Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Israel reportedly used fake social accounts to garner support from US lawmakers

haaretz.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

481–490 of 807 posts

Re: Israel reportedly used fake social accounts to garner support from US lawmakers

#481

Post by JumpCrisscross »

mike50 wrote: post #454
lenerdenator wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Israel is a postindustrial economy with a 600,000-man military reserve and (unofficially) a nuclear arsenal of the size and capability needed to destroy the society of any industrialized nation on Earth. Almost all of the support and protection they've received from the US since October has been mainly to keep leverage on Netanyahu and to keep the war from spreading across the Middle East. For example, if Iran's miss…

Which Israeli defense contractors build airplanes and tanks? Without aircraft and spares you cannot have a modern military. The US absolutely props up Israeli with weapons and military technology that they do not produce in country. Waving around nuclear weapons and a massive number of troops are the actions of states that are weaker then project as (Russia DPRK).

> Which Israeli defense contractors build airplanes and tanks?

Neither do the North Koreans [1][2]? (Caveats [3][4].)

America dropping Israel simply means it finds a new supplier. Russia is out of the picture, given its dependence on Iran, but China and India would be more than willing to supply.

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korean_People's_Army_Air_For...

[2] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tanks_of_North_Korea

[3] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pokpung-ho

[4] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merkava

Re: Israel reportedly used fake social accounts to garner support from US lawmakers

#482

Post by Levitz »

lenerdenator wrote: post #155
pphysch wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Israel seems to only extend that sort of courtesy to a part of its citizenry, but when you remember that the "stable" countries in the region are all more-or-less absolute monarchies, it becomes obvious why the US is willing to at least work with Israel. More directly: apartheid "democracy" > monarchy?

According to the wisdom of US foreign policy, yes. For what it's worth, the US has also tried to work a two-state solution over the last 30 years with various degrees of vigor. That became much harder to accomplish when the Gaza Strip decided to elect Hamas to lead its government in 2006-07.

>That became much harder to accomplish when the Gaza Strip decided to elect Hamas to lead its government in 2006-07.

Which Israel can't be blamed for enough.

Let's just leave this place filled with insurgents without any coordination with the authority. I wonder what will happen.

Re: Israel reportedly used fake social accounts to garner support from US lawmakers

#483

Post by JumpCrisscross »

Simon_ORourke wrote: post #87

How are those guys not treated as some hostile foreign power and have half their embassy staff expelled is beyond me.

> How are those guys not treated as some hostile foreign power

Americans’ views of the Israeli people are broadly positive [1].

[1] https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2024/05/30/how-ameri... 64%

Re: Israel reportedly used fake social accounts to garner support from US lawmakers

#484

Post by [deleted] »

FireBeyond wrote: post #413
bawolff wrote: post #372

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's fair, i maybe overinterpreted. I can understand why Israelis might be suspicious of the UN. The relationship between UN and Israel seems kind of fraught in a way that isn't true of pretty much any other country. The not allowing israel to fully vote until 2010 (edit: 2014), the (arguably) unequal focus only Israel's human rights record relative to other countries, and the whole UNRWA being totally different wi…

> The not allowing israel to fully vote until 2010 You're not going to throw that out without reference to how the US and Israel have consistently been the only countries to oppose Palestinian UN membership and voting.

[deleted]

Re: Israel reportedly used fake social accounts to garner support from US lawmakers

#485

Post by ToucanLoucan »

bawolff wrote: post #372
refulgentis wrote: post #352

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For the record, I agree wholeheartedly. It's hard to word these things. I hope it's clear the meaning is short of "The UN/UNWRA is above all criticism", happy to explicate at length if it isn't (I wouldn't be surprised, at all, anything I write on this looks like an unnecessarily mousey person's verbal diarrhea to me :) )

That's fair, i maybe overinterpreted. I can understand why Israelis might be suspicious of the UN. The relationship between UN and Israel seems kind of fraught in a way that isn't true of pretty much any other country. The not allowing israel to fully vote until 2010 (edit: 2014), the (arguably) unequal focus only Israel's human rights record relative to other countries, and the whole UNRWA being totally different wi…

> the (arguably) unequal focus only Israel's human rights record relative to other countries

Two thoughts on this:

Firstly, every time a country is getting criticized for it's human rights abuses it, like clockwork, raises the spectre of being "unjustly singled out" about it's human rights abuses. To be clear, I would very much like every country on earth that engages in human rights abuses prosecuted for it, including mine, and specifically every U.S. President that's still currently alive since they are ALL guilty of them in varying degrees. And that way, we can't be accused of biases.

