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Google workers arrested after protesting company's work with Israel

washingtonpost.com

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Re: Google workers arrested after protesting company's work with Israel

#211

Post by gataca »

dunekid wrote: post #189
14 wrote: post #67

For once I see a post that needs to be locked as all it is going to do is bring the worst out in HN crowd. I think we are quickly crossing into "Please don't use Hacker News for political or ideological battle. That tramples curiosity."

And the worst is really horrible. You would think that people who have pretty much all the resources to learn about the genocide is actively promoting the voice of the perpetrator. This for sure is an eye opening incident, if we were to get to AGI one day, what biases it might hold. And by looking at the attitude of those in power, future is looking a bit bleak.

Totally agree that Sudan, Ethiopia, and the Kurdish people aren't getting enough attention by the HN crowd. Why do you think that is?

Re: Google workers arrested after protesting company's work with Israel

#212

Post by packetlost »

int_19h wrote: post #198
givemeethekeys wrote: post #93

I can see both sides: Yes, Google offices are private property. Yes, Google is an American company - if Google's employees don't agree with an American company serving America and its allies - Israel has been an ally for a long time - then, they should leave for more agreeable pastures. They can even remove Google from their resume once they've found a better resume brand. However, If I were an employee at Google, an…

You know, we hear this thing about Israel being a "long-standing ally" all the time, but what exactly does US get out of this alliance except for a massive yearly bill of military aid, and recurring feuds with basically everyone else in that region?

A strong foothold in a region that has historically been unstable. Most importantly, preventing the aggression of Iran into other countries.

Re: Google workers arrested after protesting company's work with Israel

#213

Post by CydeWeys »

tsimionescu wrote: post #47
zadokshi wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Freedom on full display. Employees free to break their employment contract. Employer free to fire them. Let me guess, you want power to control what people and companies can or can not do? I don’t trust you enough to put you in control of that.

You would be right if they were fired, but they were arrested by the state. Not so free to protest.

They have since been fired too.

Re: Google workers arrested after protesting company's work with Israel

#214

Post by davidf18 »

int_19h wrote: post #198
givemeethekeys wrote: post #93

I can see both sides: Yes, Google offices are private property. Yes, Google is an American company - if Google's employees don't agree with an American company serving America and its allies - Israel has been an ally for a long time - then, they should leave for more agreeable pastures. They can even remove Google from their resume once they've found a better resume brand. However, If I were an employee at Google, an…

You know, we hear this thing about Israel being a "long-standing ally" all the time, but what exactly does US get out of this alliance except for a massive yearly bill of military aid, and recurring feuds with basically everyone else in that region?

[dead]

Re: Google workers arrested after protesting company's work with Israel

#215

Post by pcthrowaway »

Boatfaceing wrote: post #208
tptacek wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd guess something like 50% of practicing Jews in the diaspora hold beliefs that Jews are intrinsically better than non-jews Whoah, wtf? I don't care what your background is: no, not OK. I had a relatively straightforward non-normative point to make about how controversial JVP is, which you can easily Google to verify. I wasn't even here to tell you you were wrong: you asked a question, it had a straightforward answ…

[flagged]

I think Thomas (whose posts I overall have a lot of respect for) misunderstood my initial question as an indication of surprise at the mere accusation, and felt the need to explain why such accusations of anti-semitism are unsurprising.

Read that way, I can see why he thought the ADL statement on JVP might be relevant and accurate (it certainly does accurately represent the views of a number of people within the Jewish community, though I think many also use the allegations of anti-semitism tactically to distract from legitimate criticism of the actions wrought by an attitude of ethno-religious exceptionalism).

To be fair, as a descendant of Jewish holocaust survivors myself, I'm glad there's a high-profile group that makes it their mission to bring light to actual anti-semitism when it occurs, but unfortunately the ADL is influenced by actors I believe to be operating in bad-faith and has strayed from their mission in order to hand-wave away legitimate criticism of actions stemming from prejudice that exists within the Jewish community.

The Jewish community is by no means unique here; there are elements of prejudice within every demographic, and I'd wager that a near-majority of practitioners of every religion have an attitude of exceptionalism, though Judaism is unusual in having religious practices very tightly coupled with an ethnic identity that often excludes practitioners of Judaism-the-religion who aren't considered ethnically Jewish, or are an unconventional kind of ethnically Jewish (see [1] and [2]).

But I suppose to someone less familiar with the topic, criticism of prejudice that exists within a minority population can be hard to distinguish from prejudice against that minority population, so I can understand what seemed like a strongly oppositional reaction to my earlier post.

If anyone is this deep in the thread and wants modern perspectives by well-respected scholars, Gabor Mate (a holocaust survivor himself) and Noam Chomsky (another Jew who has been unfairly accused of anti-semitism and holocaust denialism by the ADL) have spoken extensively about related issues.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racism_in_Jewish_communities#J...

[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racism_in_Jewish_communities#S...

