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

haaretz.com

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

#671

Post by cess11 »

cogman10 wrote: post #396
cess11 wrote: post #362

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you really believe this? Do you think this is an efficient way to perform military counterinsurgency? And are you really sure it's a good idea to wallow in war crimes like this in relation to the rest of the world? Something like, the UAE kind of gets away with it in Sudan currently, so Israel can use IDF like its own janjaweed?

Efficient, yes. Monstrous, also yes. Efficiently killing civilians doesn't make a nation moral.

I think you stopped reading at that word and because of this disregard the goal stated afterwards.

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

#672

Post by edanm »

lenerdenator wrote: post #148
TedDoesntTalk wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Israel seems to only extend that sort of courtesy to a part of its citizenry There have been over 100 Arabs in the Israeli parliament: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Arab_members_of_the_Kn...

Good for them. But if you're Arab Israeli, you don't have the same slate of rights and representation that Jewish Israelis have. See: freedom of movement to and from the Gaza Strip prior to October 7th.

> But if you're Arab Israeli, you don't have the same slate of rights and representation that Jewish Israelis have.

You're mixing up two different things. Arab Israelis (as Israel calls them) are Israeli citizens. They have the same rights as any Israeli citizen.

Freedom of movement to and from the Gaza strip is of Gazans, who are not Israeli citizens, and they indeed don't have the same rights in Israel as Israeli citizens.

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

#674

Post by School-Cotton »

nsguy wrote: post #607
School-Cotton wrote: post #565

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Israel administers the West Bank as a bantustan for the majority of their (technically non-citizen) Arab population, but does not officially count it as part of their territory, so they don’t have to grant the people there citizenship or allow them voting rights. But it’s worth repeating: Israel entirely controls this territory. That is clearly undemocratic.

What is worth repeating this is no different than any other occupied territory in the world or in history. When the US occupied Germany it didn't allow Germans voting rights. When it occupied Japan it didn't give Japanese voting rights. When it occupied Afghanistan or Iraq it didn't give those voting rights either. Puerto Ricans are administered by the US but don't have voting rights. There is nothing undemocratic ab…

> What is worth repeating this is no different than any other occupied territory in the world or in history. When the US occupied Germany it didn't allow Germans voting rights. When it occupied Japan it didn't give Japanese voting rights. When it occupied Afghanistan or Iraq it didn't give those voting rights either.

It is a lot different from any of those examples, mainly because the U.S. didn’t annex the parts of those countries it cared about (see East Jerusalem), didn’t start moving its own people to the rest of the territory carving it up like Swiss cheese, didn’t prevent people from going and coming, didn’t heavily restrict trade between those countries and their neighbors, etc.

So while indeed they were militarily occupied, the degree of functional civilian control by the democratically elected governments were far greater than that enjoyed in Palestine by the PA or by Hamas.

I agree that the situation in Puerto Rico is undemocratic but again, it’s not nearly as egregious for lots of reasons.

> This is what international law mandates. Israel is prohibited from annexing this territory by said international law. When Israel annexed other occupied territory and gave residents rights (The Golan Heights) the international community refused to accept that.

It is laughable to claim the reason for anything Israel does is “international law” when they flaunt it so cavalierly. Really, they didn’t mind the international legal implications of annexing East Jerusalem or building settlements in the West Bank, but the reason they refuse to annex the rest of it and give people citizenship is because of international law?

That’s clearly not the case. They have taken the parts they care about either by annexation or pseudo-annexation (settlements). The reason they don’t want to annex the rest is because they don’t want Arabs to be nearly half their citizens (annexing it without granting citizenship would be too egregious to ignore in the eyes of the rest of the world) and because there’s nothing there that they want. Expect this to change if the trend of Israel becoming more and more right wing continues.

