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Israel shuts down local Al Jazeera offices

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Re: Israel shuts down local Al Jazeera offices

#261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the sentiment that can be seen across social media where even regular folks have started labelling israel as a racist settler colonial project that has no legitimacy A majority of Americans support Israel's war [1]. An overwhelming majority believe Israel has a right to exist [2]. (The exception being 18 to 24-year olds, among whom 31% believe Israel does not.) Israel has faced practically zero actual diplomatic co…

>A majority of Americans support Israel; that fraction has actually grown recently [1] America is a special case and does not represent the regular folks of the world because it's home to the strongest israeli lobby on the planet and their supporters are mostly die-hard evangelicals for whom no evil israel does is too far. Just listen to Jonathan Greenblatt's admission in the leaked[1] conversation where he verbatim…

> America is a special case and does not represent the regular folks of the world

Israel's net favourability is down globally [1]. But there is zero evidence it's losing legitimacy; very few countries flipped sign. Instead, it was countries that didn't like Israel a bit disliking them more. (And again, not to the degree of carrying policy consequences.)

> issue of the United States’ support of Israel is not left and right. It is young and old

Sure. 31% is a lot. But it's also still 31%.

[1] https://time.com/6559293/morning-consult-israel-global-opini...

Re: Israel shuts down local Al Jazeera offices

#262
post #205
post #176

Just a point about Al Jazeera that is worth mentioning. There are two Al Jazeeras. One which is presented to Western audiences and one which is presented to Middle-Eastern audiences. The media and articles are politically aligned in each region. Don't assume what you read in the US/UK/wherever is the same as over there. In the case of Israel, the Middle-Eastern unit were literally showing videos demanding further upr…

Can you point to some articles in Aljazeera Arabic that is doing what you're accusing?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al_Jazeera_Arabic#Controversie...

Re: Israel shuts down local Al Jazeera offices

#263

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is this true? I do not think journalists are just allowed to the front lines of any war. The entire Gaza strip seems like one giant front line. There needs to be more journalists reporting but I think just allowing anyone to walk anywhere because they've got 'press' on their jacket is probably just going to end up with dead journalists considering journalists will want to be were the fighting is and will gravitate to…

IDF also kills journalists for sport (Shireen Abu-Akleh comes to mind).

That seems very reductive to just say that as if it is a fact. 90% of the claims I've seen about the IDF end up being just nonsense. I did pay very close attention to what happened with Shireen Abu-Akleh and I think that was definitely not dealt with in a satisfactory way.

Re: Israel shuts down local Al Jazeera offices

#264
post #47

You can make a parallel with Russia Today being (effectively) banned in the US (albeit not via direct government action). Both are just mouthpieces of their respective masters and not a source of objective information. That said, banning media presence in Gaza by Israel, and the overall hesitance of western media to report on the devastation is very disappointing.

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Re: Israel shuts down local Al Jazeera offices

#265
post #17
post #7

Not that political discussion should not be had, but this has nothing to do with HN at all.

Users have a wide range of conflicting views about what HN does or doesn't have to do with. You can see that vividly in these past examples: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17014869 , which go back many years but sound like they were posted last week. HN's moderation approach is (a) most political stories are off topic (this is at the top of https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html for a reason), but a c…

Then I was confused myself. I thought Hacker News was in relation to the hacker spirit, embodied best in the book "Hackers", or even "Masters of DOOM", with a slight twist of VP and startup culture. Even the Big Tech propaganda gets tiring and off-topic. But I guess I was mistaken about the expectations.

Re: Israel shuts down local Al Jazeera offices

#266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This seems reasonable to me? If a western press were outside missile factories saying "this is the only place our super missiles are built!" I would expect the department of defence to block that information from being published...

That's unlawful in the United States, whose values Israel purportedly represents. It's called "prior restraint".

Are you saying the United States would not block something being reported by the media? Because that is certainly false.

Re: Israel shuts down local Al Jazeera offices

#267
post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Qatar is not exactly a belligerent but it hosts the Hamas leadership. It has been funding Hamas and other groups. It (partly) funds Al Jazeera. Al Jazeera is considered by some to be its PR/Propaganda arm and has a low standard for factual reporting - https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/al-jazeera/

Isreal has funded Hamas directly too. https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/10/world/middleeast/israel-q...

Is that claim in the part behind the paywall?

The furthest the freely accessible part goes is to say Israel "encouraged" Qatari payments to Hamas.

Re: Israel shuts down local Al Jazeera offices

#268
post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Then let me go on record as saying that I fully support my government and my army's efforts to return the remaining hostages even in the face of double-standard world efforts to legitimize the genocidal, racist, homophobic, and misogynistic Hamas regime.

[flagged]

Re: Israel shuts down local Al Jazeera offices

#269

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Could you please explain how you envision the hostage release to be achieved through bombing and systematic destruction of the area that they are held in? It sounds much more likely to kill them instead. Why not simply negotiate a hostage exchange? That presumes that there is something hamas wants that is viable for israel to give them. Its far from obvious that is the case in this conflict. Its not like "carrot an…

> That presumes that there is something hamas wants that is viable for israel to give them. Its far from obvious that is the case in this conflict. If that’s true (and I agree that it may well be) then surely Israel’s army’s efforts can’t be in aid of hostage release, because it’s an entirely unattainable goal? I think that’s what the OP is getting at. The tactics we see don’t seem like they’d be effective ways to re…

There are two ways it could in theory be in aid of that goal:

- putting pressure - even if there is nothing now to negotiate with, military action could reduce hamas's negotiating position and in principle cause them to sue for peace. I'm a bit doubtful in this conflict, but traditionally this how war works. If your enemy refuses to surrender, you take their land until either they surrender or they have no more land. For example in world war 1, there was still a lot of deaths right up until the armistice even though people knew fighting was going to stop soon, because the sides thought the more land we have now, the better our position will be during the peace negotiations.

- second, Israeli army could find where the hostages are and take them back by force. Also pretty hard, but if negotiations are unattainable its not surprising they would go here as the only other option.

Most wars happen to obtain goals that are unattainable by peaceful negotiation. I don't think this conflict is any different in that regard than any other.

Re: Israel shuts down local Al Jazeera offices

#270
post #265
post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Users have a wide range of conflicting views about what HN does or doesn't have to do with. You can see that vividly in these past examples: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17014869 , which go back many years but sound like they were posted last week. HN's moderation approach is (a) most political stories are off topic (this is at the top of https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html for a reason), but a c…

Then I was confused myself. I thought Hacker News was in relation to the hacker spirit, embodied best in the book "Hackers", or even "Masters of DOOM", with a slight twist of VP and startup culture. Even the Big Tech propaganda gets tiring and off-topic. But I guess I was mistaken about the expectations.

Well, it certainly is supposed to be for those things. But if you try to run a site like HN only for those things, it turns out that's not a stable position.
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