example from SA is that the electrical infrastructure was sized for only the whites, now that the full population is counted, there is just not enough, it's a big current problem. Any per-capita measurement of Israel should include the Palestinians to see the depth of this problem.
> Sadly, I think we are going to continue with the one state with Apartheid
The situation is not like Apartheid in South Africa.
In Apartheid, the white minority controlled South Africa, and did things like denying the black majority the vote.
In contrast, Israel has a ~20% Arab minority (excluding Gaza and West Bank). The rights of that minority are respected. Arabs can vote in Israel, and in fact there is an Arab party in the Israeli parliament.
Gaza was largely self governing until the Oct 7th attacks. Israel has not shown any desire to "rule" Gaza.
> In contrast, Israel has a ~20% Arab minority (excluding Gaza and West Bank).
I'm reminded of an anecdote (probably false) of when someone was asked in an interview why all manhole covers are round. He replied that not all manhole covers are round. They countered "Well, just consider the round ones".
Have you thought about why young Palestinians have a different opinion from older ones? The opinion of powerless people is not set in stone, but is often a reaction to things outside of their control.
Older ones used to be able to work in Israel as migrant workers.
After the 2nd Intifada and Hamas's takeover of Gaza, Israel cracked down on Palestinian migrant workers and began importing labor from Thailand, Nepal, and other countries.
Information warfare has being part of war for a long time.
It is happening from both sides of this war with multiple players taking part.
Israel obviously has a large amount of resources dedicated to it, but Arab states and Russia a chipping in heavily too on the other side.
Well it is omnipresent because they allocate resources to be omnipresent. If you did not notice helping to shift focus to what is going on in Gaza is helping them reduce the focus on what they are up to in Ukraine.
1. It was surprising to me that Hamas believed that filming and publishing their atrocities was a good idea. And more surprising that the response hasn't been a bigger backlash.
2. That makes me think that despite the fact that both parts think that infowar is necessary, the real war is fought on the ground, with weapons, bullets and bombs. Not with protests, declarations and tweets.
Neither Israel nor the Palestinians' supporters in the West give a fuck.
"One participant even suggested that they appeal to the university’s 'woke' aversion to exposing students to uncomfortable ideas. The participant drafted a sample letter claiming that Tlaib’s appearance threatened ASU’s 'commitment to a safe and inclusive environment.' The following day, ASU officially canceled the Tlaib event, citing 'procedural issues.'"
We must remember this: The credibility of both sides in a war is more than suspect. i.e., incomplete information, pure B.S., or propaganda. "The first casualty of war is the truth." This has been stated throughout history back to Aeschylus og Greece circa 550 BC.
Many of these comments talking about how many pro-this or anti-that news exist are quite baffling. I don't really think that's the point. I think the point is more about the existence of groups with links to private companies and even government(s?) who actively seek to punish people who post views and opinions they don't like. And this is supposedly is in a democracy, not dictatorship, or religious state.
I think it’s been clear to most of us from the early days that the media is the second front in this war in way it’s never been.
“Success”, whatever that looks like, lies in getting the rest of the world to care more about your side and/or be too apathetic or paralyzed to side when your enemies.
That’s always been the case to some degree, but this conflict is dropping on a hyper-connected video world that is new.
It’d be foolish for the heads of either camp to not try to manipulate popular opinion. Sadly that makes it harder—though not impossible—to grok the truth, but practically I don’t see it ever changing for the simpler.
I have not read this article. I am sad to see it here. I am Jewish and Hacker News has been my one sanctuary from all that has been going on. I feel a dreadful sadness about this whole situation, and unfortunately I have found that any issue I have looked into in any detail descends into a battle of claim and counterclaim. I have had to just give up and let it play out, not only what has happened and what will happen in Israel and Gaza, but also the battle of words on social media and newspapers. It is too painful for me to interact with.
I used to feel like you until I befriended a Palestinian in college. He had to take a year off because Israel denied him a permit to leave Gaza to attend college in the US. He had every document and paid tuition, but the Israeli government did not let him leave.
Since then I realized I cannot just let what's happening over there stay over there. I would want him to have cared and known and tried to help if I were in his place.
A couple of my colleagues are VCs who are in active combat in Gaza as we speak. Another VC I knew lost his daughter in the Nova massacre (or is a hostage - they don't know yet). This VC was very active in the peace process and lobbied a very large tech company we all know to open a large development office in West Bank and Gaza and pay pretty high salaries. I also know a lot of line level engineers and PMs from my previous jobs who are drafted, knew people drafted, or knew people at Nova. You can and should oppose war crimes, but at the end of the day, Hamas, PIJ, and other Gazan jihadi groups did unspeakable actions on 10/7. And honestly, I've seen and heard of Afghans fighting back against the Taliban, but I haven't seen Gazans fighting back against Hamas.
This [1] is why the Palestinians are winning the information war among the people that still have a well-functioning soul. And, of course, the fact that the Tsahal has already annihilated thousands of Palestinians kids ("people under 18 years of age", to use the BBC euphemism) and is planning to annihilate thousands more.
There's so much semantic discussion on anti semitic, pro Israel, etc. What I see is two groups of people fighting for a long time, one with orders of magnitude more fire power who does not hesitate to drop it on civilians willy as a show of force.
I just don't want my tax money to fund these weapons
Based on opinion polling and UN votes, most of the world is opposed to Israel's treatment of Palestinians, so the null hypothesis is that you would find far more pro-Palestinian voices represented on social media (not just the users, but also the unpaid and paid moderators).
We clearly see moderation policies being biased against pro-Palestinian points of view. All the "mistakes" moderators make are in the same direction.
I appreciate this post not yet being removed. The HN discussion often can contain nuggets of insight which are lacking from the “media”.
The challenge of balancing equity, justice, and personal security, and how conversations around this challenge are positioned is certainly not unique to the conflict in Israel/Palestine. I’d love to hear thoughts about how to have these conversations in ways that will lead to long term growth/positive change…
Why is America so fixated on Israel? Groups like AIPAC and the Israeli lobby seem to be steering U.S. policies in ways that don't necessarily benefit the U.S., while potentially harming its interests. Here's what's at stake:
This alliance seems to be turning about two billion people and dozens of muslim-majority nations against America, driving them towards alliances with countries like China.
American taxpayer money is being heavily invested in Israel. We're talking about a staggering $260 billion given to Israel, seemingly without direct benefits to the U.S.
Ethically, the U.S. is on shaky ground. By consistently supporting Israel, even in cases involving civilian casualties, the U.S. appears to be undermining international law and the United Nations, often standing alone against global consensus.
Looking at the U.S. presidency, it seems like candidates from both major parties have to win the favor of the Israeli lobby to secure their nomination. Take Obama, for example. Despite his apparent disdain for Netanyahu – remember the leaked conversation with Sarkozy where they called Netanyahu a liar? – he still seemed unable to counter the lobby's influence. This focus on Israel is a massive distraction from more pressing issues, like the rise of China.
And let's be clear – Israel's loyalty as a Western ally is questionable. It's kept friendly ties with the Kremlin, hasn't joined in sanctioning Russia, and has turned down requests to send defensive weapons to Ukraine. It seems Israel would not hesitate to shift its allegiance to China if it suited its national interests.
It happens because there is a $3B annual funding of Israel (which doesn't require a vote!!) which is for weapons-only - consequently most of the funding comes back into the US through defense contractors and lobbying groups like AIPAC. (typical client-state kind of setup which is described more thoroughly in Confessions of an Economic Hitman - freely available on the internet)
These lobbies then reach out to every lever of power and funds Israel friendly politicians (and even ones who are opposed to what Israel does - to neutralize their opposition - google "AIPAC AOC"). These offers of help (carrots) come with threats to primary the politician (sticks) if that politician goes against AIPAC's policies.
The only difference for Israel vs. other client states like Egypt, Japan, etc is the lack of vote required to keep funding going to Israel.
> It happens because there is a $3B annual funding of Israel (which doesn't require a vote!!) which is for weapons-only - consequently most of the funding comes back into the US through defense contractors and lobbying groups like AIPAC
I remember reading a column in an English-language Israeli newspaper (probably Haaretz) – sorry I can't find it now – arguing that US defence funding actually hurt Israel. It isn't that much money in the grand scheme of things (around 0.6% of Israel's GDP) – from a purely financial perspective, Israel could survive fine without it. It comes with all these strings attached, which are basically designed to keep the IDF dependent on the US defense industry, and discourage Israel from developing indigenous replacements for various US military technologies. The greater reliance on US technology, instead of indigenous Israeli replacements, holds back Israel's defense industry, causes Israel to lose out on defense export opportunities (you can't export military technologies you haven't developed), reduces Israel's national sovereignty, and gives the US leverage to use to control the Israeli government (if the US doesn't like some Israeli plan, it will send behind-closed-door threats to delay military supplies that the IDF is dependent upon.) It also sustains a talking point which opponents of Israel can reliably call upon.
The column said that the defenders of this arrangement within the Israeli establishment concede that many of these drawbacks are real, but argue that they are outweighed by the arrangement's biggest benefit – it sends a signal to neighbouring countries that "the US has Israel's back".
> The only difference for Israel vs. other client states like Egypt, Japan, etc is the lack of vote required to keep funding going to Israel.
I think there is another big difference – many Americans (both Jewish and Christian) have an emotional attachment to the US alliance with Israel, which transcends whatever its practical benefits might be; far fewer Americans feel that way about the US alliance with Egypt or Japan.
It is not at all. This funding is only occurring because of AIPAC and similar organizations including Christian groups who want to see the end times happen and supporting Israel is apparently important for that. Israel is not a counter balance to Russia at all. And Israel (specifically Netanyahu and AIPAC) undermined the Iran agreement that was going to see them stop their nuclear program.
It's not just America. Everyone is fixated on the Jews (for or against). There's plenty of ethno-religious conflicts all around the world but the world only cares about one of them.
Also, "lobbying" is a boogeyman here. Americans support Israel for all sorts of reasons that have nothing to do with lobbying. Israel is a settler society, it's a country of immigrants, much like the US. Israel has a rule of law, it's a democracy, much like the US. Israel has long existed within a sea of hostile Arab nations, none of which are democracies (okay minus Lebanon, kind of) and none which particularly resemble of the US. People are starting to look at the Israelis as bullies today but for most of the 20th century, they were viewed as the underdog. And finally there's a religious element: Americans are fairly Christian and feel a fellowship with Jews and view Israel as a custodian of the Holy Land. As a result of these factors and more, there's a strong affinity between Americans and Israel.
I’ll also add that despite only being 2% of US population 4/10 of richest Americans are Jews and they dominate both finance and media, two very influential industries. Their outsized representation/power/influence biases American popular opinion and foreign policy in favor of Israel.
Lobbying is good for the lawmakers, not the citizens. If you're a politician being offered a nice fat check to pass a pro-Israeli bill that's bad for America, and you know that the voters won't care if you vote for it, you're probably going to do it. The citizens themselves either don't know or don't care because the Israeli lobby does a lot of PR to make Israel and pro-Israel politicians look good.
Don’t forget about stretching the American military thin against China (our real political foe) and the fact Israel has illegal nukes and is willing to end humanity if they ever lose their homeland.
At the level of nation-states, there is an anarchistic relationship between one another. There's no real concept of legality at an international level when you peel away all the bureaucratic nonsense. John J. Mearsheimer touches on this briefly in his interview with Lex Fridman: https://youtu.be/r4wLXNydzeY
The permanent members of the UN's Security Council do not abide by laws they force other members to abide by. This is because there really are great powers in the world, which, despite being difficult for people in the West to understand, is very obvious in the rest of the world.
There is little ethics in politics and geopolitics.
In US politics there are the Jews, the pro-Israel Lobby, and also part of the Evangelical Christian who strongly support Israel for religious reason (while sometime being a bit antisemitic). More generally American people strongly support Israel - even if some are criticizing decision made by Israel. Electorally all that is important.
Election aside, everybody have his own interest, but for many decade Israel had been a solid ally of the USA in the middle East - which is/was a key region. And the coming decades it is hard to see how it can change as both have interest to work with each other
Muslims that are unhappy with the current situation with Israel, were probably not huge fan of the USA and Israel in the first place... This did not prevent leaders of many Muslim countries to work closely with the USA and growingly more with Israel : national interest first. Of course the current event increase the pressure of the street over their leader to not work with Israel on the short term...
If USA were dropping big time a key ally in a key situation for this ally, this would send a very very bad signal to all allies. But we see that Biden is much more critical about Israel than USA used to be. While still being an ally.
Can you imagine that all it took for her to lose her job was "“Freedom for Palestine”.
That's the insanity about this whole thing. The Zionists don't believe Palestine nor the Palestinians deserve a homeland while many Jews believe they do.
Zionism is an incredibly powerful entity that even brought Musk to his knees.
Every pro-Palestine rally I’ve been to has had many Jews and they’re welcomed with open arms. It’s not a religious war, despite what some would have you believe. Tell him about IfNotNow and Jewish Voice for Peace.
People tend to support David against Goliath. I've never been there, and I had no idea what was happening. All the information I have (and most of what you have) is propaganda, from both sides.
I find this whole thing very weird, it's all about what side are you on as if it's a game to win. Are you pro-Palestine or pro-Israel, wrong answer and you're out of the club!
Are you not just allowed to have an opinion without you being classified as some sort of adjective? The same thing is happening with politics, you're either a republican or a democrat. Well, what if you're just a regular guy who pours concrete for a living. Why can't you just be Bob Smith?
Glad to see actual discussion on this topic related to technology. Many investigations into social media being used to suppress pro-Palestinian activism, and the involvement of VCs is no less surprising. Anyone in tech who doesn’t care about what’s going on should really take a look into the huge efforts to silence people who are just trying to protect human lives.
I find it incredibly fascinating that some of the 1000 smartest people on internet are discussing if apple looks like orange, and if orange looks more like apple.
Instead of building things and relationships (which according to our very humble observation can be more fulfilling than building billion dollar companies), the culture as it is (and you can figure out which) is still today so attached to the ideas and conceptions that no longer serve humans and their fulfillment, living in times where no-one should be lacking anything.
If we start discussing if blocking water and food is can be excused by any God or highest of the dearest reason, then we should ask ourselves who brought these leaders to their positions and what is the fundamental flaw in the unfortunate human psyche.
I don't know what's going on, and I wonder who actually has accurate information.
Speaking as an early online person, who has long believed in the democratizing power and goodness potential of the Internet... Contemporary "social media" are usually wastelands, both of rampant manipulation, and of people who haven't yet learned critical thinking nor even seen much examples of same.
I would like to call for there to once again be eminently credible and respected journalists, academics, and officials, who research and understand various global situations, and report accurate assessments that people can trust.
Trustworthy experts could answer immediate questions, and also show everyone else by example, how to think and speak better, to answer future questions.
From my anecdotal point of view, there's nothing but pro-Palestinian stuff that I see here in Canada.
There are signs about 'stop the occupation' literally all over my city.
Sorry, but it looks like the Palestinians are the ones winning this information war. They broke the peace, they attacked israel, they are the ones responsible for this ongoing war.
If you condemn Russia for them breaking the peace and starting a war. Then you condemn the Palestinians just as much.
Very illuminating information - now reading this ABC article about what is happening on university campuses and the pressure that university presidents are under is seen in an entirely new light.
So now one day hence the new light is even brighter!!! Interesting that this 5th column can have so much power over so many U.S. institutions and be able to bring down university presidents.
I think the frustrating thing about the “information space” is that through a sum of “intentionally manipulative,” “willfully ignorant,” and “poised to attack you” voices, the whole space is pretty useless if your goal is to try to reconcile your strong emotions and thoughts on deeply nuanced, complex issues.
I’m inclined, more than ever, to just stay quiet, but as a social animal that’s exceedingly uncomfortable.
Israel takes the hospital: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-67436154 and this is one of the few reports from the time. I find it odd that there is more coverage on getting there then on everything they found (or did not find).
I have yet to see a diagram, or some solid on the ground reporting. I hear mixed messages that the tunnel is on the "hospital compound" or was found "Under a wall" that the tunnel is under the hospital or to a pharmacy next door. I get that there is a fog of war, but the BBC and CNN and all our other normal news sources just quit covering or explaining at that point.
I would love for someone to COVER this, to explain what happened, what went right and what went wrong. To put all the peices in one place and paint a more accurate picture, because right now there isn't one, and I think that's indicative of this entire war.
It became clear very quickly this October that the whole issue of the conflict got a very different (more censorious) treatment here on HN than around the world.
That was such a depressing and infuriating experience for me that it turned watching the censorship play out into my main interest in HN for a few weeks, and eventually turned me off of the site altogether.
I understand some of the tensions at play for moderators here and the kind of online space they want to facilitate, and the work that controversial topics put on small moderation teams. But it still ultimately damaged my relationship with this site and broke my habit of frequently using it. I can't be the only one.
It's no wonder that when the moderation team finally decided that a post closely relating to this conflict deserves to remain on the front page, it shot up into the thousands of comments. I appreciate this post's presence here, and I hope the discussion stays manageable.
I wonder how many people will be doxxed for their comments here on this very post, just like Carey in the OP.
Most of the top comments here are against Israel, the country that is defending itself against Hamas-ISIS. I think the bias in this discussion is a direct illustration of Sam Altmans tweet from yesterday:
Why does only Israel have the right to defend itself and not Palestine? When Israeli settlers steal Palestine day by day why does Palestine not have a right to exist and only Israel does?
When Israel imprisons Palestinians for years without charging them with crimes and there is documented proof of them raping and torturing them [1] why doesn't Palestine have the right to defeat Israel to make sure that never happens again?
Why isn't everything Israel wants also allowed for Palestinians?
I thought I'd get some better take on the situation here then in the rest of social media but apparently that's difficult to come by. Especially when discussing a 100 years old conflict.
I can't see how any leftist could support Oct 7 events, and call it resistance or freedom fighting in some form. Just for context, if Hamas would have targeted military positions in the attack, then it would have been possible to say they are fighting for some liberation goal. But as this is not the case and they clearly targeted civilians locations like a rave party and villages, it's clear that this was not their goal, but their goal was to inflict terror on Israeli population.
My take is that in this long fought battle both sides made wrongdoings, but we need to be very clear and nuanced about each event. In this case it's clear that Hamas, and I may say that since Hamas is a popular movement, the Palestine public in Gaza in genera, made a grave mistake and now suffer the consequences of that decision as there is very little possibility for Israel to defeat Hamas without causing civilian casualties when they are some embedded within the population.
In this sense President Biden approach makes perfect sense; defeat Hamas with minimal civilian casualties.
The Palestines deserve better, but I think that as long as they stay fixated on the results of the 1948 war, and do not agree to let that stay in the past, there will be no end in sight.
I find this supposed expose profoundly underwhelming. So a bunch of people collaborated on private channels to promote a point of view? That happens about 10 thousand times per week. We're all living in nested, overlapping and opposing conspiracies that express themselves on social media and in policy. And of course, the people supporting Palestine or Hamas or whatever are doing the same. So what?
> which also included a denunciation of the “Zionist ideology which promotes an exclusivist state,”
That's an interesting claim, since Israel is definitely not a exclusivist state. Yet again, 'anti-zionism' seems to be used as a dog whistle for anti-semitism
This article is pretty bad, it screams the typical "jews run the media" trope
The authors also collaborated on an article called 'Moderna is spying on you'. So they are anti-vax conspiracy theorists as well? Yikes
Basically every human rights org has come out and declared it an apartheid state based off how non-Jews are treated within Israel proper and in Israeli-occupied territory.
