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The blackout Palestinians are facing on social media

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Re: The blackout Palestinians are facing on social media

#121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In that case Israel should follow New Zealand's example and allow all Palestinians to become citizens, with full rights, stop being an ethnostate for Jews, stop with the racism and start behaving like the progressive country they pretend to be.

Perhaps they ought to set up their constitution to have a military pledged to the maintenance of a purely secular state that will overthrow any overtly religious government, no matter the electoral margins they earned when getting installed.

Or they could do what Lebanon does and have some mandatory representation from all ethnic groups in all important public institutions. There are definitely ways to make this work, if there is a true willingness to live in peace.

Re: The blackout Palestinians are facing on social media

#123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's almost like maybe you should care and speak out about Palestine and Bengladeshis in Qatar and Rohingya and Yemenis and Uighurs.

There are only so many hours in a day. This should be true at the community level, but an individual passionately caring about all of those injustices at once will end up spamming social media with advocacy because there is not enough time to pick any one to do something with greater impact.

He does not have to care about every injustice every time. But he should not be proud about not caring.

Re: The blackout Palestinians are facing on social media

#124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The sad part is that you can get called an anti-Semite (or self-hating Jew) for expressing any sort of solidarity with Palestinians. The sadder part is that actual anti-Semites then jump in and use that situation to further their agenda.

The sad part is that many American jews are so worried about their image that they will automatically go against Israel no matter what.

Who? When? That's a baseless, slanderous attack, usually used to silence Jewish people (and others too, I'm sure) saying unpopular things.

Re: The blackout Palestinians are facing on social media

#125
post #20

As an American Jew who grew up with a distorted and racist world view in regard to Palestine this just feels like history repeating itself. The troubles that face Israelis have always been amplified over those of Palestinians in my experience. That control of the narrative led me to be actively racist for most of my life while thinking I was not and also morally superior. This kind of censorship has a body count, and…

How do we measure this sort of amplification objectively? How do we account for context? I would say that it's exactly the opposite, that through most of the history of the Arab-Israeli conflict (of which the Palestinian issue has been a sub-conflict) the Arab voice has been amplified over the Israeli. Israel has faced many boycotts, many attempts to destroy it, and generally as less than favorable in world public opinion.

It is maybe true that there's been a little shift with the collapse of the soviet union and the split in the Arab world. I would still say that Israel gets more negative coverage in comparison to other world events and even within the specific conflict.

Just a recent example, at some point during the Covid crisis Israel was extensively criticized for not treating Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza equitably with regard to vaccine distribution. Nobody even mentions that Israeli Palestinians are treated equitably in this regard. Nuances are lost. Recently when Israel did agree to provide Palestinians with vaccines the Palestinians rejected them: https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/israel-says-covid-... EDIT: And forgot to add my point, that this did not receive as wide of a coverage.

Lack of "censorship" also has a body count. What about all the Covid conspiracy theories? Should we give those guys a free stage on social media? Incitement to commit real violence is also common in social platforms. To give an example from the "other" side some mobs that gathered to attack Israeli Arabs during the last conflicts organized on social media. Would you be critical if those voices were suppressed?

I can be really critical of Israel for many things. But I'm really not buying that the balance is set the wrong way. Keep in mind a lot of us are consuming the kind of news that amplifies our world views anyways. Which brings me back to how do we measure this in a controlled way?

Re: The blackout Palestinians are facing on social media

#126
post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As an American who moved here from a Muslim country let me assure you Muslims are socialized to feel the same way about Jews. Took me a long time to see it. In high school I obviously supported Palestine and thought Israel was a settler colony (all of it, not just Gaza). Then I realized: wait why do I even care? I’m from 3,000 miles away in Bangladesh. In Bangladesh, people don’t even care about Bangladeshis being he…

It's almost like maybe you should care and speak out about Palestine and Bengladeshis in Qatar and Rohingya and Yemenis and Uighurs.

Or maybe you start to question why you are being fed agitprop about X while your government is doing Y?

Re: The blackout Palestinians are facing on social media

#127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's almost like maybe you should care and speak out about Palestine and Bengladeshis in Qatar and Rohingya and Yemenis and Uighurs.

Or maybe you start to question why you are being fed agitprop about X while your government is doing Y?

Not mutually exclusive.

Re: The blackout Palestinians are facing on social media

#128
post #20

As an American Jew who grew up with a distorted and racist world view in regard to Palestine this just feels like history repeating itself. The troubles that face Israelis have always been amplified over those of Palestinians in my experience. That control of the narrative led me to be actively racist for most of my life while thinking I was not and also morally superior. This kind of censorship has a body count, and…

Note that the Israeli right-wing's biggest supporters in the US are Christian Evangelicals, not Jews. Most Jewish Americans vote Democrat and are liberal.

https://duckduckgo.com/?q=evangelical+support+for+israel+sit...

Re: The blackout Palestinians are facing on social media

#130
post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is hard to say Israel has less right to the land it took over than say New Zealand. The main difference is how long ago the settling happened.

In that case Israel should follow New Zealand's example and allow all Palestinians to become citizens, with full rights, stop being an ethnostate for Jews, stop with the racism and start behaving like the progressive country they pretend to be.

> allow all Palestinians to become citizens, with full rights, stop being an ethnostate for Jews

If that happened, then Palestinians would outnumber Jews and could dominate the country democratically. I can understand the potential for discrimination.

That's why the two state solution is often considered the only just solution: Both groups each have a country in which they are the majority.

The Israeli right rejects the two state solution, and clearly they reject being a minority, so that only leaves oppression of Palestinians (which is awful and unjust, to avoid any doubt).

> the progressive country they pretend to be

Israel hasn't pretended to be progressive in awhile. Netanyahu and some of his predecessors made no pretenses about it.

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