Secondly, I believe it's fair, even if we are biased against Israel in this way, to be biased since it has the rather unique position of being a state that exists solely because of and by the authority of the West. It is a colonialist project and has been from it's inception and I don't think you can take this situation on fully without acknowledging that fact.

Debating whether it should or shouldn't exist is rather moot at this point because it does, and tons of people live there who have committed no crime and done no wrong. That said, it is at the end all, an ethno-nationalist state built on a foundation of war crimes too numerous to count, that is currently incrementing as they barrage an utterly impotent neighbor to death, and it is doing so with the enthusiastic encouragement of FAR, FAR too many colonial powers. Maybe that's enough to say, ethically, that all of it's citizens should be displaced, maybe not. I do not know the solution. My point is that Israel's existence, in entirety, is violence perpetrated against every country it borders with, it wars with, and who's land it sits upon. That cannot be ignored.

Re: Israel reportedly used fake social accounts to garner support from US lawmakers

#486

Post by dmix »

Metacelsus wrote: post #13

This was related to OpenAI announcing that they had shut down several covert influence campaigns using ChatGPT-generated social media posts. https://openai.com/index/disrupting-deceptive-uses-of-AI-by-...

> As of May 2024, these campaigns do not appear to have meaningfully increased their audience engagement or reach as a result of our services.

Just like I've predicted many times on HN.

Text generation is low on the list of things needed to successfully engage in automated spam. Social media is built on reputation, not who can write generic believable text the quickest. And funny enough the ex-OpenAI people (mostly Helen) calling for gov regulation said GPT should not have been released to the public because of this risk.

Re: Israel reportedly used fake social accounts to garner support from US lawmakers

#487

Post by JumpCrisscross »

CorrectingYou wrote: post #366
jjtheblunt wrote: post #350

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"greatest ally" according to whose claim? that reads like propaganda, just plain nonsense. perhaps a contender for greatest external funding liability? not sure how the hard data would rank such numerically.

I believe this was sarcarsm, since American politicians like to always pitch Israel as "America's Greatest Ally", thus making it a common target of sarcasm

> American politicians like to always pitch Israel as "America's Greatest Ally"

In the Middle East. Which is sort of true. (Cairo, Riyadh and Doha aren’t as reliable.)

Our traditional greatest ally is the U.K.

Re: Israel reportedly used fake social accounts to garner support from US lawmakers

#488

Post by tradertef »

dragonwriter wrote: post #463
MisterDizzy wrote: post #428

[flagged]

Very few. It contributes to, obviously, our foreign policy issues in the Middle East, but other than those specifically to deal with the Israel/Palestine crisis have lots of other contributing factors pulling in similar directions and probably wouldn't be that much better without the Israeli influence. Israeli influence is substantial, but it's fairly focused, and unlike other foreign hostile influence operations it…

I don't know if it is a big problem but people around the world, mainly in Muslim majority countries, hate US because of its unconditional support of Israel. Over long term, this is not good for the US.

Re: Israel reportedly used fake social accounts to garner support from US lawmakers

#489

Post by Hikikomori »

endtime wrote: post #435
refulgentis wrote: post #279

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a very interesting thing, it demonstrates something uncomfortable & scary to me as a goy Zionist, who hangs out in a private, predominantly Jewish, space. Note the biggest word in the cloud: UNRWA. All my confirmation bias was in one direction in October. The oddly dissonant and desperate messaging you'd see made things extremely difficult to maintain that, like, you have to be of a very specific mindset to see…

[flagged]

Its bad because if Palestinians agree with the attack then they can be collectively punished, that's usually what comes after showing those polls. How many in Ireland supported IRA? Should UK have bombed them as well?

Did Israel provide evidence that UNRWA supports Hamas? If so why did many countries reinstate aid to UNRWA?

Israel may have left Gaza but they still control all their borders and airspace, even the Egyptian border as nothing can pass there without Israel approving it (even before Oct 7).

Israel might be loosing the propaganda war because they're killing mostly civilians and are starving them. They are a colonialist and apartheid state. The current government has supported Hamas as a divide and conquer strategy so Palestinians cannot unite and form their own state.

If you want to get out of the propaganda bubble of Israel try the Badhasbara podcast.

Post reply on HN