What are you referring to? 2 million Arab Israelis enjoy all the rights and freedoms of being an Israeli citizen without any restrictions. They vote, they travel, they are allowed to practice their religion.
Israel is an Apartheid State long before killing 20 000 people in the past 2 months. Israel will never get the peace they seek with the oppression they inflict.
* Illegal Settlers living in Palestine can vote in Israel but not Palestinians; Israeli settlers all the rights of being a citizen of Apartheid Israel while the Palestinian neighbour doesn't have any. Apartheid South Africa did the same, they put the people in their own "country" and so couldn't vote. Israel doesn't want 2 states as that would mean millions more voting.
* There were 5,248,185 Palestinian refugees neighbouring countries in 2020; that's equal to half the population of Israel. Israel is committing genocide in trying to ethnically cleanse the land.
As someone from South Africa, I've seen ethnic cleansing and Israel is doing worse. Israel is absolutely an Apartheid state. Various human rights organisations have already stated this.
Not to mention the Israeli government's rhetoric of calling Palestinians rats and that their lives are less important than an Israeli's. Hamas wouldn't exist if not for Apartheid Israel's actions, in the same way uMkhonto we Sizwe doesn't exist now that Apartheid has been disbanded in South Africa.
And it seems in the comments here and elsewhere on the interent, Zionism is conflated with antisemitism. Zionism is extreme nationalism (at the expense of innocent Palestinians), not anti-Jew.
It is a disgusting waste of my tax dollars to send it to an imperialist group trying to settle an area that was never theirs. Journalists are killed more by Israel than the rest. Why, if they were satisfied and confident they are correct? Those are the actions of guilty souls. Same for the ADL; they hide behind accusations of anti-semitism if you criticize them at all. They have weak positioning and simply want to genocide other groups. No better than ISIS and the Taliban as far as I'm concerned.
Money sent to Israel could have gone to Ukraine. Instead, Americans sponsored the massacre of innocent Gazans. I didn't vote for that, most of us didn't vote for that. Why should we accept it, or approve of Israel's genocidal war? The least they could do is be honest about how much they hate people showing the world the truth.
I truly have no respect or love in my heart for human beings who are comfortable killing to cover up their war crimes. As an American I'm sick of my tax dollars going to a bunch of desert conflicts that won't improve life for anyone.
I'm not trying to deflect, but I do find it interesting that just 2 months ago, >100K Armenians were permanently displaced from their homes in Nagorno-Karabakh where they've lived for literally millenia, and I saw essentially no coverage of this in Western media (in contrast, it was all over Russian media, possibly because Armenia is a historical ally of Russia and a lot of Russians are frustrated that Russia and the CSTO did basically nothing to prevent this ethnic cleansing). The Armenian-American community is rather large (>500K) but apparently nowhere near as influential as the Jewish-American community.
There are many other recent instances of ethnic cleansing that nobody seems to care about. The number of ethnic Germans who were permanently expelled from their homes in Europe and the USSR (at about the same time as Palestinians) exceeds the number of Palestinian refugees by more than an order of magnitude (10-12M, with at least 500K dead), making it the largest ethnic cleansing in modern history, but this episode is basically forgotten (presumably because sympathy for Germans was rather scarce after WW2). The hundreds of thousands of Turks and Greeks who were mutually expelled from their homes after WW2 will never get to return either. Nor will all the ethnic minorities in the former Yugoslavia who were "cleansed" from their historic homelands. So my question is, given that ethnic cleansings are not uncommon in the recent past, and that the Palestinian Nakba is not even close to the worst case, why is it basically the only one that anyone seems to care about?
Note that the issue in not the Nakba anymore. From memory Oslo was about giving to a demilitarize Palestinian state about 10% of the Palestine mandate territory mostly in "islands" controlled by Israel, then progressively over a long period, increasing it to 22%, with quite no hope to get East Jerusalem back. And now (even before oct. 7) that seems impossible, far too much for the Israelis. (in 1992 89% of the population was "Palestinian")
In general westerners don't care about what happen abroad when there is nothing connected to them. In French media we have seen many stuff about Nagorno-Karabakh (with an Armenian point of view), because there are Armenian in France, and because it fits the narrative of the clash of civilizations Christian Vs Muslim. But it was far, in unimportant countries for us, few dead, no suspense, nothing spectacular...
Israel Palestine is another beast :
- Jerusalem in Holly for half of the world population and most westerners
- Israel as been important in US politics for decades (partly because of the first point) and the USA are direct and strong ally
- Most non western country have been colonized or assaulted by westerners in "recent" history... This conflict is also the echo and symbol of this : westerners assaulting non westerners (while giving moral lesson to the world)
- For some westerners that is the echo of Muslim and terrorists attacking westerners - us (9 11, Paris attack are in all minds), and for some kind of a symbol of the clash of civilization
- And this is happening now, with a lot of pictures, media coverage, with new images everyday, some suspense, some twist...
Now that I think about it, one salient distinction might be that Palestinian refugees became largely stateless after their expulsion. The Arab states didn't want them (and still don't, no matter what they say), and there was nowhere for them to go in Palestine besides the refugee camps. Most expelled ethnic refugees have a homeland willing to receive them, or at least sympathetic nations willing to give them asylum.
> I'm not trying to deflect, but I do find it interesting that just 2 months ago, >100K Armenians were permanently displaced from their homes in Nagorno-Karabakh where they've lived for literally millenia, and I saw essentially no coverage of this in Western media
Strange, I saw a lot of coverage of it in Western media when it happened (and a kot today, because of an apparent diolomatic breakthrough.)
Its true that a lot of the coverage during the event was colored by relating it to the ongoing Russo-Ukrainian war, Armenia’s status as a CSTO ally of Russia.
> So my question is, given that ethnic cleansings are not uncommon in the recent past, and that the Palestinian Nakba is not even close to the worst case, why is it basically the only one that anyone seems to care about?
In the West and the US specifically, the role of Israel and the local governments degree of positiive engagement with Israel creates a rather different context to most ethnic cleansings elsewhere in the world.
Bit of a tangent, but I'm proud of the HN community. This post was flagged almost immediately, even though there were around 70 upvotes. Then, the admins decided to give us a chance. And so far, the discussions have been civil and very interesting.
Don't forget that you can "vouch" for an article or comment that you think was unfairly flagged. From the FAQ:
> If you see a [dead] post that shouldn't be dead, you can vouch for it. Click on its timestamp to go to its page, then click 'vouch' at the top. When enough users do this, the post is restored. There's a small karma threshold before vouch links appear.
One of things I struggle with is on certain issues like Ukraine and Israel libertarian folks I normally (largely) agree with seem to hold inexplicable views which seem to border on religious rather than practical. It makes me then wonder about everything else how can the two topics seemingly have different grades of reason versus so much of everything else.
Welcome to the internet the last couple months. Where any statement that isn't overwhelmingly pro-Israel is "antisemitic" but somehow justifying genocide against Palestinians is ok
+1. Unfortunately political articles, even with a heavy and highly relevant tech slant, tend to produce toxic conversations and don't reach anywhere near their potential with regard to curious conversations (as per @dang, this is the stated goal of HN).
This is a story about social media technology and a fairly deep and documented look at how a specific group is using this technology to spread their version of propaganda and harassment.
The use of the technology may be political, but I would not call this a political article. I was surprised this made it to the front page too at first but as I read on, it ended up being a really interesting article detailing fairly specifically how social media tech is used to engage in harassment, attack people for voicing an opposing political opinion, alter public narratives on important divisive events, etc. It's probably the most plain explanation of how this process works and how social media tech accelerates it I've read to date.
Without having to take any sides, just the surprising importance of culture wars on social media could be interesting. The societal effects of social media are regularly discussed here.
This particular issue has become so emotional that careers and relationships were ruined just by taking the wrong side. Because of that, I imagine most HN folks rationally steer clear of any public discussion.
The time has come,' the Walrus said,
To talk of many things:
Of shoes — and ships — and sealing-wax —
Of cabbages — and kings —
And why the sea is boiling hot —
And whether pigs have wings.'
I don't think it's specific to this issue, there's a lot of people who insist 'no politics om HN' even when there is a very straightforward nexus between technology and politics.
Sorry you're being downvoted, HN has always been DJ'd by administrators (which is fine) but people here are under the illusion they're seeing everything there is to this argument and not a curated view by people who are pro Palestinians.
There's so much (intentional) confusion around basic terms in this info war.
Anti-Semitism, "antisemitism", anti-Judaism, anti-Zionism, and anti-Israel are all different concepts.
Semitic peoples include both Jews and Arabs. To erase the latter (as Zionism does) and replace them with Europeans is by definition anti-Semitic, therefore Zionism is anti-Semitic.
To address that, Zionism coined the term "antisemitism" as a synonym for "anti-Zionism".
Being pro-2-state-solution is pro-Israel (and pro-Palestine, pro-Semitic) but anti-Zionist.
Anti-Zionism is also not anti-Judaism, because there are many non-Jews that identify as Zionists, e.g. from Winston Churchill to Joe Biden and Donald Trump.
(There are also distinctions between ethnic and religious Judaism)
All this said, there are unfortunately real anti-Semitic, anti-Jew, anti-Israel individuals and groups out there that also leverage this confusion.
This does not take away from the fact that anti-Zionism is an extremely sound moral and political position, akin to anti-Nazism and other anti-totalitarianisms.
The difference between "Antisemitism" and "anti-Semitism" is merely stylistic. Both have been in use in English since 1880 when the word was borrowed from German.
It refers exclusively to hatred of Jewry not because Zionists, but because the term was was popularized in Germany in the 19th century by people who hated Jews prior to being brought into English.
Please keep in mind this was posted on the Eve of the Jewish Shabbath (in the US, and in the middle of the Shabbath in Israel), so the conversation here is missing a lot of voices.
All: if you're going to comment, please take a moment to be sure that you're up on the site guidelines (https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html) and that the comment you're about to post will be strictly within them. Note, for example:
"Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive."
As this is probably the most divisive topic that exists right now, the comments should be as thoughtful and substantive as commenters can make them. At a minimum, that means no flamebait, no name-calling, and no snark. Thank you.
Pro-Palestinian views outrank Pro-Israeli online by around 36 to 1 on TikTok and 8 to 1 on other online platforms. https://twitter.com/antgoldbloom/status/1721561226151612602
If anything the skew within the platforms is to prioritize pro-palestinian views https://twitter.com/committeeonccp/status/173279243496103143...
It also seems like these platforms create (rather than support) anti-Israeli views: https://twitter.com/antgoldbloom/status/1730255552738201854
US views skew pro-israel, and GenZ is closer to 50/50, so if there's something going on online, it's not in favor of Israel.
It's probably relevant that there are 1 billion Muslims to 16 million Jews, and that the largest relevant population of pro-Israeli internationals is India and Indian Hindus, and they are not on TikTok (blocked in India).
I think the fundamental assumption of the analysis that there are two mutually exclusive groups, 'pro-Israel' and 'pro-Palestine' is flawed. It is possible to simultaneously support the interests of Palestinian and Israeli civilians (and support a peaceful Israel within the 1967 boundaries), while condemning the massacre of civilians under the orders of Likud (and other far right parties) and Hamas.
I think it is currently about an order of magnitude more civilians deaths have resulted from the actions of Likud (Netanyahu etc..., who control the government and hence the IDF) than from the actions of Hamas. IDF is apparently disrupting civilian aid, destroying infrastructure including hospitals, and causing mass population movements into areas that cannot support them, so the risk of death from starvation and infectious disease at a massive scale as an indirect result is high. The Likud-controlled IDF are also apparently enforcing a 'lock down' of Palestinian civilians in the West Bank while allowing Israeli citizens to seize land by force and further expand the occupied territories.
So the scale of the atrocities seems to be much higher on the Likud side than the Hamas side, covers both the West Bank and Gaza, and it makes sense that the Palestinian victims of those atrocities would receive more support. That doesn't mean that all the people who care about the plight of the Palestinian population are anti-Israel (they are just not posting about it because they are likely prioritising issues).
I think that forcing this dichotomy is part of the deliberate pro-Israel media strategy - if you despise Hamas inhumane acts, then of course you need to be pro-Israel. They want you to focus on Hamas to steer away your attention from what Israel has been doing. (this is also one of the reasons why Hamas has historically been an asset for the Israeli right)
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I have nothing to add here, other than to thank you for expressing this so cogently.
It’s not always “right” to measure just action in terms of lives saved or lost, but it’s hard for me (and so many other American Jews) to see anything right or just about 10 dead Palestinians for every dead Israeli.
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I don't support how civilians are being treated in Palestine whatsoever, but:
>while condemning the massacre of civilians under the orders of Likud (and other far right parties)
When has Likud ordered massacres of civilians? Or when has any modern Israeli party? I also don't believe Likud is considered far-right in Israel; just "right". There are parties far to the right of them. Not that that's necessarily a good thing, but it's a relative designation.
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Why does the scale matter? In the legal codes with which I am familiar mens rea matters.
Murder is not just worse than manslaughter it is on a different level.
Western criminal codes generally allow for no punishment, perhaps even no guilt, for a manslaughter. If Israel could remove Hamas without injuring any non-combatants I think they would. It makes a difference. Almost by definition suggesting that scale is a factor is implying that collective punishment is acceptable.
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I think it's incorrect to frame every action in Israel as the actions of Likud. That's not at all how the Israeli government works. It's a coalition government in which, yes, Likud is the biggest party, but made up of many other parties as well, and for the purposes of this war includes a party that was previously an opposition party to this government.
For better or worse, the Likud-led coalition is the current government of Israel, and Hamas is the current government of Palestine.
> while condemning the massacre of civilians under the orders of Likud
This is a surprising statement as I haven’t heard of such an event happening and I’ve followed these events fairly closely.
When was the civilian massacre? Do you have a source? Or did you make it up?
> peaceful Israel within the 1967 boundaries
Israel was previously peaceful within the 1967 boundaries, in 1967. Arab states tried to destroy it in 1967 and again in 1973, resulting in Israel gaining land, something arab states now blame on Israel.
I've noticed quite a bit of propaganda which is intentionally conflating these two pairs. That is, those who are advocating for Gazans are referred to as Hamas supporters and those advocating on behalf of Israeli citizens are accused of supporting genocide, etc. This is done to polarize both groups, encourage strongly negative emotional reactions, and prevent anyone from taking a more reasonable perspective to address issues on both sides of this complex situation.
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The problem is, as we all discuss frequently around here, when it comes to this sort of issue social media is optimized to suppress nuance, boost controversial takes, and generate engagement through anger.
So there is a very real sense in which there _are_ two mutually exclusive groups. There is also a third group wishing for nuance and understanding and thoughtful discourse of the historical context, but that group gets coded as the “other” by both of the black-and-white groups.
I think this position is a small minority in the public opinion, and is virtually non-existent in Arab countries. It doesn't help that moderate supporters of two state solution make little effort to distance themselves from the "from the River to the Sea" Israel hating crowd.
"I think the fundamental assumption of the analysis that there are two mutually exclusive groups, 'pro-Israel' and 'pro-Palestine' is flawed." This is a fairly nail-on-head distillation, and that it exists exacerbates any attempts at substantive discourse that follows.
"massacre of civilians under the orders of Likud" "scale of the atrocities"
* There really isn't any better deathrates when the other side is explicitly based on indifference to its own civillian casualties. Mosul had 40K civillian deaths in a 2.5x smaller city (by population)[0]. I fail to see why Israel can't use the same legal tactics** the US used to defend itself versus jihadists, except the Israeli death rate is lower and the US had far less justification.
* Focusing on the Likud is a mistake. Every Israeli political party would have counterattacked at Gaza, with about the same (legal) tactics, but probably much more aggressively. Leaving next door to a genocidal terrorist regime was unacceptable, actually moreso to the Israeli Left. After all, what's the point of two states if the other side can do _anything_ and get support afterwards?
And I mean anything - the attack was into 1967 lines, deathrates much higher than in Gaza. The irony is that many people that say they support 2ss are trying to enshrine impunity here, basically destroying any hope that either side will support 2ss. That's why Bibi was the pretend 'cautious' here, because of very cynical calculation - Hamas staying weakened but alive lets Bibi kill 2ss - WB Palestinians flock to 'victorious' Hamas, while Israeli Left approach is discredited - but his hand was forced.
* Focusing on Hamas is also somewhat of a mistake, given polls show widespread crosscutting Palestinian support to Hamas action[1].
[0] https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/mosul-m...
[1] https://www.awrad.org/files/server/polls/polls2023/Public%20...
** When we ignore scaremongering about 'starvation/disease at a massive scale' when it's not happening, the only thing the list has are actions into hospitals which even the US believes are used by Hamas.
So a bunch of terrorists murder 1400+ Jews and commit unspeakable acts against them, and then run and hide in pre-prepared positions behind the civilians that they have been forcibly governing and abusing since 2006, and they are on record as saying that they prepared all of this on purpose, and somehow the civilian casualties are the fault of Israel? Give me a break.
Britain killed a lot more German civilians than Germany killed British civilians in WWII. Does that make the British the bad guys?
I’m not sure how all this can be said with a straight face; that you are “pro-israel” you just think the borders should be set back over 50 years and that a democratically elected government’s actions is worse than those of a terrorist organization.
Not once did you mention what atrocities were committed on Hamas’s side and instead you spent all your effort justifying Hamas by arguing how you think Lukid is worse.
What actions in your opinion would be an appropriate response for people (& government) of Israel to respond to the targeted rape, murder, beheadings of the elderly, men, women, and children, which was filmed by Hamas and sometimes live-streamed on the social media accounts of their victims to show off what they have achieved?
I’m not sure you can claim to be in the middle or support ‘both sides / both peoples’ when you only have bad things to say about one of them.
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I don't think any other government in Israel would respond materially differently to Oct 7th. The only response Israel has to this scale of event is to re-occupy Gaza and the only way it can be accomplished without larger casualties on both sides is more or less what is transpiring today. I'm sure there are details that would be different but I don't think the script would be materially different if Likud was not in power. The military plan for re-taking Gaza is from the IDF, not the government. Likud-controlled IDF isn't really a thing, the government gives a target (removing Hamas) and the IDF executes. Any other government would give the same target.
What I would and do blame the current government for is that Oct 7th even happened, the scale, and the immediate response.
EDIT: I also blame the current government for trying to eliminate any possibility of a two state solution and effectively supporting the Hamas rule in Gaza as means of accomplishing that. I can probably blame them for lots more. That said the actual Oct 7th attack is all on Hamas and the response is pretty much the only response you'd have seen from any Israeli government (or anyone else in that position for that matter). We're in a place today that is a different place and we can talk all we want about what other possible places we could be.
I'll agree with you on the west bank policy being a Likud/right-wing policy in general. We can also talk about why the Israeli public is more right wing leaning and the left has all but disappeared.
I think those two groups are really more mutually exclusive than what you're trying to portray. At least to most Israelis they are. Because for most Israelis, when you say "peaceful within 1967 borders", it reads as "kill all the Jews in Israel". Many (most?) Palestinians will also not accept this statement because they consider Israel in the 1967 border to be the Palestinian state. If there was an overlap we wouldn't really be where we are, we'd have peace. I have not met many people who are in this overlap, i.e. they're both "pro-Israel" and "pro-Palestine" in a meaningful way. Most people do not hold nuanced views at all, don't know that much about the conflict, don't really understand what's going on, hold on to simplistic narratives and "windows" they get from the media and social media. For me as an (ex-) Israeli your equating the response of Israel to the Hamas puts you squarely in the anti-Israeli camp. You blank statement "massacre of civilians under the orders of Likud (and other far right parties)" feels like a blood libel. This is just my emotional response to how you phrase things. So that doesn't seem to be an overlap of pro-israeli and pro-palestinian.