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

#675

Post by immibis »

shiroiushi wrote: post #599
dylan604 wrote: post #457

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

The only people who can tell you the actual purpose of an action taken are the people who actually took that action. Everyone else can only speculate. How curfews can slow the spread of a virus, I have no idea. If you want to slow a virus's spread, you do it by isolating people and preventing them from mingling. A curfew doesn't do that; it just forces them to mingle during a shorter number of hours in a day, which i…

When you propose that a conspiracy happened, you propose that the purpose of something was different from the stated purpose. So what purpose were you proposing?

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

#676

Post by immibis »

dang wrote: post #183
runarberg wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Your account has continued to use HN primarily for political battle after we asked you recently to stop: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40519369 (May 2024) If you keep this up we're going to have to ban you, for reasons explained on many past occasions: https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme... . Edit for anyone concerned: yes, this principle applies regardless of which side of any politic…

What? This is a reply to a political comment on a political post and you punish it for being about politics?

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

#677

Post by acdha »

pedalpete wrote: post #554
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.

So would you also expel Russian and Chinese embassy staff? Allies influencing other allies is part of the process. Don't just think that it is Israel doing it in America. America is also doing similar actions in other countries where they want to win favour.

> So would you also expel Russian and Chinese embassy staff?

Yes? This happens periodically when someone is caught doing something outside of normal diplomatic duties.

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

#678

Post by ToucanLoucan »

nsguy wrote: post #620
ToucanLoucan wrote: post #485

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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, includi…

[flagged]

> Isn't the US a colonialist project from its beginning? Isn't Canada? Isn't all of South and Central America? Australia? New Zealand? Jordan? Saudi Arabia? and the list go on.

I mean, yes? And while in a better world we'd have proper solutions to that that would render unto these various peoples the land that was unjustly stolen from them, that is neither practical nor realistically achievable (undoing everything done to America and sending all Americans back to the various places they came from is quite a logistical undertaking, and we've decimated the various native populations to a degree where re-settlement would take quite a long time). Fortunately the vast majority of exploited peoples, Palestinian and otherwise, share a commonality with the vast majority of the rest of humanity; they don't want revenge or domination, they simply want to exist free of oppression, which is quite a bit easier to do (though not easy thanks to entrenched settler supremacist ideas worldwide).

So, stop spreading propaganda that they're inferior, stop excluding them from the halls of power, let them participate in determining the destiny of their societies, give reparations, etc. etc. I don't know if these things will be enough for all of these groups, they were harmed in different ways and the wounds are in different states, but it certainly beats what we've done so far, which is status quo while endlessly debating it.

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

#679

Post by bawolff »

ToucanLoucan wrote: post #678
nsguy wrote: post #620

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

> Isn't the US a colonialist project from its beginning? Isn't Canada? Isn't all of South and Central America? Australia? New Zealand? Jordan? Saudi Arabia? and the list go on. I mean, yes? And while in a better world we'd have proper solutions to that that would render unto these various peoples the land that was unjustly stolen from them, that is neither practical nor realistically achievable (undoing everything do…

> Fortunately the vast majority of exploited peoples, Palestinian and otherwise, share a commonality with the vast majority of the rest of humanity; they don't want revenge or domination,

It seems pretty hard to square this with the rhetoric and actions of Palestinian leadership, especially Hamas.

Like if this was their goal, why are they so opposed to a two state solution? It seems like they could easily have had this if they wanted it. Instead their leaders became obsessed with revenge against a militarily supperior force, and the results lead to the present day.

[To be clear, there have also been plenty of missed opportunities for peace on the israeli side as well, but it seems at least the israeli side has at various points in time made good faith attempts at finding peace, even if it ultimately went no where]

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

#680

Post by baybal2 »

heroprotagonist wrote: post #626
chipdart wrote: post #605

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you mean "try to scare us into believing Russia does"? Do you have any doubt that Russia has been interfering in US politics for well over a decade?

This seems like a remnant opinion resultant from old propaganda campaigns promoted by politicians Russia was supporting with its interference in US politics. These campaigns were multifaceted and included calling proven basic facts into question, going so far as to suggest Russia wasn't interfering at all. Convincing people to disbelieve this basic fact precluded them from any possible consideration of whether Russia…

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