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Israel live-tweets assault on Gaza

arstechnica.com

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Re: Israel live-tweets assault on Gaza

#61

Post by cup »

xenophanes wrote: post #47
haberman wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm an American who is split on this issue (I find fault on both sides). None of the things you mentioned were ever uncertain to me. If Israel is looking for more support from people like me, the question I'd like to see them answer is: how do they justify the West Bank settlements? I can't even begin to understand how Israel can claim to want peace with Palestinians while unilaterally moving into the land where 2/3…

The justification for settlements is as follows: buying land, and living there, is legal. Describing this process is "unilaterally moving into land where 2/3 of them live" is false. A way to stop being split on the issue is to stop believing false factual claims. Palestine will have moderate leadership sometime after the majority of Palestinians are decent people who will vote for decent leaders. Blaming Israel for t…

Calling the majority of Palestinians as indecent people is nasty.

Re: Israel live-tweets assault on Gaza

#62

Post by cema »

eoin_murphy wrote: post #36
stickfigure wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wild guess: This is for domestic consumption, or consumption by western allies. The face you present to your own citizens is not the face you present to your enemy. Most Palestinians probably don't read english anyways.

It may be for domestic consumption but there are plenty of Palestinians who do speak English and I'm pretty sure at least some of them are on Twitter. After all, if a Danish cartoon in a newspaper can set off riots in countries where it is not published then I'm sure public posts on a very popular website will get some coverage. Regardless of how the Palestinians react to it, it does just seem a very dehumanized way…

  if a Danish cartoon in a newspaper can set off riots 
  in countries where it is not published
...and several months after it has been published. What does it tell us? There are people who trigger the riots and decide when and how to influence the crowds. They, or their adjutants, are interested in using the "Danish newspapers"; not the people on the street.

  it does just seem a very dehumanized way of approaching a conflict 
  where actual real people are dying
There are people who need to be stopped, and getting them dead is sometimes the only way.

Re: Israel live-tweets assault on Gaza

#63

Post by blvr »

skrebbel wrote: post #45
philwelch wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Before this, I merely thought of the Israeli government as a bunch of nazis That's probably the least appropriate analogy ever. > who believe that driving people out of their homes is god's work Israel is actually a surprisingly secular country. If you don't know the most basic things about a country, maybe you shouldn't go around calling them nazis and barbarians. There's a word for those kind of attitudes.

Good point. In fact, I may very well not know the most basic things about this country. But then how do you explain the colonization programme? The only explanation I've been able to figure out is some zionist idea of a right to a patch of land; some race-based sense of superiority. Why else bulldozer villages far across the border that was last determined in a treaty? These are horrible crimes, committed willingly b…

Wow. No. You've got it completely wrong.

Zionism is the idea that Jews need a Jewish nation to take Jewish refugees fleeing persecution. History has basically proved that to be true.

What it's not:

1. The idea that Jews are in any way superior. All races have equal rights under Israeli law (although secular Jews have some obligations that other groups don't, i.e. mandatory military service) and Israel has a significant Arab population.

2. Religion-based. Early Zionists were all secular socialists. Religious Jews got on board later when they started to see Israel as a sign from God but the traditional position (and the reason why many Ultra-Orthodox Jews still don't support Israel) is that Jews weren't allowed a nation until the Messiah comes.

Israel isn't perfect (obviously) but your comments are completely disproportionate. You need to tone down the hate.

Re: Israel live-tweets assault on Gaza

#64

Post by skrebbel »

xenophanes wrote: post #49
skrebbel wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I doubt it'll work. Before this, I merely thought of the Israeli government as a bunch of nazis who believe that driving people out of their homes is god's work. Now, I also think they're barbarians.

And you believe posting anti-semitic remarks in public is appropriate. We should care about your opinion why? Flagged.

I'm curious, why do you equate "critical of the Israeli government" to antisemitism? I have no problem with Jews at all. In fact, if you read carefully, you'll see that the word Jew (or anything like it) does not appear in my post.

Re: Israel live-tweets assault on Gaza

#65

Post by epoxyhockey »

earlyresort wrote: post #20
confluence wrote: post #5

Holy shit! What the fuck are they doing? This is absolutely insane! What better way to create more terrorists than by laughing in their faces, publishing military operations on Twitter as if they were trivial events, showing military kill strikes on YouTube and using game like graphics stating their leaders have been "eliminated". Do you want to enrage your enemy into more violence or do you want to win? Do your mili…

The Arab world is already awash in antisemitic propaganda. This Twitter account isn't going to move the needle there. No, this account is aimed at Americans. It shares short, simple, true messages: Hamas is a terrorist organization, Hamas launches hundreds of rockets into Israel, Israel is defending itself, and Israel is rather good at defending itself. The messages are designed to be shared with friends, in order to…

Coming from someone who isn't really engaged in the whole Israel-Palestine thing (and, honestly, won't be until they cause the next world war), this little display makes me feel like IDF is presenting a very real, serious act (killing a person) as if it is a game.

The trophy eliminated graphic and youtube video.. it's almost like they aren't even serious about killing people and using military force. It has a reckless feeling to it and it doesn't sit well with me.