It seems to me a more fundamental assumption is: there are two groups.
I believe breaking things up into "us" vs "them" is the root of much evil in the world.
Would it be more meaningful to say "dads killing dads" or "this specific person killing that specific person" ?
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>I think the fundamental assumption of the analysis that there are two mutually exclusive groups, 'pro-Israel' and 'pro-Palestine' is flawed. It is possible to simultaneously support the interests of Palestinian and Israeli civilians
That would be a nuanced view. The reality is that most people and especially most people who post their views online are not capable of seeing things that way.
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> Pro-Palestinian views outrank Pro-Israeli online by around 36 to 1 on TikTok and 8 to 1 on other online platforms.
> If anything the skew within the platforms is to prioritize pro-palestinian views.
That platforms prioritize one over the other is just one possible explanation. An alternative explanation is that more people already have those views. And it's dishonest to present one explanation and omit the other.
Nothing inflames people like injustice.
> An alternative explanation is that more people already have those views.
Treading a fine line here between Bayesian priors and stereotypes, but the worldwide Muslim/Jewish population split is something like 112:1. Obviously that's not going to be the same proportion on a given media-service, but it should still inform our expectations of what is the "default" state before theorizing about platform algorithm-tweaking or propaganda-campaigns.
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I don't think that parent is suggesting that platforms are actively prioritising one over the other.
I think they are saying that the composition of users of these apps skews one way rather than the other due to pre existing stances, and the fact that the apps are not available in some markets.
As a result, certain views are prioritised as a byproduct of the fact that all modern social media apps have an algorithm that shows you more of what you already agree with, in order to maximise ad profits.
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There is an ocean of injustice in the world and this one issue causes more anger than many that are equally abhorrent.
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A platform with a proprietary algorithm which ranks and boosts content does not get the benefit of doubt.
They are per se responsible for what people see. If pro-Palestinian views are on TikTok at 36:1, that's what TikTok wants, they could easily promote content at a different ratio.
The alternative explanation seems unlikely. I'd think that if it were true, there'd be even one single instance of that having come up in conversation prior to bad graffiti and printed propaganda showing up all over my neighborhood. Getting a glimpse of what people allow themselves to be subjected to on the various platforms seems to indicate it's younger, easily influenced, volatile reactionary people suddenly being inflamed by whatever hot conflict of the day it is; people I wouldn't normally talk to anyway and who wouldn't have any authentic connection with it. The only time it's come up in real life was when I bumped into some Israeli guests at a hostel, and they were talking about what their families were going through and whether they'd have to go back and serve.
It doesn't come up on my Instagram presumably because I had previously unfollowed everyone who posted about whatever other injustice they'd been told to be pissed about, and shockingly I don't feel the need to go and vandalize property to spread the word.
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The simple explanation is that the "Free Palestine" posters just post more. If you look at Internet posts, you'll find a lot of people talking about being vegan, even though vegans are vanishingly rare in real life. Practically every American media outlet that isn't explicitly socialist expresses more sympathy for Israel than Palestine, so people holding contrary views may feel the need to voice them more acutely.
I'm not sure that fully explains it. There is incredible amounts of anti-Israel disinformation as well, that would be easily debunked with a reverse image search if anyone could be bothered.
https://www.bellingcat.com/news/2023/10/11/hamas-attacks-isr...
https://www.bellingcat.com/news/2023/12/08/images-of-syrian-...
If you want to start counting drivers, there are at least three
1) The algorithms of the platforms
2) The disinformation / astroturfing / asymetric warfare, driven from Russia, Iran, CCP, and many other 'interested parties'
3) The actual organic opinions
The drivers are in about that order of force. The point of #2 is to make it appear organic, so people can make the argument that 'it's just people's opinion', even when it is wrong.
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And where do you think that comes from? Some coherent well researched culturally deep understanding of history and the current status of things by the entire population? Of course not, it’s propaganda. There are ethnic conflicts worldwide that often have more bloodshed, many occurring simultaneously right now, but this gets all the rhetoric and attention.
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Another possible explanation for this skew is that TikTok and IG are primarily video platforms.
The videos of destruction and death in Gaza are far more horrific than corresponding videos in Israel, because the scale of what Israel is doing to Gaza is so much greater than what Gaza has done to Israel.
Another way of saying it is, it makes sense that someone who spends hours on apps optimized for empathy-based addiction would be more sympathetic to Gazans than someone who reads the newspaper or watches talking heads on TV news, since the latter portray the occupation as a two-sided tit for tat.
It's also the nature of the violence. It's generally acceptable to show shots of bombed-out buildings and the like, or even display injured or dead bodies. The footage we and Israel have from Hamas depicts first-hand murder, rape and torture - all things which are going to violate TOS.
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> The videos of destruction and death in Gaza are far more horrific than corresponding videos in Israel
Maybe you haven't seen enough of what happened in 10/7 then. I would rather get hit by a bomb then tortured to death in the most horrific way possible.
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Anti-semitism in and of itself is unequivocally wrong.
But conflating anti-Israeli views with anti-Semitic views does a disservice to Jews and Palestinians alike.
Criticizing the actions of Israel is not anti-semitic, and many Israelis and Jews are critical of the Israeli government and its actions (even more than usual during the ongoing political crisis). Many of the critics I see lack nuance (basically, "rooting for the underdog"), but that's a different problem. The problem is complicated, and there is no simple solution (some kind of two-state may work after many years).
But chants like "from the river to the sea" (meaning destroying Jewish country) and calls for an intifada (de facto violence against Jews) are anti-semitic. Supporting Hamas, whose goal is to kill as many Jews as possible, or saying Israel shouldn't defend itself against Hamas attacks is anti-semitic (Hamas is also bad for Gazans, but that's another story). I can go on and on. People holding these views may hold them not because they hate Jews (for example, I don't think that people removing posters of kidnapped Israelis necessarily hate them), but the result is all the same. There is also obvious anti-semitism unrelated to Israel, like attacking synagogues, drawing stars of David on Jewish houses, etc., but that's not what I'm talking about.
And the most vocal anti-Israelis are naturally the most extreme ones and usually include some of the stuff I mentioned. As a result, people call out anti-semitism, usually not referring to anti-Israeli critics you are talking about.
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Couldn't agree more. It's a common misunderstanding, perhaps because there has always been a powerful campaign to equate any criticism of Israel to antisemitism.
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It’s obviously true that criticism of Israel isn’t inherently antisemitic.
But that’s also a convenient excuse used by people who are actually antisemitic.
Both of these things can be true at once.
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It's dangerous, tricky terrain. Regardless of your beliefs, anti-Semites benefit.
* The anti-Semites are not idiots, mostly; they don't spew anti-Semitism publicly but say what is acceptable, which is to criticize Israel, and obviously anything anti-Israeli helps their cause.
* There's an implication whether people like it or not: Israel defines itself as The Jewish State. Also, many people are unware that Judaism is non-hierarchical overall; there's no pope-equivalent in Israel to which Jewish people have some allegiance (remember the old Papist accusation against Roman Catholics for dual loyalty); though Israel has some special things and history, it has no other role in non-Israeli Jewish people's religion, but people make that association regardless. Also, many are unaware that most Jewish people in the US oppose Netanyahu and the Israeli right, and afaik are sympathetic to the Palestinians. Anti-Semites will benefit from that implication, even though you don't want them to.
* Not everyone will respect that essential division between anti-Israel and anti-Semitic speech, and there's a significant risk that large-scale anti-Semitism could spill over. It was already at the highest levels in recent history (like other prejudices). It's easy to dismiss as as unlikely when you aren't at risk; a small risk of catastrophe is a big issue when it's your life.
People absolutely need to be able to criticize Israel, but I hope they are careful (not silent) and aware that there is no easy answer. You are anti-Israel (in this case, at least) and not anti-Semitic, but you will help the latter to some degree - hopefully a minimized one.
I think the major problem is that we've abandoned and actively attack the former social prohibition against prejudice, stereotypes, intolerance, race/sex/gender/religious discrimination, etc. It used to be verboten, but then we are all familiar with the contemporary reactionary attack on it (however you perceive it, whatever words you use), which seems to have been very successful. A very major loss is that without that high wall between us and the bad guys and bad behavior, without that bright line, there is much more spillover in what we do, and much more risk of them walking right in.
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Funny how so many otherwise clever people get confused about this.
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It depends on "Israeli what".
Anti Israeli government: It's not antisemitic.
Anti Israeli people: It's antisemitic.
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The term "anti-semetic" is in and of itself "anti-semetic". It obfuscates the fact that palestinians are true semites by conflating itself with any anti-jewish sentiment or criticism.
The modern israeli's are not semites. Those that settled after WW2 were eastern european converts, khazars, with no genetic ties to the middle east. Those that are not ashkenazi are migrants from the surrounding countries, who largely did not move to the area until after the occupation of palestine.
The term "anti-semite" was invented to reinforce the lie that the ruling class of israel have some ancestral claim to the land. Using it is playing into that propaganda.
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Yup, that's exactly the reason why I don't treat the term seriously any more. Same with "racist" or "nazi". If it means anything these days it's that those using the words disagree with someone.
Anti-Israeli views are anti-Semitic views when criticizing Israel and Israel only, for actions that are done by dozens of states over the course of decades.
If the people spouting anti-Israel sentiment spouted the same sentiment for the same actions done a dozen times over by other nations, then they would not be anti-Semitic. In fact, I would agree with the vast majority of them. But when they ignore the 300,000 killed in Syria, or the 600,000 killed in Ethiopia, or the situations in Yemen, Mail, Turkey, or even Gaza when Hamas murders hundreds of Palestinians, or in Syria where the regime kills thousands of Palestinians, then it is clear that they are not stewards of "human rights" or "civilians" or even "values". Rather, they are abusing these ideas to promote an anti-Semitic agenda. These people actually need dead Palestinians to further their agenda.
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There's all kinds of propaganda from both sides all over the internet. But the linked article is about organized pressure campaigns.
It's been interesting to observe that various official Israeli accounts have taken to posting tik-tok-like videos that quickly show images, footage, text commentary, all with very little context.
Of course pro-Palestinian people/groups are doing the same thing, but it feels odd to see a first-world government engaged so directly in pushing that sort of propaganda. I can't imagine the US army directly tweeting this kind of stuff. The US, I feel, would do it through proxy groups.
I don't have much to add about any of this, only that you clearly cannot trust the sort of videos, images, and statements all over the internet. As they say, in war, truth is the first casualty.
Clips of bodies being buried in mass graves, of corpses with maggot-infested wounds, of limbs scattered in shopping bags, of children screaming in terror as their city blocks gets bombed, or of soldiers stripping civilians naked are not "pro-Palestinian" per se. But they show the terrible brutality of this "war". That may cause people with some empathy and with hearts not cold as stone to demand an end to the terror. That is "pro-Human" not "pro-Palestinian".
>That may cause people with some empathy and with hearts not cold as stone to demand an end to the terror.
Well this should have caused those people to do something with Hammas controlling the area long before recent events. Isn’t it? This would have be much more Pro-human don’t you think?
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> US views skew pro-israel, and GenZ is closer to 50/50, so if there's something going on online, it's not in favor of Israel.
That’s one interpretation. Another is that the skew would be even more pronounced if not for platforms prioritizing pro-Israel content.
Which would those be? Facebook and normal American media outlets?
> It's probably relevant that there are 1 billion Muslims to 16 million Jews,
Anecdotally, all of my friends here in the EU are pro-Palestinian, and none of us is Muslim. It's also relevant to consider the context of Israel's occupation of Palestine and illegal settlements in light of the UN General Assembly's pro-Palestinian votes.
One of the examples from before current conflict[1]: Approve 128 nations. Against 9 nations: Guatemala, Honduras, Israel, Marshall Islands, Micronesia, Nauru, Palau, Togo and United States.
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Nations_General_Assembl...
Today, there was another vote in the UN Security Council regarding a ceasefire. Thirteen nations voted in favor of it, the UK abstained, and the US vetoed.
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>US views skew pro-israel, and GenZ is closer to 50/50, so if there's something going on online, it's not in favor of Israel.
That could also mean that Israeli online propaganda is ineffective, not that it doesn't exist. Even if they haven't made ground online, pro-Israeli views are universal in the mainstream media, with pro-Palestine reporters being fired.
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Many black Americans hold pro-Palestinian views because of the perceived similarity to civil rights abuses in America and South Africa, as well as Palestinian support for Black Lives Matter. Brown Americans for similar reasons. American youth cohorts (under 40) are blacker and browner than its elderly, and the most likely to use the platforms in question. The oblique suggestion of shadowy puppeteers tricking minorities and youth and whipping them into a mob that's rallying against their own interests is an old racist and ageist canard, and disappointing, if unsurprising, to see conjured here.
No one group has a monopoly on reason.
Not to mention the policing styles of American cops and the IDF are very similar and literally share training and tactics.
The actual treatment of Palestinians on the ground mirrors the experience black Americans and others literally deal with in the US.
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> Pro-Palestinian views outrank Pro-Israeli online by around 36 to 1 on TikTok
Judging this by the method used (counts of uses of top 5 hashtags associated with the conflict) is ludicrously bad as a methodology, because, aside from not looking at sentiment, its prone to being radically wrong if one side is more consistent in hashtag use than the other.
What's the more correct way?
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There is also the likelihood that even those ratios are like that after the pro-Israeli factor.
They could very well be more than that but you can't shut them all up. So that 36 to 1 might be after the fact.
Just from the populations you mention, which is obviously a super rough calculation, if we assume all Muslims to be pro Palestine and all Jews to be pro Israel, we would be expecting something like 60 to 1 ratio.
So the existence of that 36 to 1 might even be the result of the bias.
I am not saying this is the case, I'm just saying don't dismiss the claim simply based on the ratio you see.
There’s a reason why Goldbloom charted “change in likelihood” instead of simply showing sentiments in the chart. The reason is that if you look at the raw data he made available[0], the differences in sentiment between platforms are statistically insignificant.
To say nothing of conflating anti-Israel sentiments with antisemitism.
> US views skew pro-israel, and GenZ is closer to 50/50
The latest Gallup[1] says it’s about 50/50 in the US across demographics and almost 70% disapproval of Israel in the 18-34 age range (so a little bit of Gen Z and a little bit of Millennials). No polls specifically and exclusively break down responses to the exact Gen Z age range, but I doubt that would bring it closer to 50/50.
Now, there’s, of course, the chicken and egg debate. Still, explicitly on TikTok, I’ve seen Goldbloom-esque studies that document that the algorithm is led by the user’s preferences instead of the other way around. I’ll see if I can find the URLs in my history.
0: https://github.com/antgoldbloom/tiktok_israel_hamas/blob/mai...
1: https://news.gallup.com/poll/545045/americans-back-israel-mi...
The poll asked if they backed their current military action. That’s not the same as being pro- or anti-Israeli.
In fact, less Israelis support the war than any of the American groups you mentioned. Only 29% support the war, with 49% against.
(Note: the poll you cite doesn’t allow for unsure, making the numbers incomparable. I worded the above to count unsure as “not supportive of”. If you count them as “supporting”, then Americans are still about as supportive as Israelis.).
https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/israeli-poll-finds...
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If, generally, 99% of people are in favor of X, and 1% of people are in favor of Y, but on some platform 70% of posts are in favor of X, and 30% in favor of Y, which way does that platform skew?
I'm skeptical that hashtags are really a good way to measure these things. They seem rather arbitrary in some cases (particularly that second link). It seems like it would be pretty easy to selectively choose specific hashtags to give any impression you want.
Cherry picking a few hashtags is not a credible analysis. That being said, it’s well known that millennials and gen z support Palestine so it’s not surprising a platform with those demographics would have more pro Palestine content.
I am surprised that tiktok makes that data public
I'd assume the anti-Israel views could be caused by the actions of Israel.
Is that not a reasonable interpretation? Normally a country killing many thousands of innocent children, women and men, in an act of bloody revenge is not thought well of.
That's not to condone Hamas's acts on October 7th, but to point out that indiscriminate violence is usually not an answer to anything.
>Pro-Palestinian views outrank Pro-Israeli online by around 36 to 1 on TikTok
That's because TikTok is a global platform where the voices of 1.9 billion Muslims outweigh those of the 19 million Jews.
The skew is just from that view being much more popular. It's organic content.
The pro-israel side is from heavy manipulation of the recommendation algorithms and billions of dollars worth of propaganda investments (including paying people to post).
Also worth noting the strong pro-israel sentiment in India is only amongst extreme far-right Hindus.
I think of this more as a distinction between exercising "platform power" versus "real world" power. #freepalestine is not an issue like #metoo, in that the court of public opinion does not really matter for the former, since Israel is a sovereign nation. The state of Israel is not going to get cancelled for toxic behavior. I think this was the argument framed in the article: despite popular support for the Palestinian cause, you are more likely to lose your job for stating pro-Palestine views. This is one probably reason that those without even enough clout to get fired for an opinion are even more rabid and vociferous. I understand your doubt of the organic pro-Palestine content, and I'm agnostic about it, but it is an easy train to get on right now regardless of the actual depth of your beliefs.
Pro-Ukraine viewd also outnumber pro-Russia views on twitter or facebook. Are the conclusions you draw from this fact the same? Why/why not?
With Ukraine there’s a clear victim and clear aggressor. Textbook good vs evil.
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This conflict (and the press/social media sentiment) seems to be going exactly as planned by both sides of the conflict.
According to Israeli intelligence, Hamas’s primary goal was to cause as much death and destruction in Gaza as possible. The Israeli civilians were just collateral damage.
They needed Israel to over-react and commit so many war crimes that it would force other countries into the conflict, and also get a new generation of Palestinians to sign up for the cause.
Not only did they achieve all their goals, but they did it in one day! They had budgeted for three days of slaughtering Israeli citizens, since they thought it would be harder to force a response. Since they called it off early, they presumably have more resources in reserve than expected.
As it usually goes with these conflicts, Hamas and the Israeli hardliners won on day one, and literally everyone else lost:
The strong anti-Israeli sentiment online will just justify more military investment in Israel, and might even help them use fear to win an election or two.
At the same time, Hamas recruiters can again use rational arguments to get people to sign up.
The frontline of the Israeli military (including many draftees) get screwed, as do all the people that live anywhere near the conflicts.
Might it be because the whole world is actually concerned about the massacre Isreal is now committing on the Palestinian people?
What is your specific assertion here? Are you saying something about the article? Does it demonstrate that this group has not suppressed pro-Palestine speech in places in the US?
> there are 1 billion Muslims to 16 million Jews
The vasty majority of Muslims are not in the US, the area relevant to the article. Also, to complicate things, afaik most Jewish Americans oppose Israel's right wing, especially the current government, and are sympathetic to Palestinians. And afaik most Israeli support in the US is right-wing evangelical Christians (if I am defining the subgroup accurately), a much larger group than Jewish Americans.
Take a wild guess how support changes when confronted by a major attack.
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Well, that’s not a fair comparison. Palestinians may have a lot of muslims on their side, but the whole western world—-or more precisely: their media and people in power—-fully support anything Israel does. No consequences. Au contraire:
Looking at Germany for instance, anyone remotely criticising Israel for even gross violations of international human rights or Geneva Conventions (for instance for withholding water, food, medicines, and electricity for 2.2mil civilians in Gaza) will be attacked, silenced, stigmatised, smeared by the majority of media, politician, police, attorneys, etc. Many artists, intellectuals, activists, thinkers, academics have been cancelled, smeared (for instance Greta Thunberg, Ai Wei Wei, Candice Brice, Ilan Pappe, and many many more). And even more people are afraid to speak about Israel critically, fearing to lose their job or called antisemite, when in fact Zionism is not Judaism and the state of Israel does not represent all jews around the world, and cannot be sacrosanct.
