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Israel reportedly used fake social accounts to garner support from US lawmakers
491–500 of 807 posts
Re: Israel reportedly used fake social accounts to garner support from US lawmakers
#492Well their enemies used social accounts to garner support from US citizens so you've got to start somewhere! It's not like we haven't done this either. I worked for a company in 2005 which was doing this paid for by politicians. Moment I worked this out, I quit.
>Well their enemies used social accounts to garner support from US citizens so you've got to start somewhere!
I mean, if Israel started bombing me, I'd try to garner support from US citizens too? There is a world of difference between that and faking social media accounts
Re: Israel reportedly used fake social accounts to garner support from US lawmakers
#493Earlier quoted context omitted.
> But in general what strategy do you need? Take over, destroy the military infra and prevent smuggling. That's all that is needed. Gaza is thousand years back, it will never recover. It is not a threat anymore in any meaningful way. Impressively amoral post, but this is insanity. (1) Israel doesn't exist in a vacuum. It is not self-sufficient. (2) There's something monstrous about keeping 2M people herded up in a cl…
Is it? Pragmatically speaking, who is going to make it end in tears? Nobody in the region really wants a war with Israel: the Arab countries got their fill of it and Iran sure doesn't want to get into an actual war. And if anyone gets any big ideas, there's always Uncle Sam (and Uncle Sam's Western allies; who, btw, include Turkey). I understand that people want to see things put right, but we must understand what wo…
> There are three great powers, the US, China and Russia, and Israel has a um special relation with one of them, whereas none of its enemies do.
Things keep going the way they're going, and that special relationship has got twenty years left on the clock, max.
I don't think that American support should be taken for granted -- and it's not like Israel is cozying up to the Russians or Chinese. They may well end up like South Africa, with investment bans, arms embargoes, sanctions, no participation in international cultural events, etc. That's a very hard fate for a nation. The white South Africans of those days weren't able to hold out for very long.
Re: Israel reportedly used fake social accounts to garner support from US lawmakers
#494it would be interesting to know how global politics and wars would change if the US were to stop shoveling money to foreign countries.
Much, much more peaceful. Once parties lack the resources for war and have to come to peace, it often takes hold in unexpectedly strong ways
> Much, much more peaceful
The entire history of our species runs counter to this. The most peaceful periods are uni or bipolar dynamic. Pax Americana is statistically meaningful [1].
> Once parties lack the resources for war
Generally speaking, impoverishment increases violence.
Re: Israel reportedly used fake social accounts to garner support from US lawmakers
#495Earlier quoted context omitted.
General lack of countries with something even vaguely resembling representative government in the Middle East. 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.
Iraq and Lebanon both more closely "vaguely resemble" representative government than Israel does. For all their problems, at least all the people they rule over are allowed to be citizens and vote.
500k Palestinians in Lebanon, 2nd-3rd generation "refugees", are not allowed to be citizens and do not have a vote.
(Palestinians are the only people in the world who the UN allow to inherit this status)
And now... Iraq?! you must be joking or cynic
Re: Israel reportedly used fake social accounts to garner support from US lawmakers
#496I'm sure the story is true, but I doubt it was effective. I don't think most politicians are really looking at their social media given most of it is trolling junk. I'm sure Russia/Iran/Hamas adjacent countries were doing the same. I just don't think they have been that effective in getting politician support. Direct lobbying or phone/email is much more effective than an online troll farm to get the attention of a po…
I would argue it is extremely effective. Take a look a r/worldnews vs any other subreddit discussing this topic. r/worldnews is controlled. Negative comments towards Israel get comments deleted and users banned. Any other subreddit, there are people arguing from multiple directions. On r/worldnews, you only see dissenting opinions for the first hour or so until the mods "clean up the thread". Obviously, this is anecd…
r/worldnews has been astroturfed by questionable entities for a long time now. I'll never forget when they censored all information about blood drives after the Pulse Nightclub shooting.
Re: Israel reportedly used fake social accounts to garner support from US lawmakers
#497Earlier quoted context omitted.
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An exercise with war casualty stats you can do is look at previous wars and look at the variation in estimates in body counts for each side. Then factor that into the news you are reading it. End game is there has never been a credible body count from even a small scale war. So to claim anyone is right here on either side is probably selective bias on your part. At best when the dust has figuratively and literally se…
For the record I didn't verify the deaths, I looked at information release in past conflicts for the last 10 or so years *.
"MoH statistics have also been verified by Human Rights Watch and used by the United States Department of State in past conflicts and as recently as March 2023, despite US President Joe Biden questioning those numbers without evidence."
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/5/14/has-the-un-really-s...
Palestinian authorities were found to be releasing counts in good faith and never inflated numbers for the sake of an information war. This is a key point, why doubt an organisation that hasn't lied about it's death count before.
Deny, Discredit, Disinform, Diffuse and Defray are things you'll see time and time again in threads like these.
Now, it's a sobering thought 15,000+ children have been murdered, in 2023/2024. With full support of the US, 'ironclad' apparently.
Re: Israel reportedly used fake social accounts to garner support from US lawmakers
#498Earlier quoted context omitted.
> But in general what strategy do you need? Take over, destroy the military infra and prevent smuggling. That's all that is needed. Gaza is thousand years back, it will never recover. It is not a threat anymore in any meaningful way. Impressively amoral post, but this is insanity. (1) Israel doesn't exist in a vacuum. It is not self-sufficient. (2) There's something monstrous about keeping 2M people herded up in a cl…
>Whether or not those people are "threats" shall remain to be seen, but Israel is going to lose (is, already, losing) the hearts and minds of everybody on the planet under age 40 At this point, I think these are not the real power dynamics. I used to think Israel needed western support to exist. I don't do anymore. Now I believe that Israel needs any support, and they are perfectly fine with the idea of allying with…
Take my upvotes. Take them! Guidelines schmidelines!
(OK, I only got one).
Re: Israel reportedly used fake social accounts to garner support from US lawmakers
#499Earlier quoted context omitted.
Iraq and Lebanon both more closely "vaguely resemble" representative government than Israel does. For all their problems, at least all the people they rule over are allowed to be citizens and vote.
500k Palestinians in Lebanon, 2nd-3rd generation "refugees", are not allowed to be citizens and do not have a vote. (Palestinians are the only people in the world who the UN allow to inherit this status) And now... Iraq?! you must be joking or cynic
That is a fair point. The way Lebanon treats Palestinians is terrible and they should not get a free pass when people criticize Israel.
Re: Israel reportedly used fake social accounts to garner support from US lawmakers
#500[flagged]
How many problems in the US are due at least in part to the desire to support and promote democracy? We wouldn’t be involved / concerned with NATO unless we valued democracy and freedom for our partners, no?
The ill-conceived post-911 War on Terror was cheered on by Israel and its supporters, but it would have probably happened either way. Osama Bin Laden specifically mentions Israel in his motivation for his terrorist attacks, but his overarching argument for attacking the US is more about western powers empowering dictators across the middle east, suppressing the local population and getting control over ressources. I honestly doubt much would be different in this regard if Israel had been founded in Pomerania instead.
The argument becomes more interesting when talking about the last 10 years. The US actually does not have a lot of self-interested reasons to keep engaging in the ME as much as they do. Controlling energy and trade is useful, but containing China seems to be the more pressing issue, and binding a lot of ressources in the ME might be dangerous going forward. Either way, it is the center point of the world, so controlling it, or plunging it into chaos, both benefit a power on the margins like the US.