Re: Israel live-tweets assault on Gaza

#66

Post by fusiongyro »

skrebbel wrote: post #38
gyardley wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting, how people hold the world's only Jewish state to a different moral standard than every other country. There's a word for that.

I'm sure there's people who do this, but I doubt there are many of them in this thread. The fact of the matter is that both the Israelis and the Palestinians consistently commit horrible crimes, in the name of some perceived God-declared right to a strip of desert. On individual cases, you can't blame Israel for defending against hand-made rockets flying over the Gaza strip border. Similarly, you can't blame your ave…

I'm not going to say Israel is a font of ethical behavior or that your analysis is, in broad strokes, wrong, but there are a few facts that should get clarified.

First, the settlers aren't settling in Gaza, they're settling in the West Bank. This makes the idea of rockets-as-retribution a bit strange, since relations with the West Bank are decent and they obviously undergo a lot more daily molestation than Gazans do since Israel unilaterally withdrew from Gaza.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Population_statistics_for_Israe...

Also, Israel is in no sense a single religion state. There is complete freedom of religion in Israel. There is an "official" orthodox Judaism there which sadly has the authority to determine if you get a real Jewish wedding among other things, but there are Muslim and Christian Israelis among everything else, and the stripe of ones Judaism is not relevant to immigration.

Re: Israel live-tweets assault on Gaza

#67

Post by cema »

philwelch wrote: post #48
skrebbel wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm sure there's people who do this, but I doubt there are many of them in this thread. The fact of the matter is that both the Israelis and the Palestinians consistently commit horrible crimes, in the name of some perceived God-declared right to a strip of desert. On individual cases, you can't blame Israel for defending against hand-made rockets flying over the Gaza strip border. Similarly, you can't blame your ave…

> I don't see how all of that has anything to do with Israel being a Jewish state, except of course that declaring a single-religion state, in general, is asking for trouble. Israel isn't a state for Judaism, it's simply a state for Jewish people. The set of Jewish people is not equal to the set of people who practice Judaism.

You know, many people don't know that Jews form an ethnic group, not just a religion. There is a surprising lack of knowledge about our, admittedly small, but still widespread and supposedly familiar group of people.

Re: Israel live-tweets assault on Gaza

#68

Post by mkhattab »

xenophanes wrote: post #47
haberman wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm an American who is split on this issue (I find fault on both sides). None of the things you mentioned were ever uncertain to me. If Israel is looking for more support from people like me, the question I'd like to see them answer is: how do they justify the West Bank settlements? I can't even begin to understand how Israel can claim to want peace with Palestinians while unilaterally moving into the land where 2/3…

The justification for settlements is as follows: buying land, and living there, is legal. Describing this process is "unilaterally moving into land where 2/3 of them live" is false. A way to stop being split on the issue is to stop believing false factual claims. Palestine will have moderate leadership sometime after the majority of Palestinians are decent people who will vote for decent leaders. Blaming Israel for t…

Wow, it's well known that the settlements are illegal under international law. This is acknowledged by many academics and intellectuals such as Norman Finkelstein and Noam Chomsky.

Re: Israel live-tweets assault on Gaza

#69

Post by ChuckMcM »

DanBC wrote: post #4
ChuckMcM wrote: post #2

I shared this because for me seems like a significant change on the force multiplier of the Internet. How will it affect the thoughts and impressions of folks who deal with this locally, or remotely? Will it inure us to violence or create hypersensitivity? Out of control rumor mills or inability to cover up anything. I don't know where this road leads but I'm not sure I even want to know.

Do you know anyone who has changed their opinion about anything to do with Israel? These tweets just re-enforce people's existing opinion. Also, 'ELIMINATED' is a distasteful way of saying 'DEAD' or 'KILLED'.

Yes I do know people who have changed points of view. But I am more interested in the way in which technology has changed the way all of the parties involved are acting. During the Egypt uprising as part of the Arab spring there was a tremendous backlash on Egypt for cutting off (or trying to) Internet access to keep word of what was going on from getting out. I felt that was pretty egregious, but I wouldn't feel bad if Twitter said "We don't want to enable you to prosecute your war and advertise it on our service."

So I find myself internally at a conflicted point. Why was it 'bad' for Egypt to do? Why wouldn't it be 'bad' for Twitter to do? (remember this is me asking myself if I can deduce through introspection why I'm conflicted) I'm not on either 'side' of the Palestinian conflict, but I am interested in trying to reason about morality and the Internet's impact on it.

Re: Israel live-tweets assault on Gaza

#70

Post by [deleted] »

earlyresort wrote: post #20
confluence wrote: post #5

Holy shit! What the fuck are they doing? This is absolutely insane! What better way to create more terrorists than by laughing in their faces, publishing military operations on Twitter as if they were trivial events, showing military kill strikes on YouTube and using game like graphics stating their leaders have been "eliminated". Do you want to enrage your enemy into more violence or do you want to win? Do your mili…

The Arab world is already awash in antisemitic propaganda. This Twitter account isn't going to move the needle there. No, this account is aimed at Americans. It shares short, simple, true messages: Hamas is a terrorist organization, Hamas launches hundreds of rockets into Israel, Israel is defending itself, and Israel is rather good at defending itself. The messages are designed to be shared with friends, in order to…

[deleted]
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