In the US the support is even larger. Just today the US vetoed a Security Council decision for a ceasefire in Gaza. And this inspite of many people in the state department internally rebelling against this blind support for Israels retaliatory move in Gaza.
Disclosure: I have family in Israel, some of them went to the streets in Tel Aviv every week for months to protest against the judicial overhaul. And who are in panic mode seeing the right wing coalition partners of Netanyahu getting stronger and stronger. And I have family members in the military who after 7/10 want to „kill arabs now“. I just do not think flattening Gaza and/or dehumanising Palestinians will make Israel any safer.
Many in the US government have been critical of Israel’s strategy in the last week or so (Lloyd Austin, etc).
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I would take the "Pro-Israeli" views coming out of India with a heavy grain of salt.
The tweets you see of "India Israel" and the like are largely from troll farms intending to use the event to antagonize local Muslims that fall on the opposite part of the political spectrum they support. The average Indian is neither aware of the nuances of the overall conflict nor does he care, since it actually has extremely little to do with his daily life.
It is weird but this thread was not flagged but all of these were:
- https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38582239
The hn admins allegedly vetted that one.
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> so if there's something going on online, it's not in favor of Israel.
More people live outside the United States and Israel than in them, and they use these platforms. Many of those people have been out are descendants of subjects of colonialism and Imperialism, whether at the hands of Europe or America. Many of those people view Israel as a colonial project.
And yeah, as you mentioned, a large portion of the world is Muslim.
FWIW a recent YouGov poll[1] found that 20% of 18-29 year-olds agree with the statement that "the Holocaust is a myth," with an additional 30% neither agreeing or disagreeing. Compare this to 0%(!) of 65+ year-olds agreeing, and a mere 2% neither agreeing or disagreeing.
To put another way, the oldest generations are in 98% agreement that the Holocaust happened, compared to 50% of young adults.
[1] https://d3nkl3psvxxpe9.cloudfront.net/documents/econTabRepor...
A better polling company would use more objective language, such as :
"Millions of Jews were targeted for persecution, imprisonment and extermination by Nazi Germany"
It's fine for people to use the word 'Holocaust' to reference that history if they want to but it's also a word that carries some baggage and some assumption of 'specialness'. A polling company shouldn't use it, in my view. I think they would have got a (much) higher degree of agreement if they had used my suggested phrasing (or something like it). People have become increasingly wary of the way that the persecution and genocide of the Jews in the 1930s and 1940s has been elevated (e.g. by Hollywood) above the many other great persecutions and genocides that also occurred during the 20th century.
(Also, getting young people to respond to a statement such as "the Holocaust is a myth" is unnecessarily provocative and will incentivise a certain proportion to agree to it, just 'for the lolz').
I think there is an information war Israel is still winning just because they have more media resources. Accurate and unbiased information about what is happening in Gaza is somewhat hard to find while Israel has a lot of reliable information supporting anything they want. The information that does come out from Gaza spreads farther, unfortunately a lot of which is wrong because people spread unreliable sources, but information from Israel supporting their positions is greater and more accurate because they have more media resources.
>so if there's something going on online, it's not in favor of Israel
What if that 1 (in 36 to 1, or 8 to 1) is specifically the pro Israel effort? (As in if there weren't, the pro Palestine would be consensus)
Interestingly enough, Israel has a stranglehold on r/worldnews. You'd be hard pressed to find any news or content there that doesn't praise Israel in their slaughter of the Palestinians.
/r/worldnews kind of exists as a more right-leaning sub considering reddit's general leftist (in the context of American politics).
TikTok is a Chinese product, and therefore inseparable from the Communist Party. This may also be a factor. It's the safest (read: more moderated and controlled) large social media platform. Why? It may seem valuable to cause havoc in the US electorate at a critical time, splitting the age groups and driving a wedge hard.
For the terminally-online students this issue has almost become a litmus test - "If you are pro-Israel, you are not one of us. They say so on TikTok."
This is a very good example of how social media completely takes over and leads the herd blindly in one direction, either through manipulation, or through just natural hype and bandwagon effect.
In the past we had a few friends who would subject us to peer pressure and convince us to do stupid shit.
Now these kids are in global peer pressure groups of millions.
It is an interesting contrast to the situation in 'editorial rooms' (not virtual tiktok rooms) where most decision makers globally get their information. Some head of state in country X (entangled "innocent"* bystander state) is being bombarded by pro-Israeli 'official news organs' not some rando with a tiktok account.
* All those ignored UN resolutions
For whatever algorithmic reasons tiktok is giving me 5 to 1 (at least) pro-israeli views at the moment.
I stopped watching Instagram reels, but when I did I’d get 90% pro-Palestinian (I’m from Israel and live in California)
Indians largely don't care about this conflict, it's too far and too irrelevant to take up enough space in our day to day lives.
The online bot armies are not really indication of public sentiment.
Also a quarter of young Americans deny The Holocaust. Hating Jews is deep in the identity and politics of young Americans
https://www.economist.com/united-states/2023/12/07/one-in-fi...
It is one in five, so 20%, per your link.
One in four think it was exaggerated.
That’s a somewhat defensible position if you compare what Hitler did to what Stalin and the Japanese did. (At least when I was growing up, the Holocaust coursework completely ignored the Chinese, and mentioned Gypsies in passing, if at all. They covered homosexuals though.)
It's not about muslims vs Jews. It's about being pro genocide and being anti genocide.
Don't make this about religion. Human beings do not want to see genocide carried out on concentration camp of 2.3 million people.
Unless you know the ground truth, nothing can be said about this.
And even then you have the Alf Landon effect : : being perceived as a minority invites voluntarily action.
Hi dang I don't understand why you are not flagging this topic as there are many similar in HN which are flagged for less incendiary topics.
I think what's relevant is that people see a genocide happening and it's common sense to condemn the people committing it.
First of all based on how this Tweet author is writing he sounds like he is on the list of those 30 CEOs that wanted to blacklist anyone from Harvard that signed a pro-Palestinian letter.
I wish they would instead release the full list of the 30 CEOs just like how they are doxxing the students or targeting anyone on Linkedin(via scraping) with a pro-Palestine view. Instead these people are cowards.
Secondly, its been quite fascinating watching over the years the pro-Palestinian view be the minority but then seeing this event finally being the one that broke the camel's back. I always knew that the pro-Palestinian view would become the majority view but there was no way I could have expected it to grow this quickly. Over the last few years, we have seen an erosion of free speech in the US with all these Anti-BDS laws and it just drove me up the wall seeing the right cry about free speech yet have no problem with these laws. It really felt like we were going back for a decade before we could move forward.
But this reaction is just another way that Gen-Z has really surpassed my expectations. Before this event, it was like screaming into the ether but you know what can't be faked or gamed by the Chinese or whoever else hates the US? The enormous protests occurring in the West. These are people making their own decision to go out and spend their time. Thats when I knew this isn't just another internet manipulation hogwash.
Now the powers that be are brushing off all these Gen-Z people by complaining that they have a negative mindset of the world and using protest as a coping mechanism. Elon said this nonsense the other day and I couldn't believe how little he understand Gen-Z. These are the people that watched their older siblings get taken as fools by Obama's "hope and change". They entered the world on the cusp of post-9/11, watched the GFC take hold during childhood and then graduated with loads of debt into the COVID market. Of course they have a pessimistic outlook.
Eventually a Millenial or Gen-Z will take the white house and then things will get really spicy. This really does feel like a generational divide.
Regarding the Indian support of Israel: Now THAT definitely feels like internet manipulation nonsense. I have been following the conflict for over a decade on sites like Reddit, Twitter, and HN and never have I seen so much content from India over this. All of a sudden this is super important to them. Yeah right... :/
Thought the same. +1
My subjective experience is that since Elon Musk visited Israel and met with the government a week ago, Twitter has started heavily promoting pro-Israeli accounts.
Of course, Elon Musk decided to visit Israel after he came under criticism for agreeing with a blatantly anti-Semitic Tweet,[0] so some may question how sincere Musk's sudden change of heart is.
0. https://edition.cnn.com/2023/11/27/tech/elon-musk-isaac-herz...
Even if you're legitimately attempting to analyze political preferences or skew on social media, it seems incredibly inappropriate to be basing that analysis on someone who makes purely biased claims in all of their social media posts. There are so many analytical flaws in the graphs he provides, that they really shouldn't be used for anything.
They've selectively[1] searched for multiple Palestine hashtags, which all show up under the same base hashtag[2], but then count all of the hashtags as separate data points -- and then compares them to a singular Israel hashtag that includes an emoji, which won't include most results regarding Israel. What's worse, is that including a Palestine hashtag doesn't remotely guarantee that the post is pro-Palestine or anti-Israel, and the same is true for posts including Israel hashtags not necessarily being pro-Israel, which can also be seen in [2]. In reality, the #palestine hashtag is used in pro-Israel posts all the time, so the sweeping generalizations made by Anthony Goldbloom aren't based on any legitimate statistical methodology.
Instead of echoing Goldbloom's manipulation of data as factual, it should be used as an example of pro-Israel disinformation and entirely backs the article's claim. In fact, even Goldbloom admits that he made mistakes[3], and the other graph was made by him and not the company who conducted the survey, who actually disputes his claim.
I think it could even be argued that your comment, without any supporting facts other than a very pro-Israel Twitter pundit who already debunked himself, is contributing to the misinformation discussed in the article, even if you're doing so unintentionally.
[1] https://twitter.com/antgoldbloom/status/1721561226151612602/...
[2] https://www.tiktok.com/@kituuuub/video/7298048299905355041?q...
[3] https://www.semafor.com/article/12/07/2023/tiktok-antisemiti...
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"That’s where the efforts of J-Ventures’ hasbara WhatsApp group come in. The group, which also includes attorneys and individuals affiliated with the influential American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), has tirelessly worked to fire employees and punish activists for expressing pro-Palestinian views."
Is that even legal under US law? Apparently it is in some states. Federal law does not, apparently, prohibit political discrimination. But some states do - California, New York, DC, Colorado, and North Dakota.[1]
This should be reported to the FBI's Foreign Influence Task Force.[2] Anyone involved in such suppression activities may be considered an "unregistered foreign agent".[3] Anyone or any organization attempting to influence US policy on behalf of a foreign government is supposed to register. Here's the database.[4]
[1] https://www.legalmatch.com/law-library/article/political-aff...
[2] https://www.fbi.gov/investigate/counterintelligence/foreign-...
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_Agents_Registration_Ac...
[4] https://search.justice.gov/search?affiliate=justice_fara
AIPAC itself is a result of the President Eisenhower and later Robert F Kennedy (DOJ) demanding the American Zionist Council (AZC) register as foreign agents. Because of this, the AZC rebranded to AIPAC with the same leadership and the issue seemed to have fell off the high priority political radar since.
Incidentally, the founder of AIPAC, Isaiah Kenen registered twice with the U.S. Department of Justice under the Foreign Agent Registration Act (FARA) as an agent for Israel. Prior to leading AIPAC, he was the leader of the American Zionist Council. He was also chief information officer for the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
AIPAC's mission is pretty clear: to promote the interests of Israel. This is fine, and not unique, but that seems to me to be the textbook definition of a foreign agent, and it should be registered as such.
AIPAC has a very large budget and will be spending over $100M in 2024 to defeat any candidate for US Congress that did not align with their pro-Israel goals.
It was also formed to influence public opinion in the wake of the Israeli massacre at Qibya, which looked pretty bad.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/made-by-history/wp/2018/...
Two questions:
1. Does AIPAC's use of dual-citizens (American-Israelis) allow it to circumvent the Foreign Agent Registration Act?
2. Is there any other analog to AIPAC operating in the United States for a foreign nation?
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You should watch this documentary:
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt15721106
The documentary "Boycott" explores the legislation passed in several U.S. states, including Arkansas, Arizona, and Texas, that requires individuals to pledge not to boycott Israel as a condition for receiving government funds. This legislation emerged in response to the Palestinian-led BDS (Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions) movement against Israel. The film follows individuals who challenged these laws, including a publisher in Arkansas, an attorney in Arizona, and a speech pathologist in Texas, highlighting their legal battles and the implications for free speech
There have been many arguments that AIPAC should register under the Foreign Agents Registration Act but my understanding is that in it's current form AIPAC doesn't qualify.
I see this as a reason to strengthen the Foreign Agents Registration Act.
That issue came up regarding China's Confucius Institutes.[1] There's been something of a crackdown on those.
Politico has some coverage of the current Israel-related lobbying push.[2] There are a lot of players. "An unsanctioned coterie of pro-Israel quasi-lobbyists has descended on D.C." Some have formally registered as agents of Israel. Some haven't.
The big issue here is when activities go beyond lobbying. Anyone can lobby Congress; that's a constitutional right in the US. Getting people fired on behalf of a foreign power, though, is a legally questionable activity.
[1] https://thediplomat.com/2023/11/the-rise-and-fall-of-confuci...
[2] https://www.politico.com/news/2023/10/22/pro-israel-lobbying...
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In this context, 'foreign agent' means 'agent of a foreign power', not that one is a foreigner. This is what US Senator Bob Menendez is being prosecuted for; it's alleged that he was an undeclared agent of the Egyptian government. AIPAC is run by Americans, but it does advocate on behalf of the state of Israel; I'm unclear to what extent it is financially supported or directed by the government of Israel. Having IDF people advising on information war strategies (as described in the article) does make it seem official though.
AIPAC is the American-Israel Political Action Committee. "The largest pro-Israel PAC in America", their web site says. They are, quite openly, a lobby for Israel's interests in the US.
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I have no skin in this game.
What I have seen is a confusion (perhaps intentional) between anti-semitism, and protesting Israel’s behavior since the Hamas attack in October.
Criticizing Israel’s response is not anti-Semitism- it is literally just criticizing the response.
Israel and pro-Israel commentators have spent a lot of time and effort trying to ingrain the idea that Israel == Jews. Of course, not all Jews are Israeli, and not all Israelis are Jews. And there are many Jewish Israelis who are critical of the actions of the Israeli government.
Of course, a lot of criticism of Israel is rooted in antisemitism. But saying all criticism of Israel is antisemitic deflects legitimate criticism, and makes it harder to identify legitimate antisemitism.
I feel like this a great point. As an American, I’m not labeled as any particular religion. I honestly wish there were no labels at all. I would much rather look at things as right and wrong based on the specific situation.
The goal, in my opinion, is division. Without it, they have nothing.
Peace above all!
> But saying all criticism of Israel is antisemitic deflects legitimate criticism
Who is saying this? All I've heard are people on one side insisting that people are saying this, sounds like a straw man
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While that is definitely true and an important distinction, I will say that unfortunately all too often as discussions on the topic deepen there's a troubling correlation between the most vocal voices engaged in criticizing Israel and legit antisemitism views creeping in.
Which isn't a one sided phenomenon. The reverse is true as well, where often the most vocal voices rationalizing Israel's actions and behavior around civilian casualties often have anti-Muslim perspectives crop up as back and forth conversation goes on.
One of the litmus tests I've noticed is the capacity to acknowledge and condemn the civilian suffering of both sides. The commenters who recognize and condemn both the Oct 7th terrorist attack and the targeting or indiscriminate killing of civilians in the response to it tend to be rational and level headed driven by humanitarian concerns.
Those who only recognize the suffering of one side and dismiss, dehumanize, or rationalize the suffering of the other side - or worst of all propagandize the denial of it's occurrence or scope - tend to quickly fall into revealing rather abhorrent views with a mere scratching of the surface.
Not everyone who criticizes Israel is antisemitic nor everyone who criticizes Hamas is anti-Muslim, but many who are antisemitic or anti-Muslim seem keen to defend their respective side of the conflict quite emphatically and unilaterally.
I get your point, but at the same time dragging anti-semetism into the argument weakens the voices of those who really are not anti-Semitic at all, but genuinely question the Israeli government response to the Hamas attacks.
Which is, I suspect, the point - to weaken those viewpoints.
And to address others in this thread around US actions around the world, I am critical of the U.S. war on Afghanistan and the second Iraq war as well as the Israeli attacks on Gaza.
One can be critical of a government without despising it.
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That is my observation as well. In Germany many right wing groups who have deep seated antisemitic prejudices („they control the world, they want to exchange our white population“, etc) now fully express their hate against arabs / migrants hiding / excusing their behaviour with philo-semitism or support for Israel. They apparently do not have a iota of compassion for the dying civilians in Gaza.
>Criticizing Israel’s response is not anti-Semitism- it is literally just criticizing the response.
Okay - then what should be Israel's response? For me what they are doing is the bare minimum with the minimum casualties from the options they have. Hamas is Gaza's government. Hamas has intertwined the civilian and the military infrastructure. Hamas has made sure that the civilian Palestinians will suffer if you target Hamas. And it was Hamas that made sure with organized rape, torture and atrocities on Oct 7 that it can't be overlooked or forgiven.
Here is a good rule of thumb - if you are going to stir shit - stick to just killing. Don't livestream torture and rape, so diplomacy will have something to work with.
> For me what they are doing is the bare minimum with the minimum casualties from the options they have.
Really? Israel routinely turns off Gaza's electricity (to the entire country) for days. It has also turned off all fresh water for similar durations.
I think we have different definitions of "bare minimum". That comes across looking a lot more "punitive".
In this conflict it told Gazan civilians to move to Southern Gaza because of the extensive bombing in Northern Gaza. Then it began increasing bombing in Southern Gaza.
There is a lot of Gazan support for Hamas. But Hamas also makes up a very small minority of Gazans (I believe 40,000 in a country of 2.3 million). Hamas is also the people who are armed (thanks to both Israeli blockades, oh, and when Israel found it politically expedient to encourage Hamas' militancy because a more moderate Palestinian Authority would make the far right Israeli government look worse by being more willing to compromise).
I'm not sure if Israel killing 14-16x the amount of citizens that Hamas did qualifies as a bare 'minimum'
Their response should be to leave the occupied territories, which aren't theirs to begin with, and to recognize a Palestinian state. Israel has held millions of Palestinians under military occupation for more than half a century, and it's way past time that that ended.
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Your comment is entirely regurgitated Israeli propaganda that has been repeatedly debunked.
I'll be as polite as I can about this, and take it one step at a time.
> Okay - then what should be Israel's response?
The world has been clear about this. Stop killing civilians and treat Palestinians as humans with rights.
> what they are doing is the bare minimum with the minimum casualties from the options they have.
That's not remotely true. Human rights groups and genocide experts around the world are screaming at world leaders to take action. Schools and refugee camps and humanitarian corridors and civil infrastructure and entire residential blocks are being vaporized without warning.
> Hamas is Gaza's government
The last election was in 2006, so this talking point is real stale.
> Hamas has intertwined the civilian and the military infrastructure.
The only proof that has been offered of that has been incredibly shoddily made, as if daring people to believe it.
> Hamas has made sure that the civilian Palestinians will suffer if you target Hamas.
That doesn't excuse war crimes, and it's highly fucked up to think that it does somehow.
> And it was Hamas that made sure with organized rape, torture and atrocities on Oct 7 that it can't be overlooked or forgiven.
The only evidence of organized rape that I've seen presented turned out to be a 10 year old photo of Kurdish women [0]. Torture? No evidence. By atrocities, do you mean the debunked beheaded babies? Or the debunked babies in oven claim? The debunked pregnant women cut open claim?