Re: Google workers arrested after protesting company's work with Israel

#216

Post by tptacek »

pcthrowaway wrote: post #215
Boatfaceing wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

I think Thomas (whose posts I overall have a lot of respect for) misunderstood my initial question as an indication of surprise at the mere accusation, and felt the need to explain why such accusations of anti-semitism are unsurprising. Read that way, I can see why he thought the ADL statement on JVP might be relevant and accurate (it certainly does accurately represent the views of a number of people within the Jewi…

You of course run into pretty big problems with both Gabor Mate, an admirer of Hamas, and Noam Chomsky, who among other things is infamous for denying the genocide in Cambodia on campist grounds. About the whole cursed situation you can distill out a through-line, of people starting their analyses with the axiom that an alliance of western capitalist world powers is responsible on a daily basis for all the ills of the world, and extrapolating from there.

I don't know what I think about JVP other than that they're not a mainstream organization. I went down a grim rabbit hole of reading about their advocacy to evangelical churches and the whole "Zionism Unsettled" thing. Look, there's nothing wrong with being resolutely leftist. It's just that it's not reasonable to argue that a resolutely leftist organization is representative of American Jewish people, or that it can insulate other activists from charges of antisemitism when it itself is continuously subjected to those same charges.

About ADL, I probably mostly agree with you, that they haven't navigated the distinctions between anti-Zionism and antisemitism well, and, like other antiracist activist organizations, diluted their credibility with mission creep and capture. Like Rationalwiki, I read ADL things for the receipts they bring and disregard the analysis.

This thread, too, is deeply cursed, and I don't mean to try to "win" any arguments here; there's no such thing, especially on this topic. I'm just clarifying what I dropped in here to say.

Re: Google workers arrested after protesting company's work with Israel

#217

Post by tptacek »

tptacek wrote: post #216
pcthrowaway wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think Thomas (whose posts I overall have a lot of respect for) misunderstood my initial question as an indication of surprise at the mere accusation, and felt the need to explain why such accusations of anti-semitism are unsurprising. Read that way, I can see why he thought the ADL statement on JVP might be relevant and accurate (it certainly does accurately represent the views of a number of people within the Jewi…

You of course run into pretty big problems with both Gabor Mate, an admirer of Hamas, and Noam Chomsky, who among other things is infamous for denying the genocide in Cambodia on campist grounds. About the whole cursed situation you can distill out a through-line, of people starting their analyses with the axiom that an alliance of western capitalist world powers is responsible on a daily basis for all the ills of th…

(after rereading what I just wrote)

Actually Gabor Mate and Noam Chomsky are just really good examples of what I'm talking about, right?

Like: if an activist said something, and a normie person objected to it, and you came back with "Noam Chomsky says this is just fine to say", you wouldn't expect that to persuade the normie. That doesn't make Chomsky wrong! It just makes him not all that rhetorically useful.

Same deal with JVP.

Re: Google workers arrested after protesting company's work with Israel

#218

Post by int_19h »

scarab92 wrote: post #206
int_19h wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You know, we hear this thing about Israel being a "long-standing ally" all the time, but what exactly does US get out of this alliance except for a massive yearly bill of military aid, and recurring feuds with basically everyone else in that region?

The national interest is really just the collective interests of the citizens of a country, and America has a lot of Jewish citizens. As a more practical matter, there is significant amount of technology transfer between Israel and the US, and Israel also is also a friendly and militarily capable country in a region where America doesn’t have many allies. Also, does America provide much aid to Israel? I don’t think t…

Israel is the single largest recipient of foreign aid from US. Has been that way for many, many years.

The national interest should be the collective interests of citizens, you're right. I don't think that what's actually sold to us as "national interest" is that in any meaningful sense, though.

But also, those Jewish citizens of US are, well, citizens of US. It's not that it's wrong for them to also have some interests wrt Israel, but why should it be of any concern to the rest of this polity?

Re: Google workers arrested after protesting company's work with Israel

#219

Post by r00fus »

JamesAdir wrote: post #55
gorbot wrote: post #14

They said nimbus was for civilian use only, then time publishes an article saying they are dealing with the IDF directly and have a discount given that Nimbus exists… https://time.com/6966102/google-contract-israel-defense-mini...

The same contract the exists between CIA and aws for it's top secret regions. I always ponder why people protest against something that happens thousands of miles from their homes, while the same activity occurs in their own country.

The correct answer is "both". Because the CIA and Mossad are very much intertwined.

Re: Google workers arrested after protesting company's work with Israel

#220

Post by r00fus »

pcthrowaway wrote: post #183
rdtsc wrote: post #87

> Anti-Semitism appears to be rampant throughout Google’s workforce. If someone would have told me 5 years ago that in just a few years, Google employees would be accused of anti-semitism, or any -ism, really, I would have never believed it. They were on the frontlines "punching nazis" and fighting rising fascism here in US, and here they are, being accused of anti-semitism, themselves.

The protest was organized by Jewish Voice for Peace... are you suggesting they're an anti-semitic group?

The modern definition of anti-semitism by zionists is: "not pro zionist".
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