What Hamas did was atrocious, killing civilians and kidnapping people. So why embellish so devilishly? Only to excuse genocide, and grab land.
> Here is a good rule of thumb - if you are going to stir shit - stick to just killing. Don't livestream torture and rape, so diplomacy will have something to work with.
Again with the claims of "livestreamed torture and rape", which no one has actually seen.
You know who can be documented to have tortured and raped people in the last couple decades? Israel and the US. On many, many occasions. But in your view, at least they're smart enough not to livestream it - they only took photos.
0 - https://twitter.com/MaxBlumenthal/status/1724688009293873502
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>Okay - then what should be Israel's response?
The same response I have concluded should have been the US' response to 9/11: turn the other cheek, and invest heavily in reconciling with "enemy" forces while rebuilding "enemy" infrastructure and institutions, while dealing with individual bad actors on a case-by-case basis as a matter of legal (rather than martial) procedure.
And I'm not joking.
I feel bad for Israelis who have let their government doom them to a generation of government mismanagement and expensive, arduous military adventure. My single-payer health insurance and my friends' free college education went into a couple Patriot missiles, and I do wonder what they're going to have to give up.
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Provoking an overreaction was the intention... and yet that is not factored into the criticism.
they let it happen
It's intentional. The Israel lobby has worked tirelessly to conflate antisemitism with any critique of Israel whatsoever, no matter how legitimate.
It's sad, and in the long run completely self-defeating, but nobody seems to realize that. The more Israel and their lobby overreacts to honest, legitimate and peaceful critique of their actions, the more extreme that the responses will inevitably be....especially in times like these where Palestinians have legitimate reasons to be angry with Israel, and when Israel's citizenry has the right to be angry with their government.
Nobody is right, and everyone is wrong. Everyone has blood on their hands. Pretending otherwise is dumb. Likud and Hamas are responsible, not the innocent Israelis nor the innocent Palestinians.
Fuck Hamas, fuck Likud.
The question is, what is so special about the Israeli/Palestine conflict that leads to these outsized protests? I do not recollect a similar response to the treatment of ISIS or the war in Yemen, even though both had the unconditional support of the US war machine. Even if the left could be absolved of antisemitism, the resistance groups it is aligning itself with clearly can not.
The free flow of information and lack of government control over access to that information. Much of the early Iraq war and even, to an extent, conflicts with ISIS and Yemen had the benefit of those citizens not having access to the internet. So any information many American citizens were getting was filtered through what the military allowed to be known, then further filtered by the news.
With Palestine and Israel, we were able to see it with our own eyes. I remember specifically watching TikToks of a teenage girl in Gaza posting about the evacuations, hearing the bombs in the background, etc. It felt "real" to us, which is a terrible way to put it, but I believe that is why the protests are much larger than other conflicts.
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" The question is, what is so special about the Israeli/Palestine conflict that leads to these outsized protests? "
- Jerusalem (and more globally Israel and Palestine) is holly for Jews, Muslims and Christians ; more than half of the word population and more than 90% of US population
- Israel is a key ally of the USA, and this is a topic important in US politics for long time - including for some evangelical voters for religious question
- Westerners have colonized (or inflicted violence to) most of the non western countries on this planet in "recent" history... Israel is seen by some as a Western country colonizing just another developing country, with support of other western countries... echoing recent history for many. It is as such a symbol for a long time.
- USA, France... have had some big Islamist attack, what happened in Israel echoed to this for some people... and echoes to the clash of civilization western word vs Muslim which is central in the ideology of a growing number of westerners
- It is easier to understand, more divisive, with more people or causes we can identify with, than in Syria (everybody hates ISIS) or Yemen (arabs fighting arabs fighting other arabs in a desert ?)... And we have more images
I certainly remember similar sized, if not larger, protests against the Iraq war.
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"what is so special about the Israeli/Palestine conflict that leads to these outsized protests?"
Good question. 75 years of history those other two conflicts lack
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One answer is these media efforts. Isreal works hard to draw attention to its conflicts, and to try to turn that attention into support.
I'd note the Ukranians worked very hard to draw attention to their war as well, and they were quite successful at that.
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My slightly-informed opinion? Two cooperating factors.
1. The extraordinary effective Hamas organization. Hamas has set itself up to benefit from atrocities committed upon the people of Gaza. Every civilian death is a point for Hamas, the more so the better publicized it is. A point for Hamas is obviously not a point for regular people in Gaza. And Hamas provoked Israel as much as it could manage, and continues to provoke Israel by engaging in military operations from civilian sites, leading to:
2. Israel doesn’t understand this, and is entirely willing to play right into Hamas’ hands, in the name of its own security. And it looks really, really bad.
Actions of Western democracies are usually subject to greater scrutiny. Indeed, the IHRA definition of anti-Semitism allowed for this: it says that it is antisemitism to hold Israel to a higher standard than other democracies - not than other nations altogether.
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Religion, hundreds of millions of people feel spiritually invested in that part of the world.
There is something particularly grating about how Israel acts with impunity on the world stage yet continues to receive unfaltering support from the US government.
They secretly introduced nuclear weapons into the Middle East and refused to sign any of the treaties which are responsible for humanities current existence.
According to Snowden the NSA provides them with whatever data they'd like, even that on Americans, without any filtering whatsoever.
Bibi clowned all over Obama for years and yet he still had to agree with nearly every policy he pushed. Biden has been practically begging them to cut back on West Bank settlements. They won't even meet us there and still we send over money for them to do whatever they please.
As an American it's embarrassing.
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It went viral on social media, the other conflicts didn't. That's really it. Many people's awareness of the world and the moral weight of what happens there comes directly from social media.
A lot of people were upset about China and the Uyghurs as well, for a while, but not until after it became a thing influencers talked about. And then they stopped caring after social media moved on. Even on HN, where anti-China sentiment is rampant, people no longer seem to mention it.
It's because on the surface it's an interracial conflict (it's not really, I guess, but that is the perception for most), and lots of people are obsessed over racial dynamics and analyzing history through that lens.
There are so many other conflicts going on with many more dead, but if it's not interracial then somehow it is not talked about.
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“If you have no skin in the game, don’t comment”.
I’m sorry, people who aren’t Jewish or Palestinians are not allowed to have opinions on this?
I’m sorry, but Israel can’t just pull out their “anti-Semite” card at will and do what they want without the world reacting.
The Israeli government - like any government - can make mistakes. And can be criticized. Criticizing the government is in no way anti-Semitic. To believe otherwise would be to believe the Israeli government is divinely chosen and can do no wrong, like the Pharohs of old. Sorry, but they are people and people can make mistakes.
Which again does not excuse Hamas.
But Israel cannot wage unlimited war on the people of Gaza at will forever.
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I’m not holding them to a higher standard.
Imagine if you will someone going to start large scale bombing NYC. Or London. Or Rome.
The Hamas attack was unprecedented and horrific. I don’t know that it justifies declaring all out war on and entire city.
I can say that without being anti-Semitic.
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Criticising current Israeli government policy doesn't hold Israel to a higher standard than that of other countries.
Also Israel critics also tend to be _much more likely_ to condemn the actions of other states (e.g. Saudi Arabia in Yemen, Indonensia in Papaua, etc). The issue is that the press is less interested in this and the general American public is much more interested in Israel than they are in Saudi Arabia.
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Then what is holding Israel to a lower standard to other nations a sign of?
I've heard this claim, but what is your personal reasoning? It's an oddly narrow condition. Isn't 'prejudice against Israel' more general and effective? Enumerating prejudice in every possible form seems impossible and impractical.
FWIW, it's included in a definition from the last ~20 years that is favored by pro-Israel groups.
Possibly, it's just rhetorical and diversionary, putting critics on the defensive to carefully defend and establish all speech as non-anti-Jewish, which diverts time and attention.
I think those tactics work for Israel when the issues aren't so stark and prominent, and so few people see the critique of the critics (i.e., few see the accusation that the speech is antisemitic). With everyone watching closely, the apparent rhetorical tactics become noticeable.
Which other nation is allowed to literally colonize land than even itself doesn't consider to be part of their country? What other nation can get away with military enforcement of said colonies?
If anything, Israel is given more slack in the west than any other nation. More civilians died in Gaza than in Ukraine yet clearly, only one nation has been condemned officially by western states and that's not Israel
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Not all other nations - just Palestine. Because Israel is in position of power.
So I have to have been involved in protesting a non-Israel conflict to have an opinion on this one?
My friend, not conflating groups is literally one of the standards for public discourse in 2023.
It's the same standard the entire world held the US to after 9/11. A response to the attacks by Al-Qaeda was justified, the 20 year "Crusade" across the Middle East was not. A response by Israel against Hamas terrorism is justified - a campaign of extermination and genocide is not.
It isn't even a high standard, "don't commit genocide" has been the bare minimum requirement for any modern country, much less democracy, for nearly a century. It would be antisemitic to believe that Israel is uniquely incapable of meeting that minimum standard.
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Some of this information war seems to be intended from keeping the US from considering a third option - sitting this one out. One U.S. State Department official resigned over this when he saw Israel's weapons shopping list.[1]
The US could provide humanitarian aid, but not military aid. Cut military aid to Israel. Maybe still provide Iron Dome reloads, but that's about it. Bring in a hospital ship off Gaza, to care for the injured. Send a few frigates to protect it from all parties. Discourage outside interference. Then wait to see how this plays out. It's not the US's fight, after all.
Creating a lot of noise over the issue tends to force people to choose a side and eliminates middle options. That may be part of the intent of this campaign. "Are you with us, or against us". No, we're fed up with both of you.
[1] https://www.newyorker.com/news/the-political-scene/why-a-sta...
AFAIK, US cannot just "sit out", because the Israel-Palestine conflict can negatively impact the US-Saudi relationship. Even though Saudi shares some common interests with Israel (i.e. Iran), it simply can't look away from the sufferings of Muslims in Palestine, given its role as a major power in the Islamic world.
Also, if Israel takes the control of the Gaza Strip, a lot of refugees will spread in the region, creating more tension in the long-term. I deem this more sensitive than the religious strife, because it can leave concrete, direct, and explicit marks on the neighboring societies.
I think the best scenario for US is that Israel eventually stands down and falls back to the pre-war state - that is, no Israel control over the Palestinian territories. Israel won't have much choice here.
> the US-Saudi relationship.
Less of an issue than it used to be. The US is now a net oil exporter.[1]
[1] https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/oil-and-petroleum-produc...
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The problem with cutting aid to Israel is that the only thing stopping Israel from committing even more violence is the western support they receive. The current Israeli government is as right wing as the country has ever seen. The defense minister is a proud supporter of terrorism against palestinians and even israeli's who support palestinians. He believes god gave the west bank and the entire levant to the jews. If Israel's international relations soured they would quickly come to the conclusion that they have nothing to lose and no reason not to enact their "final solution to the palestinian problem".
Wait until this State Department official finds all the weapons sold to Saudi Arabia
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> Recall that Palestine's goal is to eliminate all Jews.
No, that's not Palestine’s goal.
Its not even clearly the goal of the Palestinian Islamist extremist group Israel fostered specifically to have a less sympathetic enemy to deflect pressure for peace with Palestine to use as a pretext for perpetual war, though it may be, and whose fault is that?
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This opinion is surfacing in the likes of Ramaswamy.
I think the behavior of the EU is more problematic TBH. Ursula VdL went heavily pro-israel the first day kind of giving carte blanche to israel for the following days
This situation is not a good look for western response in general. The world is watching. Reminder that Srebrenica was 8000 deaths, but 17100 palestinians are justified losses.
She probably destroyed her career with this, since acted way beyond her limits. I still wonder, was she overcompensating due to her being German?
It's very normal for EU to be pro-Israel, that's EU's official position and IMHO it's the correct one but EU's position is also pro-Two states solution and EU has significant humanitarian missions and political support for many of the Palestinian demands. Some EU countries are also very sympathetic towards the Palestinian cause and some countries which have huge importance for EU, like Turkey, the issue is very emotional.
Very wrong of Vdl to act as if EU is all-in for the Zionist aspirations. As EU Commission president, should have strongly condemned the terrorist attack that Israel suffered and offer any help possible and at the same time she should have pushed for a solution of the root cause(Israeli occupation and extremist antisemitic politics seeking the demise of the Israel - both unacceptable).
Maybe the bigger lesson here is that you should never go all-in on one side of a very complex issue. A kind of an issue where the rights and wrongs are quite evenly distributed and there's no way you end up on the correct side of it. Whoever-pro you are, you lose and she lost.
VdL has 'destroyed her career' many times over, during her stint. She repeatedly tried to look decisive rather than wise; sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn't.
The truth is that the Commission President continues to be a job in search of political weight and legitimacy, but you can't get that after you are nominated to the post by scheming national rulers - it has to come from the ballot box. She tries hard to compensate for what is a structural weakness that was supposed to be fixed by the spitzenkandidaten process... a process that she blew up herself.
> It's very normal for EU to be pro-Israel, that's EU's official position and IMHO it's the correct one
Why would supporting ethnic cleansing be a correct position? Can you explain?
> the Zionist aspirations
What has the current conflict to do with Zionist aspirations?
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Imho, being heavily pro-Israel on the first day was perfectly appropriate. They'd just seen a crapload of innocent civilians butchered, and a bunch of them taken hostage.
Obviously you can still think that Palestinians have legit grievances without supporting massacre, and likewise you can support the Israeli right to defend itself. But at some point the actions of the Israeli military looks less like an effort to root out Hamas and more like ethnic cleansing.
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> Anything other than an unequivocal win over Hamas will be unacceptable and lead to more violence down the line.
Some argue that "unequivocal win over Hamas" should be achieved without wiping out the rest of the population, housing, hospitals, infrastructure, etc
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worse than anything ever perpetrated by Nazis and ISIS alike
I quite agree that the Hamas attacks on civilians that took place on October 7 were an atrocity and should be treated as a war crime. But 'worse than the Nazis' hyperbole doesn't help you make that argument. Massacres of civilians are unfortunately ordinary in wars and by no means unique to a particular region or culture.
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I think it's tragic that you have no sympathy for children and innocent civilians dying. No matter the side.
These types of responses always skip over the most crucial parts of history:
The IDF originally funneled money to the founder of Hamas in order to weaken popular support for Fatah, and Netanyahu facilitated Qatari payments to Hamas when it seemed that support for the Palestinian Authority was rising. His far right defense minister publicly resigned, saying that Netanyahu was financing terrorism against Israel.
Including in these facts into the argument makes it seem less like Israel is fighting a terrorist group, and more like Israel tolerates a terrorist organization as their best alternative to a two state solution.
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good for you, but this is not about how we feel, but about making peace. The palestine issue won't be solved this time like it was not solved in decades of war. you will just have thousands more new terrorists now, who watched family members die while trying to follow orders that israel had given them to protect them. This is a complex issue and not one for taking sides.
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I want to believe that Hamas is hiding among civilians, but there has already been reported major violations where there cannot be any military benefit for Israel about this. A hospital with a children's ward was labeled to be a command center for Hamas, but when the BBC came to examine the command center, they not only found nothing to indicate a major military use but also had video evidence (from previous video taken earlier in the day by Israeli military) that what was there was actively staged for them. And then we find out that the children's ward had babies in incubators-- and the Israeli military did nothing to save those babies despite taking control of the hospital. Like, when Palestinians were able to get back to the hospital they found the babies as corpses rotting in the incubators. This was confirmed by neutral third party reporters. WTF?
How much grace can someone reasonably hold for a military force that repeatedly lies and then allows babies in incubators to die in the hospital they took over? At what point should we hold a much more well funded, a much more democratic, and a much more supposedly civilized civilization to higher standards than the terrorists they're fighting?
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I don’t think that most (nearly all?) pro Palestine critics are saying that Hamas is in the right. All of the wording I’ve seen was focused on Israel’s and the IDFs response and actions. As you’ve mentioned, killing civilians is a war crime.
Many civilized nations have military installations, such as headquarters and office facilities, co-located and intermixed with civilian facilities. They also have military bases and complexes, but the intermixing is not unique to Hamas.
When the Palestinians in Gaza have been denied elections in nearly 2 decades and have expressed discontent with Hamas as well, it sounds disingenuous to characterize it as “invited […] so deeply into their everyday lives.”
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Paul Graham:
Well, well, well. That felt coordinated. Turns out it was.
https://twitter.com/paulg/status/1733146138226614465?ref_src...
The replies in that are pretty terrible. I'd forgotten how awful the bluecheck-reply slurry was on Twitter since they started selling those.
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Like how Elon "trashed his rep" and then got on a plane to meet Netanyahu a week later?
Don't be hyperbolic for the sake of politicking. PG has recovered from vastly dumber takes, and still finds people to give him money.
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What an absolute mind-fuck.
I think the greatest thing the Moscow-Teheran-Beijing "bot army diplomacy doctrine" is showing us is that you can radicalize both the US right AND the US Left at the same time by speaking to each side's idiocies at full throat.
We are nearing Elders of Zion territory here where the ratio of 2 Billion Muslims to 15 Million Jews, and thus the constant stream of anti-Israeli propaganda, now contains propaganda suggesting that we are deceived and in fact there is more pro-Israeli discoursem when in reality it is being drowned out.
What discourse you see online is entirely dependent on who you follow. TikTok is not force feeding you pro-Palestine content (and pro-Palestine ≠ pro-Hamas, people who are unironically pro-Hamas are not to be taken seriously since they usually come with other nonsensical takes on everything). Neither is Twitter, Youtube, Instagram, or any other platform where content is recommended based on user preferences. Don't like what you see? Close it or use whatever feedback function built-in to strongly signal your distaste, and the algorithms will recommend less of that. My tech twitter timeline was unusable for weeks after October 7 because many people I follow started posting pro-Israel messages nonstop, to the point where I had to mute them because it's not what I followed them for despite having sympathy for Israelis after the attack from Hamas.
I started getting ads obviously funded by the State of Israel and pro-Israel organizations on Youtube, on Twitter, on Instagram, and on TikTok (for a day or two). There were "Missing Person" posters of October 7th victims in my neighbourhood street which is located more than 10000+km from Israel (I feel bad for them and hope they will return home safe and sound, but what are these posters trying to achieve here in my neighbourhood? My local representative legislator is already supporting Israel and condemning Hamas). I'm not going to stop recognizing propaganda for being propaganda even if I mostly agree with its underlying message. That's a basic critical thinking skill and evidently that skill is lacking even mong highly successful and "intelligent" people on HN, tech Twitter, and so on.
Just to be clear, are you saying this article is false propaganda? Which parts, and do you have sources? I'd like to know full picture before I send this link to people.
There are ~9 Senators and 26 House representatives who are Jewish. There is only 1 Palestinian, and as the article pointed out, many from the pro-Israel faction are vying to have her expelled from congress. Further, in the US, nearly every presidential candidate or prominent politician has staunchly taken the side of Israel, reiterating their 'right to defend' whenever the mass casualties of Gaza are brought up. Many in Biden's admin have given interviews saying this sentiment as well.
So while I'm sure your statistics are correct, I think it's a misnomer to say that there is more anti-Israel propoganda or pro-Israel or anti-Palestinian, etc. It's a moot point. The most clear point to me is that most gov't officials are supporting Israel's war no matter what.
There is no need for Russian/Iranian propaganda bots. Israel does that already for them: Seeing how Israel tries to defeat Hamas by withholding water, food, electricity, medicines for 2.2mil civilians in Gaza or by using genocidal language by Netanyahu and his war cabinet (Netanyahu: „they are Amalek!“, Gallant: „they are human animals“, Herzog: „there are no innocent in Gaza“, and then compring Hamas to Hitler/Nazis/ISIS/Satan) or by bombing hospitals, schools, ambulances, killing civilians by the thousands, then at the same time handing out guns to Settlers who loot, kill, start pogroms in the West Bank.
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I could not confirm your claim that Hamas called for murdering Jews globally. Could you please share a source?
My feeling is that media controlled by people - like TikTok - tend to be pro-Palestinian, whereas media controlled by institutions tend to be pro-Israeli (with the exception of the majority of ONGs and human right organizations).
> it gets amplified by 1.8 billion people whose holy book calls for attacks on Jews
Broadly generalizing like this does border on racism, which definitely does not help defend a country accused of apartheid and genocide.
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> people are jumping at the opportunity to contradict you and actually adding some new data points that you're actually right.
This argument is called a double-bind.
This article made it to front with 297 pts and generally it negative towards Israel. I don't think any of the articles about Hamas atrocities and their use of social media made to cause panic and fear made it that far on HN.
Back in Oct about a week after the attack Bloomberg 's reporting on the attack and the beginning of the ended up being flagged on NH and only has 23pts: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37910148
It seems that anti-Israel propaganda is way more successful than this pro-Israel information war.
It's easier for anti-Israel propaganda to be more successful here when the people leading Y-Combinator, who own and manage Hacker News, are also anti-Israel, some possibly antisemitic. If it didn't take sides and mandated neutrality, it would flag content from both sides. If a moderator on HN acts out of line with the policy or sentiments of YC leadership, they would be corrected. The battle of ideas begins with who controls the platform and what their policies are.
> some possibly antisemitic
Ah yes, there it is. You didn't even wait untill the second sentence to use this empty term. Because of comments like yours this word completely lost its meaning. Intelligent people just ignore it now.
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Not much is known about Hamas propaganda because sharing it is illegal in the USA where YC and HN are based.
On the contrary the IDF is pretty open about its online media budget, spend, and goals. So isn't it natural that people would study it more?
https://www.versobooks.com/blogs/news/social-media-is-a-warz...
You know it is in overdrive when the ICC thinks about investigating the IOF for war crimes and Netanyahu says the ICC is anti-Semitic.
https://www.euronews.com/2021/02/06/israel-netanyahu-denounc...
If Israel has its way, even thinking about Gaza as a concentration camp would be anti-Semitic.
"anti-Semitic" has been thrown around so much that it has lost its value. A red balloon, a walrus, or a nice cup of tea can be anti-Semitic nowadays.
This article, more than making me feel one way or another about the particular issue at hand (Isreal Hamas) makes me speculate what other unknown, better coordinated, better funded, interest groups might be doing this sort of thing on a massive scale.
I'm reminded of the "Come out - we have you surrounded" meme where the mentally insane man is hiding behind a desk with a shotgun screaming "Get out of my head" or "I hate the Antichrist", because that's how thinking about these groups make me feel
It's very interesting to me that a large new org (say BBC, DW, CBC whatever) will publish some YouTube video report about some political subject (Canada and India, Ukraine and Russia, Taiwan and China), and within 15 minutes the video has a comments section containing 200+ posts in a very obvious direction. Are 100s of Canadians really awake at 5am posting on a BBC video about Canadian support for Ukraine 15 minutes after it was posted? Are 100s of Taiwanese people really awake at 3am commenting on a DW video about China-Taiwan relations? 15 minutes after it was posted? I can't tell if I've become paranoid over the last 4/5 years or if it's real, but it seems so stark to me how intense manipulation on platforms is, be it YouTube, TikTok, or Instagram.
I shift from making myself not think about it to becoming a complete paranoid nut to telling myself it probably isn't so bad and doesn't matter a few times a year. There are levels to this sort of thinking, and it exists on a spectrum. I think everyone can agree on a conceptual level that manipulation occurs. A basic, mostly harmless example would be a music star "organically going viral" and "being discovered as a result" not being quite as organic as it seems. Where it changes from healthy skepticism to paranoia is a line I struggle to draw personally.
> what other unknown, better coordinated, better funded, interest groups might be doing this sort of thing on a massive scale.
There is no better-coordinated or -funded lobbying group than the military-industrial complex, which is, of course, all in on Israel.
I don't think there is a more potent example right now than the Israel Lobby.
The Holocaust and Hitler basically define modern Western morality, and Zionism's claims to legitimacy are closely related to those concepts. Associating someone with "Hitler" or "antisemitic" is worse than calling them "bin Laden" or "slavemaster".
Other popular foreign lobbies in Washington, from Ukrainian, Taiwanese, Kurds, Uyghurs, don't have nearly the same influence.
Saying this as a person that typically doesn't care at all about these things: you can't possibly compare Hitler to Bin Laden. The first is definitely worse - and I am sorry for people who lost family or friends in 9/11. But he was way worse. The guy started a world war, he literally killed dozens of millions of civilians and made life shi*ier for everyone on this planet. What he and his crew did to people, to society, and everything else - books have been written so that we hopefully, as humanity, won't repeat again.
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No, when capital coordinates people get worried and rightfully so. There are a lot of non Jewish Zionists, just as there are a lot of Jewish non-Zionists. In our industry, the VCs are overwhelmingly Zionist while the rest of the industry is non-Zionist and it's the Zionists that are getting people fired and blacklisted.
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This article is not about Jews co-ordinating, it's about foreign govt agents in military uniforms coordinating with powerful sillicon valley leaders to punish, among other things, American citizens for holding wrong-think.
I legitimately don't understand what you're trying to imply. As far as I can tell it's a very indirect attempt to imply that people "having a nerve struck" over "Jews coordinating", are bad in a nonspecific way. Can you state more clearly what you mean so I can consider it?
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It's very unfair to say that the reaction to this is because of "the Jews" and not because a close US ally who has much of the support of its military and intelligence apparatus at its disposal is doing this.
If I'm ever fired for taking a pro-Palestinian stance, I will spend the rest of my life suing everyone involved. The capital community has crossed so many lines in their witch hunt for pro-Palestinan voices that it's not even funny. Our industry has reached a breaking point and I'm not sure what's going to happen since most of the VCs are extremely pro-Zionism and a huge portion of people under the age of 45 are pro-Palestinian, including most engineers and tech people I know.
I’m very pro-Palestinian. That’s yet another reason why I want Hamas gone. There’s no chance for social justice while terrorists are running the show.
What do you think about the historical evidence of Netanyahu promoting Hamas for this very reason?
https://www.timesofisrael.com/for-years-netanyahu-propped-up...
Anyway, we can make a similar argument about the Netanyahu regime: it is actively making Jewish, Israeli, and American people around the world less safe. It is almost treasonous that our elected officials are supporting this dangerous regime so uncritically.
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If the conditions in Gaza continue as they have for multiple generations now, the eradication of Hamas will just beget the founding a different group with the same approach, or near to.
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Hamas will only end along with the Zionist occupation.
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Yup,anyone with a brain and access to internet (non mainstream media) is pretty much against Israel exercising ethnic cleansing on Palestinian people. And you're right, young people tend to be more empathetic and less likely to support a bully.
I definitely have a client who would fire us if I said anything remotely against Israel.
Which is normally a very bad thing, but during a genocide it's a million times worse. I think a lot of people can feel that they're not allowed to say something right now that they should probably say, or at least be allowed to say.
There was always going to be an opinion war after 1200 massacred civilians, when a large portion of the other side doesn't take the primary tack of "stop bombing Palestine" but instead "Free Palestine".
This particular pro-Palestinian argument being so imprecise and tactically wrong, at this crucial time to saving the lives of Palestinians, only guarantees an unsovable hurricane of noise with no outcome but more civilian deaths and more war.
As the other side can not and will not reward the spark of the initial massacre to force a benefits negotiation, obviously. Let alone one that discusses ceding territory.
It's morally logical to be aghast at the Palestinian Civilian death toll, regardless of the argument as to who is ultimately responsible.
But it is morally unforgiveable for people, living in safety and ostensibly in support of voiceless Palestinians in a war zone, to decide to put a territory argument above Paelstinian lives.
This argument further endangers Palestinian lives when it radicalizes them in a manner, within the context of an unwinnable situation, that all but assures their deaths.
Hamas has been clear about their choice of the promise of territory over the lives of the entire Palestinian population.
Less doomed and morally clearer people need to make the choice to discharge the Palestinian population from their duty as pawns. Even if it means living a long life in another desert that isn't under terrorist militia control. In the context of an absolutely unwinnable situation.
Israel is clear, whatever one thinks of the nature of that clarity. That the Palestinians are unclear is why there will be a continued "information war" until the exact point when there isn't the possibility of Palestinians tolerating a single further death. At which point the rallying cry will focus solely on Palestinian lives.
We should all hope that this mutual clarity comes in this very minute. If not in this minute, then in the next. So that the maximum number of lives can be saved.
People can rail against that reality forever, but it will remain reality.
> There was always going to be an opinion war after 1200 massacred civilians, when a large portion of the other side doesn't take the primary tack of "stop bombing Palestine" but instead "Free Palestine".
The West Bank shows what happens if they only stop being bombed without actually being free. Palestine needs to be free in order for there to be peace.
Your comment implies that Palestinian civilians can't have peace until Israeli territory is ceded back to them. This is in the context of October 7th and a the current Gaza seige. It is reflective of the loudest echo in the war zone.
There won't be a single outcome but the most negative one for radicalized Palestinian civilians as a result. Hopefully, morally clearer voices will be raised higher.
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The 1200 casualties on Oct 7 included 283 Israeli soldiers and 57 policemen. 859 civilians were killed. Doesn't change anything but it's worth using the correct figures.
Coming from Europe and living in the US for the last couple of years, I'm shocked at how society here is clearly pro-israel.
It is very clear that in the US the life of an israel citizen is valued way above the one of a palestinian. It is sad to lose that level of humanity.
all of the discourse also conveniently ignores that Israel created a large-scale open-air prison in Gaza and removed any hope left for people living there.
I think a lot of Americans either consciously or subconciosuly see the similarity between Israel's situation and the US's with regards to the natives. If there was a native independence movement that resorted to terrorism the us would flatten every reservation in the country.
There's definitely a similarity, but no, modern US would not behave like modern Israel is behaving. Our response to the 2020 riots was extremely hands-off relative to the level of violence of the rioters (who, in one instance, took cobtrol by force of a section of a major US city, declared secession, and held the area for several days [0]).
[0]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capitol_Hill_Occupied_Protes...
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For someone, who is coming from Europe it strange, that you did not notice a slow, but steady rise in right politics in Europe, but was very quick to notice the US bias.
Israel is the United States' colonial outpost and our leaders know it. Our press knows it. That influences the public discourse, especially that which flows from official channels and major news outlets. And Israel has a huge lobby here to reinforce all that.
There's a religious dimension, too. Some kinds of Protestants see a modern Jewish state in Palestine as a precondition for the Second Coming of Christ, and actively want to urge that by supporting Israel. This is very common among religious fundamentalists in much of the US.
This is, by the way, exactly what President Biden was getting at on the Senate floor decades before his presidency when he said that 'if Israel did not exist, the United States would have had to invent an Israel to protect her interests in the region'.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FYLNCcLfIkM
It seems like Hamas values one Palestinian less than one Israeli. This is based on prisoner exchanges. Hamas gives up one Israeli prisoner for more than one Palestinian. Most recently it was 2:1, but historically it was 100:1 or more.
This is silly right? It isn’t like Hamas demanded this ratio, or that they forced Israel to accept. Should Hamas refuse out of principle if Israel gave them prisoners for free?
On the contrary it seems more like a power play on Israel’s part. “Take our prisoners we will just defeat them again!”
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Despite all this, as a casual observer, my general impression is Israel has done terribly at making the case for war, and specifically the kind of war their military seems to be carrying out.
The most relevant comparison seems to be with the Russians. Russia has no credibility in the West and Israel is rapidly losing any they had, at least with younger people. My general impression is of a Russian-level intensity of destruction, too.
But perhaps these impressions are wrong. I would normally assume the Israelis aren’t complete idiots. I’d like to read a “steelman” case for this military campaign, if anyone knows of one. Why are these impressions misleading? What’s really going on?
(Yes, a major difference is that this is a counter-attack, but beyond that?)
You will be made quite miserable if you find what you seek. The Israeli politicians basically see Gaza as a "problem" population which they cannot deal with and which is hampering their national goals. And it's shockingly and ironically similar to how Jewish people were looked at in another time and another place by another leader
I like how you put "problem" in quotes as if Palestine does not regularly shoot unguided missiles at Israel with the goal of killing civilians.
Maybe you need a quick history refresher but the Jews were not doing that in 1930s Germany.
Are you serious? They were attacked first and invaded, experiencing the equivalent of Pearl Harbor + 9/11 together in relative terms, or in absolute terms the 2nd worst terrorist attack EVER. Entire communities viciously wiped out, and hundreds of hostages taken, followed by a barrage of thousands of rockets on the cities of Israel.
I'm at a loss of words. What kind of explanation are you missing?
Yes, they were attacked first and that’s a traditional justification for war. If a government wants to go to war, this is the time to do it, while they have the support of the public.
However, as we saw after 9/11, that doesn’t necessarily mean that whatever war a government proposes is a good idea. A counter-attack could still be foolish or unnecessarily brutal (as it seems to be). It might still result in a strategic failure.
The kind of explanation I’d be interested in would be why the way Israel is prosecuting this war is something the US (and other countries) should support.
(Your comment is about what Hamas did, and that’s a different sort of thing than a justification for what the Israel military is doing.)
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There are about 1.8 Billion Muslims on planet earth. There are about 15 Million Jews on the planet. There are about 120 Muslims for every Jewish person. In Israel there are about 7 million Jews. The anti Israel propaganda and blatant lies on social media is sickening. To someone who knows what's on the ground, reading countless 100% false posts from many (not all!) Muslims and Palestinian supporters is downright scary. Israelis (including myself) try to educate people about who is who and what's right and what is false. This article that singles out Israel for trying to provide its (true) version of reality and facts as nefarious-is misguided to be polite.
Why does how many Muslims there are have to do with anything? Israel is not at war with the Muslim community they are at war with a single country which is not even all Muslim. Seems like shaky rhetoric.
> Why does how many Muslims there are have to do with anything? Israel is not at war with the Muslim community they are at war with a single country which is not even all Muslim. Seems like shaky rhetoric.
But the muslim community is at war with Israel and the jews, given the rabid antisemitism in every corner of MENA and beyond, like in Indonesia and Pakistan. Antisemitism is the normal in all these places.
I guess it's also the new normal on US college campuses too.
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Identity is very powerful
> the ground
What ground? Kibbutz Be'eri and all the other Israel towns where families are mourning their slaughtered loved ones? Or Gaza refugee camps where families are mourning their own dead children?
> This article that singles out Israel for trying to provide its (true) version of reality
Is this a serious comment, or satire? I honestly can't tell. I mean... we're talking about a country whose official social media accounts tries to pass off pics of the Lebanese war as the current situation in Gaza; who posts doctored images to try to disguise executions; who posts edited footage of their military commanders pointing at calendars saying they are a roster of terrorist names. I could go on and on, but that last bit is still too surreal.
What (true) version of reality are you talking about here? And besides that, you do realise that one of the things this article is pointing out is how certain groups work together to punish people who post things they don't like - even if it's just an opinion?
Nevermind, your post simply has to be satire...
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If someone's supporters lie enough can you genocide them? If not then I don't see how this is relevant.
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While it might be a bit dated, the leaked 2009 Global Language Dictionary [1] remains pertinent to this subject. Essentially, it serves as a manual for communication. I discovered it through another intriguing resource, the documentary "The Lobby - USA." [2] Admittedly, the perspective it offers is somewhat biased, but it provides a straighforward presentation of the situation, especially through the lens of an undercover agent who recorded behind-the-scenes discussions among advocates of the Pro-Israel Information War.
[1] https://www.transcend.org/tms/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/sf-...
[2] https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLHEvpbppx_4rgC8q0TVMf...
That's a really... weird article to read. It's like reading a fantasy book about another universe. Or a desperate attempt at "inception".
Reddit, at least, seems to be (rightfully or not) dominated by a strongly anti-Israel narrative.
Even the "great" BBC is not willing to call a spade a spade.
Interestingly I've seen a strong pro-Israel bias, particularly on the larger subreddits (like the default ones). Some of the smaller ones do seem to have a pro-Palestine (or pro-civilian) outlook but nothing that I would describe as "strongly anti-Israel"
The default subreddits are truly awful. r/worldnews is the first one that comes to mind. They were accusing the murdered Reuters journalist of being a member of hamas.
I decided to never look at those subreddits ever again.
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you should look at the r/palestine if you want see manifestation of hatred. or any heavily left leaning subs.
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What you say about Reddit is certainly not my experience. /r/UKPolitics for example - anything posted about Istael/Gaza is now moderated out. And comments are dominated by people still parroting the debunked stories about mass rapes and baked babies.
When the crisis was initially unfolding, I followed a few of the major subreddits, and it was entirely pro-Israel. It was kind of shocking how uniformly pro-Israel the comments were.
I think it depends on what subreddit you're on. /r/worldnews tends to be very pro-Israel, unless the comment are on a story about settler violence. /r/politics is more balanced.
Most of the complaints I've seen are in the opposite direction, complaining about how pro Isreal reddit is.
I'm sure it depends on what subredits you look at. The moderators are essentially free to enforce their politics.
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I really wished Israel didn’t blatantly start airbombing Gaza civilian infrastructure and blockade food, water, gas.
When Russia does this on Ukraine, we call them war criminals but when Israel does it on Palestinians we call it business as usual.
The idea of military revenge doesn’t get us anywhere.
Defense is the best offense. Little gains the world made in Middle East stability have now been reversed for decades.
As technology progresses, the drones and missiles will become cheaper and more destructive.
An eye for an eye makes the world blind.
I really wished US provided weapons based on condition of only making precise targeted attacks for specific terrorists.
That means our a big chunk of $800B defense money, funded by our tax money is used to obliterate civilians in Gaza. That makes me sad.
It’s likely this turns into another Afghanistan multi decade war with trillions spent and nothing to show for it. The only winners are defense contractors.
US could have played peace maker role. Be the party to stop missiles flying everywhere. Provided humanitarian and medical aid.
Demilitarize and deescalate.
The current strategy of destroying hamas by destroying Gaza and its inhabitants is pretty stupid.
Play stupid games, win stupid prizes.
very interesting to see the contrast between the two conflicts in terms of economic sanctions, or the lack thereof.
to me this topic goes to show that if you remove the US-centric discourse out of a world event, you get to actually see the real nuances in what the direct parties are doing.
What, specifically, should they have done instead?
After an initial military response, take their time and specifically plan and target the terrorists who were responsible and organized the attacks on the 7.10. Yeah this will obviously take way longer and is harder than levelling Gaza but would avoid eventually bringing the entire world against you and producing much more terrorists than before. At the same time also try to make sure that the civilians in Gaza get humanitarian aid, so you remove the breeding ground for terrorism. This approach was also suggested by Jocko Willink retured Navy Seal (https://youtu.be/3O4dW24az98)
But the mistakes happened way before by moving troops away from the Gaza border to West Bank to protect illegal settlements and also supporting Hamas as an opposition to PLO. Don't get me wrong. Don't get me wrong the world would be a better place without Hamas however your policy has to be strategic and not emotional (i.e. revenge)
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It's Incredible how many people here are ok with genocide and ethnic cleansing.
I've been watching Project Ask recently:
https://www.youtube.com/@CoreyGilShusterAskProject/videos
It's fascinating to hear opinions on the ground from both sides. Some things I've learned or concluded:
Young Palestinians are much more radical than older ones, who seem more flexible.
I personally think the two-state solution is a non-starter, and watched these videos to see if a one state solution is at all viable (meaning make Palestinians into Israeli citizens with full rights- basically the Zionists conquered the land, but they must also take the people). The problem is that neither side wants this.
Many Jewish Israelis think the Arabs would outnumber them due to birth rate, but recently Ultra-Orthodox Jews have an even higher birth rate, and Palestinian birth rate has fallen (I speculate due to increased education). Extremist settlers absolutely won't have it, and there is rampant racism. Palestinians want the Jews gone from their lands, but when pressed would probably accept those of Palestinian descent.
Sadly, I think we are going to continue with the one state with Apartheid. And, an interesting thing has happened in post-Apartheid South Africa: the realization that they are collectively poor, and not a rich first world country. One example from SA is that the electrical infrastructure was sized for only the whites, now that the full population is counted, there is just not enough, it's a big current problem. Any per-capita measurement of Israel should include the Palestinians to see the depth of this problem.
> Sadly, I think we are going to continue with the one state with Apartheid
The situation is not like Apartheid in South Africa.
In Apartheid, the white minority controlled South Africa, and did things like denying the black majority the vote.
In contrast, Israel has a ~20% Arab minority (excluding Gaza and West Bank). The rights of that minority are respected. Arabs can vote in Israel, and in fact there is an Arab party in the Israeli parliament.
Gaza was largely self governing until the Oct 7th attacks. Israel has not shown any desire to "rule" Gaza.
> In contrast, Israel has a ~20% Arab minority (excluding Gaza and West Bank).
I'm reminded of an anecdote (probably false) of when someone was asked in an interview why all manhole covers are round. He replied that not all manhole covers are round. They countered "Well, just consider the round ones".
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All analogies are wrong, but humans use them as thought devices.
Let's just say that on a scale of 1 to apartheid it's not a 1.
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Have you thought about why young Palestinians have a different opinion from older ones? The opinion of powerless people is not set in stone, but is often a reaction to things outside of their control.
Direct experience? Learning from their parents? Typical young person reaction to perceived injustice? Dangerous to have a differing opinion?
They have internet, but unfortunately it's not a force for moderation.
Older ones used to be able to work in Israel as migrant workers.
After the 2nd Intifada and Hamas's takeover of Gaza, Israel cracked down on Palestinian migrant workers and began importing labor from Thailand, Nepal, and other countries.
Information warfare has being part of war for a long time. It is happening from both sides of this war with multiple players taking part. Israel obviously has a large amount of resources dedicated to it, but Arab states and Russia a chipping in heavily too on the other side.
This. Take everything you read with a grain of salt.
oh that evil omnipresent Russia!
Well it is omnipresent because they allocate resources to be omnipresent. If you did not notice helping to shift focus to what is going on in Gaza is helping them reduce the focus on what they are up to in Ukraine.
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Two ideas:
1. It was surprising to me that Hamas believed that filming and publishing their atrocities was a good idea. And more surprising that the response hasn't been a bigger backlash.
2. That makes me think that despite the fact that both parts think that infowar is necessary, the real war is fought on the ground, with weapons, bullets and bombs. Not with protests, declarations and tweets.
Neither Israel nor the Palestinians' supporters in the West give a fuck.
1. News outlets here actually did not show the full Hamas footage from Oct 7.
But they have no problem showing Hamas propaganda.
"One participant even suggested that they appeal to the university’s 'woke' aversion to exposing students to uncomfortable ideas. The participant drafted a sample letter claiming that Tlaib’s appearance threatened ASU’s 'commitment to a safe and inclusive environment.' The following day, ASU officially canceled the Tlaib event, citing 'procedural issues.'"
We must remember this: The credibility of both sides in a war is more than suspect. i.e., incomplete information, pure B.S., or propaganda. "The first casualty of war is the truth." This has been stated throughout history back to Aeschylus og Greece circa 550 BC.
https://www.societyofeditors.org/soe_blog/the-first-casualty...
Most of what I see online and in the news is pro-palestine.
Reading up on the conflict, I support Israel more and more.
What have you read?
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Is there a reason why you created an account specifically for this comment thread?
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Many of these comments talking about how many pro-this or anti-that news exist are quite baffling. I don't really think that's the point. I think the point is more about the existence of groups with links to private companies and even government(s?) who actively seek to punish people who post views and opinions they don't like. And this is supposedly is in a democracy, not dictatorship, or religious state.
I think it’s been clear to most of us from the early days that the media is the second front in this war in way it’s never been.
“Success”, whatever that looks like, lies in getting the rest of the world to care more about your side and/or be too apathetic or paralyzed to side when your enemies.
That’s always been the case to some degree, but this conflict is dropping on a hyper-connected video world that is new.
It’d be foolish for the heads of either camp to not try to manipulate popular opinion. Sadly that makes it harder—though not impossible—to grok the truth, but practically I don’t see it ever changing for the simpler.
I have not read this article. I am sad to see it here. I am Jewish and Hacker News has been my one sanctuary from all that has been going on. I feel a dreadful sadness about this whole situation, and unfortunately I have found that any issue I have looked into in any detail descends into a battle of claim and counterclaim. I have had to just give up and let it play out, not only what has happened and what will happen in Israel and Gaza, but also the battle of words on social media and newspapers. It is too painful for me to interact with.
I used to feel like you until I befriended a Palestinian in college. He had to take a year off because Israel denied him a permit to leave Gaza to attend college in the US. He had every document and paid tuition, but the Israeli government did not let him leave.
Since then I realized I cannot just let what's happening over there stay over there. I would want him to have cared and known and tried to help if I were in his place.
Egypt, not Israel, is where most Gazans travel through. Sounds like Hamas wouldn’t let him leave and he pinned this on Israel.
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I know a lot of Palestinians and they don't have the luxury of avoiding the news because they still have family in Gaza.
A couple of my colleagues are VCs who are in active combat in Gaza as we speak. Another VC I knew lost his daughter in the Nova massacre (or is a hostage - they don't know yet). This VC was very active in the peace process and lobbied a very large tech company we all know to open a large development office in West Bank and Gaza and pay pretty high salaries. I also know a lot of line level engineers and PMs from my previous jobs who are drafted, knew people drafted, or knew people at Nova. You can and should oppose war crimes, but at the end of the day, Hamas, PIJ, and other Gazan jihadi groups did unspeakable actions on 10/7. And honestly, I've seen and heard of Afghans fighting back against the Taliban, but I haven't seen Gazans fighting back against Hamas.
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This [1] is why the Palestinians are winning the information war among the people that still have a well-functioning soul. And, of course, the fact that the Tsahal has already annihilated thousands of Palestinians kids ("people under 18 years of age", to use the BBC euphemism) and is planning to annihilate thousands more.
[1] https://old.reddit.com/r/redscarepod/comments/18dp0jp/mental...
There's so much semantic discussion on anti semitic, pro Israel, etc. What I see is two groups of people fighting for a long time, one with orders of magnitude more fire power who does not hesitate to drop it on civilians willy as a show of force.
I just don't want my tax money to fund these weapons
Based on opinion polling and UN votes, most of the world is opposed to Israel's treatment of Palestinians, so the null hypothesis is that you would find far more pro-Palestinian voices represented on social media (not just the users, but also the unpaid and paid moderators).
We clearly see moderation policies being biased against pro-Palestinian points of view. All the "mistakes" moderators make are in the same direction.
I appreciate this post not yet being removed. The HN discussion often can contain nuggets of insight which are lacking from the “media”.
The challenge of balancing equity, justice, and personal security, and how conversations around this challenge are positioned is certainly not unique to the conflict in Israel/Palestine. I’d love to hear thoughts about how to have these conversations in ways that will lead to long term growth/positive change…
Why is America so fixated on Israel? Groups like AIPAC and the Israeli lobby seem to be steering U.S. policies in ways that don't necessarily benefit the U.S., while potentially harming its interests. Here's what's at stake:
This alliance seems to be turning about two billion people and dozens of muslim-majority nations against America, driving them towards alliances with countries like China. American taxpayer money is being heavily invested in Israel. We're talking about a staggering $260 billion given to Israel, seemingly without direct benefits to the U.S. Ethically, the U.S. is on shaky ground. By consistently supporting Israel, even in cases involving civilian casualties, the U.S. appears to be undermining international law and the United Nations, often standing alone against global consensus. Looking at the U.S. presidency, it seems like candidates from both major parties have to win the favor of the Israeli lobby to secure their nomination. Take Obama, for example. Despite his apparent disdain for Netanyahu – remember the leaked conversation with Sarkozy where they called Netanyahu a liar? – he still seemed unable to counter the lobby's influence. This focus on Israel is a massive distraction from more pressing issues, like the rise of China.
And let's be clear – Israel's loyalty as a Western ally is questionable. It's kept friendly ties with the Kremlin, hasn't joined in sanctioning Russia, and has turned down requests to send defensive weapons to Ukraine. It seems Israel would not hesitate to shift its allegiance to China if it suited its national interests.
It happens because there is a $3B annual funding of Israel (which doesn't require a vote!!) which is for weapons-only - consequently most of the funding comes back into the US through defense contractors and lobbying groups like AIPAC. (typical client-state kind of setup which is described more thoroughly in Confessions of an Economic Hitman - freely available on the internet)
These lobbies then reach out to every lever of power and funds Israel friendly politicians (and even ones who are opposed to what Israel does - to neutralize their opposition - google "AIPAC AOC"). These offers of help (carrots) come with threats to primary the politician (sticks) if that politician goes against AIPAC's policies.
The only difference for Israel vs. other client states like Egypt, Japan, etc is the lack of vote required to keep funding going to Israel.
> It happens because there is a $3B annual funding of Israel (which doesn't require a vote!!) which is for weapons-only - consequently most of the funding comes back into the US through defense contractors and lobbying groups like AIPAC
I remember reading a column in an English-language Israeli newspaper (probably Haaretz) – sorry I can't find it now – arguing that US defence funding actually hurt Israel. It isn't that much money in the grand scheme of things (around 0.6% of Israel's GDP) – from a purely financial perspective, Israel could survive fine without it. It comes with all these strings attached, which are basically designed to keep the IDF dependent on the US defense industry, and discourage Israel from developing indigenous replacements for various US military technologies. The greater reliance on US technology, instead of indigenous Israeli replacements, holds back Israel's defense industry, causes Israel to lose out on defense export opportunities (you can't export military technologies you haven't developed), reduces Israel's national sovereignty, and gives the US leverage to use to control the Israeli government (if the US doesn't like some Israeli plan, it will send behind-closed-door threats to delay military supplies that the IDF is dependent upon.) It also sustains a talking point which opponents of Israel can reliably call upon.
The column said that the defenders of this arrangement within the Israeli establishment concede that many of these drawbacks are real, but argue that they are outweighed by the arrangement's biggest benefit – it sends a signal to neighbouring countries that "the US has Israel's back".
> The only difference for Israel vs. other client states like Egypt, Japan, etc is the lack of vote required to keep funding going to Israel.
I think there is another big difference – many Americans (both Jewish and Christian) have an emotional attachment to the US alliance with Israel, which transcends whatever its practical benefits might be; far fewer Americans feel that way about the US alliance with Egypt or Japan.
It's realpolitik. It's not about Israel. It's about Russia and Iran. To a lesser extent it's also about the Suez.
It also doesn't hurt that any aid, is defense spending in the US which is a stimulus for jobs or manufacturing for defense.
Overall it's cheap expenditure for the US.
> It's realpolitik. It's not about Israel
It is not at all. This funding is only occurring because of AIPAC and similar organizations including Christian groups who want to see the end times happen and supporting Israel is apparently important for that. Israel is not a counter balance to Russia at all. And Israel (specifically Netanyahu and AIPAC) undermined the Iran agreement that was going to see them stop their nuclear program.
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It's not just America. Everyone is fixated on the Jews (for or against). There's plenty of ethno-religious conflicts all around the world but the world only cares about one of them.
Also, "lobbying" is a boogeyman here. Americans support Israel for all sorts of reasons that have nothing to do with lobbying. Israel is a settler society, it's a country of immigrants, much like the US. Israel has a rule of law, it's a democracy, much like the US. Israel has long existed within a sea of hostile Arab nations, none of which are democracies (okay minus Lebanon, kind of) and none which particularly resemble of the US. People are starting to look at the Israelis as bullies today but for most of the 20th century, they were viewed as the underdog. And finally there's a religious element: Americans are fairly Christian and feel a fellowship with Jews and view Israel as a custodian of the Holy Land. As a result of these factors and more, there's a strong affinity between Americans and Israel.
The people whining about the Israeli-Gaza war sure don't care about Boko Haram killing 300,000 children in the last dozen years.
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Some good responses here.
I’ll also add that despite only being 2% of US population 4/10 of richest Americans are Jews and they dominate both finance and media, two very influential industries. Their outsized representation/power/influence biases American popular opinion and foreign policy in favor of Israel.
Lobbying is good for the lawmakers, not the citizens. If you're a politician being offered a nice fat check to pass a pro-Israeli bill that's bad for America, and you know that the voters won't care if you vote for it, you're probably going to do it. The citizens themselves either don't know or don't care because the Israeli lobby does a lot of PR to make Israel and pro-Israel politicians look good.
Don’t forget about stretching the American military thin against China (our real political foe) and the fact Israel has illegal nukes and is willing to end humanity if they ever lose their homeland.
At the level of nation-states, there is an anarchistic relationship between one another. There's no real concept of legality at an international level when you peel away all the bureaucratic nonsense. John J. Mearsheimer touches on this briefly in his interview with Lex Fridman: https://youtu.be/r4wLXNydzeY
The permanent members of the UN's Security Council do not abide by laws they force other members to abide by. This is because there really are great powers in the world, which, despite being difficult for people in the West to understand, is very obvious in the rest of the world.
What’s an illegal Nuke?
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Israel has no capability to "end humanity" with their nukes. Only the USA and Russia have that many nukes.
About the last part - Israel is not friendly to the Kremlin. It merely doesn't actively attack due to the Kremlin control of Syria.
If Israel goes against Russia, then Russia will prevent Israel attacks that prevent Irans control of Syria and Lebanon.
life is way more complicated than you presented it
> Why is America so fixated on Israel?
1. It's a Western-style democracy in an Eastern anti-democratic location.
2. It doesn't hurt that there have been plenty of ethnic Jews in foreign policy positions.
3. The military industrial complex doesn't see costs as costs.
There is little ethics in politics and geopolitics.
In US politics there are the Jews, the pro-Israel Lobby, and also part of the Evangelical Christian who strongly support Israel for religious reason (while sometime being a bit antisemitic). More generally American people strongly support Israel - even if some are criticizing decision made by Israel. Electorally all that is important.
Election aside, everybody have his own interest, but for many decade Israel had been a solid ally of the USA in the middle East - which is/was a key region. And the coming decades it is hard to see how it can change as both have interest to work with each other
Muslims that are unhappy with the current situation with Israel, were probably not huge fan of the USA and Israel in the first place... This did not prevent leaders of many Muslim countries to work closely with the USA and growingly more with Israel : national interest first. Of course the current event increase the pressure of the street over their leader to not work with Israel on the short term...
If USA were dropping big time a key ally in a key situation for this ally, this would send a very very bad signal to all allies. But we see that Biden is much more critical about Israel than USA used to be. While still being an ally.
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Can you imagine that all it took for her to lose her job was "“Freedom for Palestine”.
That's the insanity about this whole thing. The Zionists don't believe Palestine nor the Palestinians deserve a homeland while many Jews believe they do. Zionism is an incredibly powerful entity that even brought Musk to his knees.
That's the real story here.....
Just saying....
> Can you imagine that all it took for her to lose her job was "“Freedom for Palestine”.
Which she said after Israel was a victim of a terrorist attack. Quite tone deaf, no?
Tell me do you think the Palestinians deserve their own country?
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My Israeli brother-in-law is afraid to join a pro-Palestine rally because he looks too Jewish.
Life's ironies I guess.
Every pro-Palestine rally I’ve been to has had many Jews and they’re welcomed with open arms. It’s not a religious war, despite what some would have you believe. Tell him about IfNotNow and Jewish Voice for Peace.
People tend to support David against Goliath. I've never been there, and I had no idea what was happening. All the information I have (and most of what you have) is propaganda, from both sides.
https://twitter.com/sama/status/1732925866836210151
I recommend to add to this thread the pro-Israel Twitter user: Shaun Maguire: https://twitter.com/shaunmmaguire and one of his latest thread is: https://twitter.com/shaunmmaguire/status/1733251364787302553
I find this whole thing very weird, it's all about what side are you on as if it's a game to win. Are you pro-Palestine or pro-Israel, wrong answer and you're out of the club!
Are you not just allowed to have an opinion without you being classified as some sort of adjective? The same thing is happening with politics, you're either a republican or a democrat. Well, what if you're just a regular guy who pours concrete for a living. Why can't you just be Bob Smith?
Glad to see actual discussion on this topic related to technology. Many investigations into social media being used to suppress pro-Palestinian activism, and the involvement of VCs is no less surprising. Anyone in tech who doesn’t care about what’s going on should really take a look into the huge efforts to silence people who are just trying to protect human lives.
Meanwhile Jews who work at TikTok actually report the opposite: https://www.timesofisrael.com/report-jewish-tiktok-staff-rev...
Journalists live dangerously in an information war:
https://www.afp.com/en/inside-afp/journalists-killed-and-inj...
I find it incredibly fascinating that some of the 1000 smartest people on internet are discussing if apple looks like orange, and if orange looks more like apple.
Instead of building things and relationships (which according to our very humble observation can be more fulfilling than building billion dollar companies), the culture as it is (and you can figure out which) is still today so attached to the ideas and conceptions that no longer serve humans and their fulfillment, living in times where no-one should be lacking anything.
If we start discussing if blocking water and food is can be excused by any God or highest of the dearest reason, then we should ask ourselves who brought these leaders to their positions and what is the fundamental flaw in the unfortunate human psyche.
I'm not sure why author is surprised by this. There is enormous amount of propaganda from another side too. This is how war is done today.
Sadly today our narratives are shaped by algorithms and I'm afraid that most of the people are not very well aware of that.
Not gonna lie. That gives me mild anxiety.
I don't know what's going on, and I wonder who actually has accurate information.
Speaking as an early online person, who has long believed in the democratizing power and goodness potential of the Internet... Contemporary "social media" are usually wastelands, both of rampant manipulation, and of people who haven't yet learned critical thinking nor even seen much examples of same.
I would like to call for there to once again be eminently credible and respected journalists, academics, and officials, who research and understand various global situations, and report accurate assessments that people can trust.
Trustworthy experts could answer immediate questions, and also show everyone else by example, how to think and speak better, to answer future questions.
From my anecdotal point of view, there's nothing but pro-Palestinian stuff that I see here in Canada.
There are signs about 'stop the occupation' literally all over my city.
Sorry, but it looks like the Palestinians are the ones winning this information war. They broke the peace, they attacked israel, they are the ones responsible for this ongoing war.
If you condemn Russia for them breaking the peace and starting a war. Then you condemn the Palestinians just as much.
I have no skin in this game but I have a lot of Jewish friends.
I have two conclusions:
- Whoever is in charged for this "pro-Israel" information war failed miserably. Even in Jewish communities.
- Putin is clearly the winner here.
The mistakes are the following:
- They focused way too much on the mainstream media. And nearly nothing on TikTok, forums, etc.
- They did nothing about China's and Russia's influence and their own info-war.
- They assumed Biden is popular - or maybe they hoped his support will help in public. It did not.
- They pushed "canceling" but public option about canceling changed considerable in last 6 months.
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Very illuminating information - now reading this ABC article about what is happening on university campuses and the pressure that university presidents are under is seen in an entirely new light.
https://abcnews.go.com/US/uproar-university-presidents-remar...
So now one day hence the new light is even brighter!!! Interesting that this 5th column can have so much power over so many U.S. institutions and be able to bring down university presidents.
https://www.cnn.com/2023/12/09/business/upenn-board-of-trust...
Doesn't seem coordinated to me...
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/stefanik-applauds-resignati...
I think the frustrating thing about the “information space” is that through a sum of “intentionally manipulative,” “willfully ignorant,” and “poised to attack you” voices, the whole space is pretty useless if your goal is to try to reconcile your strong emotions and thoughts on deeply nuanced, complex issues.
I’m inclined, more than ever, to just stay quiet, but as a social animal that’s exceedingly uncomfortable.
What is the story here? That Israelis try to defend themselves online?
The fact that it is a story at all is concerning.
The discussion is open, looking at Israel is not looking at the whole information war.
- Is TikTok Really Boosting Pro-Palestinian Content? [1]
- TikTok: ‘The biggest antisemitic movement since the Nazis’ says actor Sacha Baron Cohen [2]
- Apple, Disney and IBM to pause ads on X after antisemitic Elon Musk tweet [3]
- How Bad Is Antisemitism Online? It’s Increasingly Hard to Know. [4]
[1] https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-features/right-...
[2] https://www.euronews.com/culture/2023/11/20/tiktok-the-bigge...
[3] https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2023/nov/17/elon-musk...
[4] https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/17/technology/israel-hamas-w... [4]
This is not surprising at all.
I feel like we had this war's WMD moment and its just not being covered!
The Al-Shifa hospital is a pretty interesting place: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al-Shifa_Hospital
In 2014 it was called "...a de facto headquarters for Hamas leaders, who can be seen in the hallways and offices." From: https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/middle_east/while-israe...
The US and Israel claim that the hospital is again being used by Hammas: https://web.archive.org/web/20231205215049/http://www.reuter...
"Hamas is using bunkers built by Israel under Al-Shifa Hospital, former Israeli prime minister says" From: https://edition.cnn.com/middleeast/live-news/israel-hamas-wa...
Israel takes the hospital: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-67436154 and this is one of the few reports from the time. I find it odd that there is more coverage on getting there then on everything they found (or did not find).
It takes almost a week to get footage of the "tunnel" that they found: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/nov/19/idf-israel-arm...
I have yet to see a diagram, or some solid on the ground reporting. I hear mixed messages that the tunnel is on the "hospital compound" or was found "Under a wall" that the tunnel is under the hospital or to a pharmacy next door. I get that there is a fog of war, but the BBC and CNN and all our other normal news sources just quit covering or explaining at that point.
Israel has a history of bombing hospitals (2014): https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jul/21/gaza-crisis-un... so not exactly the first time this sort of thing has gone on.
I would love for someone to COVER this, to explain what happened, what went right and what went wrong. To put all the peices in one place and paint a more accurate picture, because right now there isn't one, and I think that's indicative of this entire war.
BTW, I added the "In a Worldwide War of Words, Russia, China and Iran Back Hamas" thread to see how it goes [1].
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38581205
It became clear very quickly this October that the whole issue of the conflict got a very different (more censorious) treatment here on HN than around the world.
That was such a depressing and infuriating experience for me that it turned watching the censorship play out into my main interest in HN for a few weeks, and eventually turned me off of the site altogether.
I understand some of the tensions at play for moderators here and the kind of online space they want to facilitate, and the work that controversial topics put on small moderation teams. But it still ultimately damaged my relationship with this site and broke my habit of frequently using it. I can't be the only one.
It's no wonder that when the moderation team finally decided that a post closely relating to this conflict deserves to remain on the front page, it shot up into the thousands of comments. I appreciate this post's presence here, and I hope the discussion stays manageable.
I wonder how many people will be doxxed for their comments here on this very post, just like Carey in the OP.
Most of the top comments here are against Israel, the country that is defending itself against Hamas-ISIS. I think the bias in this discussion is a direct illustration of Sam Altmans tweet from yesterday:
https://twitter.com/sama/status/1732925866836210151
"for a long time i said that antisemitism, particularly on the american left, was not as bad as people claimed.
i'd like to just state that i was totally wrong.
i still don't understand it, really. or know what to do about it.
but it is so fucked."
Why does only Israel have the right to defend itself and not Palestine? When Israeli settlers steal Palestine day by day why does Palestine not have a right to exist and only Israel does?
When Israel imprisons Palestinians for years without charging them with crimes and there is documented proof of them raping and torturing them [1] why doesn't Palestine have the right to defeat Israel to make sure that never happens again?
Why isn't everything Israel wants also allowed for Palestinians?
[1] https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20231205-resigned-us-state...
this 'resistance' is just killing every civilian right and left, that's just pure evil. Go inform yourself.
Ok heres my thoughtful comment: It doesnt matter what Israel says or does from this point forward, nothing can undo the genocide they have committed.
I thought I'd get some better take on the situation here then in the rest of social media but apparently that's difficult to come by. Especially when discussing a 100 years old conflict.
I can't see how any leftist could support Oct 7 events, and call it resistance or freedom fighting in some form. Just for context, if Hamas would have targeted military positions in the attack, then it would have been possible to say they are fighting for some liberation goal. But as this is not the case and they clearly targeted civilians locations like a rave party and villages, it's clear that this was not their goal, but their goal was to inflict terror on Israeli population.
My take is that in this long fought battle both sides made wrongdoings, but we need to be very clear and nuanced about each event. In this case it's clear that Hamas, and I may say that since Hamas is a popular movement, the Palestine public in Gaza in genera, made a grave mistake and now suffer the consequences of that decision as there is very little possibility for Israel to defeat Hamas without causing civilian casualties when they are some embedded within the population.
In this sense President Biden approach makes perfect sense; defeat Hamas with minimal civilian casualties.
The Palestines deserve better, but I think that as long as they stay fixated on the results of the 1948 war, and do not agree to let that stay in the past, there will be no end in sight.
I find this supposed expose profoundly underwhelming. So a bunch of people collaborated on private channels to promote a point of view? That happens about 10 thousand times per week. We're all living in nested, overlapping and opposing conspiracies that express themselves on social media and in policy. And of course, the people supporting Palestine or Hamas or whatever are doing the same. So what?
Why can't I downvote this article here? There is only an upvote button.
If you want to stop making hummus, stop smashing chickpeas.
> which also included a denunciation of the “Zionist ideology which promotes an exclusivist state,”
That's an interesting claim, since Israel is definitely not a exclusivist state. Yet again, 'anti-zionism' seems to be used as a dog whistle for anti-semitism
This article is pretty bad, it screams the typical "jews run the media" trope
The authors also collaborated on an article called 'Moderna is spying on you'. So they are anti-vax conspiracy theorists as well? Yikes
Not an exclusivist state, really? https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/israel-adopts-divisive-la...
Basically every human rights org has come out and declared it an apartheid state based off how non-Jews are treated within Israel proper and in Israeli-occupied territory.
> Although the law is largely symbolic
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What are you referring to? 2 million Arab Israelis enjoy all the rights and freedoms of being an Israeli citizen without any restrictions. They vote, they travel, they are allowed to practice their religion.
the world sucks
Israel is an Apartheid State long before killing 20 000 people in the past 2 months. Israel will never get the peace they seek with the oppression they inflict.
* Illegal Settlers living in Palestine can vote in Israel but not Palestinians; Israeli settlers all the rights of being a citizen of Apartheid Israel while the Palestinian neighbour doesn't have any. Apartheid South Africa did the same, they put the people in their own "country" and so couldn't vote. Israel doesn't want 2 states as that would mean millions more voting.
* There were 5,248,185 Palestinian refugees neighbouring countries in 2020; that's equal to half the population of Israel. Israel is committing genocide in trying to ethnically cleanse the land.
* Israel has ethnically cleansed and fragmented areas into [isolated cantons divided by Israeli settlements](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palestinian_enclaves), and implemented [lebensraum](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lebensraum) tactics. This was called [Bantustans](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bantustan) in South Africa.
* The Apartheid Separation wall - https://i.pinimg.com/originals/d0/73/81/d07381fffef632350bcb...
* The settlers killing in the West Bank, and burning homes to get rid of people and destroying olive tree groves.
* They control the water completely - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_supply_and_sanitation_in...
* They get 12 hours of electricity a day - https://www.ochaopt.org/page/gaza-strip-electricity-supply
* Palestinians didn't have 3G until 2018, their access is also spied on and restricted.
* Segregated road system - https://s3.amazonaws.com/VP2/visuals/en/4db97391fe7cb2462249...
* 50% of Palestinians are children.
As someone from South Africa, I've seen ethnic cleansing and Israel is doing worse. Israel is absolutely an Apartheid state. Various human rights organisations have already stated this.
Not to mention the Israeli government's rhetoric of calling Palestinians rats and that their lives are less important than an Israeli's. Hamas wouldn't exist if not for Apartheid Israel's actions, in the same way uMkhonto we Sizwe doesn't exist now that Apartheid has been disbanded in South Africa.
And it seems in the comments here and elsewhere on the interent, Zionism is conflated with antisemitism. Zionism is extreme nationalism (at the expense of innocent Palestinians), not anti-Jew.
It is a disgusting waste of my tax dollars to send it to an imperialist group trying to settle an area that was never theirs. Journalists are killed more by Israel than the rest. Why, if they were satisfied and confident they are correct? Those are the actions of guilty souls. Same for the ADL; they hide behind accusations of anti-semitism if you criticize them at all. They have weak positioning and simply want to genocide other groups. No better than ISIS and the Taliban as far as I'm concerned.
Money sent to Israel could have gone to Ukraine. Instead, Americans sponsored the massacre of innocent Gazans. I didn't vote for that, most of us didn't vote for that. Why should we accept it, or approve of Israel's genocidal war? The least they could do is be honest about how much they hate people showing the world the truth.
I truly have no respect or love in my heart for human beings who are comfortable killing to cover up their war crimes. As an American I'm sick of my tax dollars going to a bunch of desert conflicts that won't improve life for anyone.
Everyone, just a reminder: History exists. But ofc, you have a smartphone, don’t you? Oh, someone tweeted something, lemme check!
HN is absolutely disgusting on this one. Yes, I’m telling you, the guy who’s gonna see this comment before it gets shadowbanned.
I'm not trying to deflect, but I do find it interesting that just 2 months ago, >100K Armenians were permanently displaced from their homes in Nagorno-Karabakh where they've lived for literally millenia, and I saw essentially no coverage of this in Western media (in contrast, it was all over Russian media, possibly because Armenia is a historical ally of Russia and a lot of Russians are frustrated that Russia and the CSTO did basically nothing to prevent this ethnic cleansing). The Armenian-American community is rather large (>500K) but apparently nowhere near as influential as the Jewish-American community.
There are many other recent instances of ethnic cleansing that nobody seems to care about. The number of ethnic Germans who were permanently expelled from their homes in Europe and the USSR (at about the same time as Palestinians) exceeds the number of Palestinian refugees by more than an order of magnitude (10-12M, with at least 500K dead), making it the largest ethnic cleansing in modern history, but this episode is basically forgotten (presumably because sympathy for Germans was rather scarce after WW2). The hundreds of thousands of Turks and Greeks who were mutually expelled from their homes after WW2 will never get to return either. Nor will all the ethnic minorities in the former Yugoslavia who were "cleansed" from their historic homelands. So my question is, given that ethnic cleansings are not uncommon in the recent past, and that the Palestinian Nakba is not even close to the worst case, why is it basically the only one that anyone seems to care about?
You do point some interesting points.
Note that the issue in not the Nakba anymore. From memory Oslo was about giving to a demilitarize Palestinian state about 10% of the Palestine mandate territory mostly in "islands" controlled by Israel, then progressively over a long period, increasing it to 22%, with quite no hope to get East Jerusalem back. And now (even before oct. 7) that seems impossible, far too much for the Israelis. (in 1992 89% of the population was "Palestinian")
In general westerners don't care about what happen abroad when there is nothing connected to them. In French media we have seen many stuff about Nagorno-Karabakh (with an Armenian point of view), because there are Armenian in France, and because it fits the narrative of the clash of civilizations Christian Vs Muslim. But it was far, in unimportant countries for us, few dead, no suspense, nothing spectacular...
Israel Palestine is another beast :
- Jerusalem in Holly for half of the world population and most westerners
- Israel as been important in US politics for decades (partly because of the first point) and the USA are direct and strong ally
- Most non western country have been colonized or assaulted by westerners in "recent" history... This conflict is also the echo and symbol of this : westerners assaulting non westerners (while giving moral lesson to the world)
- For some westerners that is the echo of Muslim and terrorists attacking westerners - us (9 11, Paris attack are in all minds), and for some kind of a symbol of the clash of civilization
- And this is happening now, with a lot of pictures, media coverage, with new images everyday, some suspense, some twist...
Now that I think about it, one salient distinction might be that Palestinian refugees became largely stateless after their expulsion. The Arab states didn't want them (and still don't, no matter what they say), and there was nowhere for them to go in Palestine besides the refugee camps. Most expelled ethnic refugees have a homeland willing to receive them, or at least sympathetic nations willing to give them asylum.
> I'm not trying to deflect, but I do find it interesting that just 2 months ago, >100K Armenians were permanently displaced from their homes in Nagorno-Karabakh where they've lived for literally millenia, and I saw essentially no coverage of this in Western media
Strange, I saw a lot of coverage of it in Western media when it happened (and a kot today, because of an apparent diolomatic breakthrough.)
Its true that a lot of the coverage during the event was colored by relating it to the ongoing Russo-Ukrainian war, Armenia’s status as a CSTO ally of Russia.
> So my question is, given that ethnic cleansings are not uncommon in the recent past, and that the Palestinian Nakba is not even close to the worst case, why is it basically the only one that anyone seems to care about?
In the West and the US specifically, the role of Israel and the local governments degree of positiive engagement with Israel creates a rather different context to most ethnic cleansings elsewhere in the world.
Totally unrelated, did you know it was Israel that armed the Azeri army for their ethnic cleansing campaign?
https://www.calcalistech.com/ctechnews/article/rjhofzoet
I certainly did. They won't even sell Harop or Spike to Ukraine.
Did you know about the Israeli killer drone sales demo for the Azeris that practiced on live Armenian soldiers?
https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2017-08-15/ty-article/is...
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Bit of a tangent, but I'm proud of the HN community. This post was flagged almost immediately, even though there were around 70 upvotes. Then, the admins decided to give us a chance. And so far, the discussions have been civil and very interesting.
Don't forget that you can "vouch" for an article or comment that you think was unfairly flagged. From the FAQ:
> If you see a [dead] post that shouldn't be dead, you can vouch for it. Click on its timestamp to go to its page, then click 'vouch' at the top. When enough users do this, the post is restored. There's a small karma threshold before vouch links appear.
That's a great reminder, thank you!
I should revisit the guidelines and the FAQ sometime.
Also, here is a link that explains undocumented features and behaviors of HN for anyone interested:
https://github.com/minimaxir/hacker-news-undocumented
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I don't pro anything. I am against the ethnic cleansing and extermination of a people. In this case, the people are the Palestinian people.
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What did he say? Nothing new on his home page.
he tweeted a while back the number of palestinian vs israeli children who have died since october 7
there were way more palestinian children who had died, and some didn't like that being broadcast
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https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38572076
One of things I struggle with is on certain issues like Ukraine and Israel libertarian folks I normally (largely) agree with seem to hold inexplicable views which seem to border on religious rather than practical. It makes me then wonder about everything else how can the two topics seemingly have different grades of reason versus so much of everything else.
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“Vocally against Israel” when he was just responding to character assassinations?
Welcome to the internet the last couple months. Where any statement that isn't overwhelmingly pro-Israel is "antisemitic" but somehow justifying genocide against Palestinians is ok
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HN gets rid of political stuff explicitly.
I honestly think this is a good thing as virtually every other online forum devolves into emotionally driven politically charged clickbait content.
+1. Unfortunately political articles, even with a heavy and highly relevant tech slant, tend to produce toxic conversations and don't reach anywhere near their potential with regard to curious conversations (as per @dang, this is the stated goal of HN).
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https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
> Off-Topic: Most stories about politics
This is a story about social media technology and a fairly deep and documented look at how a specific group is using this technology to spread their version of propaganda and harassment.
The use of the technology may be political, but I would not call this a political article. I was surprised this made it to the front page too at first but as I read on, it ended up being a really interesting article detailing fairly specifically how social media tech is used to engage in harassment, attack people for voicing an opposing political opinion, alter public narratives on important divisive events, etc. It's probably the most plain explanation of how this process works and how social media tech accelerates it I've read to date.
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The rub is the word 'most', which means there's a line to draw—one which everyone would draw differently.
What I can at least say is that HN's approach to this has been pretty stable for years now, and we do our best to practice it even-handedly.
If anyone wants to read about what the approach is, see https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so....
Without having to take any sides, just the surprising importance of culture wars on social media could be interesting. The societal effects of social media are regularly discussed here.
This particular issue has become so emotional that careers and relationships were ruined just by taking the wrong side. Because of that, I imagine most HN folks rationally steer clear of any public discussion.
But some is allowed it seems
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38562946
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It's back on. Perhaps -
I don't think it's specific to this issue, there's a lot of people who insist 'no politics om HN' even when there is a very straightforward nexus between technology and politics.
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It is always good to remember that Jewish people include people with dark skins and black people.
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Sorry you're being downvoted, HN has always been DJ'd by administrators (which is fine) but people here are under the illusion they're seeing everything there is to this argument and not a curated view by people who are pro Palestinians.
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There's so much (intentional) confusion around basic terms in this info war.
Anti-Semitism, "antisemitism", anti-Judaism, anti-Zionism, and anti-Israel are all different concepts.
Semitic peoples include both Jews and Arabs. To erase the latter (as Zionism does) and replace them with Europeans is by definition anti-Semitic, therefore Zionism is anti-Semitic.
To address that, Zionism coined the term "antisemitism" as a synonym for "anti-Zionism".
Being pro-2-state-solution is pro-Israel (and pro-Palestine, pro-Semitic) but anti-Zionist.
Anti-Zionism is also not anti-Judaism, because there are many non-Jews that identify as Zionists, e.g. from Winston Churchill to Joe Biden and Donald Trump.
(There are also distinctions between ethnic and religious Judaism)
All this said, there are unfortunately real anti-Semitic, anti-Jew, anti-Israel individuals and groups out there that also leverage this confusion.
This does not take away from the fact that anti-Zionism is an extremely sound moral and political position, akin to anti-Nazism and other anti-totalitarianisms.
The difference between "Antisemitism" and "anti-Semitism" is merely stylistic. Both have been in use in English since 1880 when the word was borrowed from German.
It refers exclusively to hatred of Jewry not because Zionists, but because the term was was popularized in Germany in the 19th century by people who hated Jews prior to being brought into English.
Why does dang resurrect these flamebait threads to carry water for PG?
Please keep in mind this was posted on the Eve of the Jewish Shabbath (in the US, and in the middle of the Shabbath in Israel), so the conversation here is missing a lot of voices.
Also keep in mind Gaza has been cut of from electricity and internet, many there have been killed. The conversation is missing a lot of voices
Nice snarky reply, but what you are saying is around 0.11% of Muslims can't talk here, but around 30% of Jews can't.
Not exactly comparable.