Israeli firm BlackCore suspected of meddling in New York and Scotland votes

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There is no such thing as a "semite." It's an archaic racial category that 19th century German race science used since "anti-semite" sounds more scientific than "Jew hater." Consequently, that's why it's applied to Jews rather than a larger pseudoscientific racial group.

(More broadly, "they're semites too" is the "Elon Musk is African American" of I/P discourse. You can recognize extraordinary human tragedy without re-using race science.)

The country of Israel is based on western colonialism, taking advantage of the atrocities of WWII and the Holocaust.

It was meant as a western foothold in the middle east, which is clearly the case now. In a despicable manner, Germany now is aiding and abetting the atrocities committed by the colony of Israel, as if two wrongs make a right.

It's hard to separate for some people. Unfortunately those people tend to be the worst on both sides

In general, I think (or at least hope) your experience is the more common one. But fwiw I do have a Jewish friend who was personally cussed at and threatened by his own coworker explicitly for being Jewish (well, and probably because they were from Florida if I'm being honest, but there aren't as many slurs for that). The guy who did it was fired (whole thing was recorded iirc), nobody sided with him, he was clearly off his rocker in some way - but it doesn't take much to get shaken up - it sticks with you. And my friend was understandably, shaken up.

I know that because I used to live in Seattle, and unfortunately I had a really scary experience of being threatened (he yelled "I'm going to kill you b****") and chased down by a homeless man for nothing other than being a woman on the same street as him. So I saw my own perspective shift when it happened first hand. I was no longer excited about living downtown in a big city after that experience.

So what I'm saying is, neither me nor my friend took the experience and made it a defining thing. He still lives where he does, didn't blame the community or anything. And I'm back to taking public transit, talking to strangers on the sidewalk, and all the other stuff that comes with spending time downtown in a big city. But this time the city is Charlotte, my home city. It's probably not any safer than Seattle (maybe worse), but experiences shape perception, and I've always had really good experiences on Charlotte, including with homeless people. I could say it's because Charlotte has more police presence lately, or because there's not visible tent camps or open drug usage. But deep down, I know, crazy people are always gonna be out there, and the most trivial thing can make you a target.

So I really get the pull by people who have experienced victimization like that to talk about it. You feel kinda crazy if you don't, because you are surrounded by people who say it never happens because they've never seen it. That was such a big part I think of the Floyd protests - a lot of white people lived in a bubble and didn't know how pervasive overly violent interactions with the police can be (though the ironic part is that a lot of white people still don't realize that they can also be targeted by police with just as much malice). Most American black people already knew first or second-hand that police brutality was real and not uncommon - but until it was undeniable on video, it was treated by others as if it never happened.

So there's some honest middle ground somewhere, but the extremists are the one who have the most to gain from convincing people to believe otherwise.

I'll direct you to the Nat Turner rebellion [1]. Or the practice of "necklacing" in apartheid South AFrica [2]. Or the Mau Mau rebellion [3]. As Nelson Mandela put it [4]:

> A freedom fighter learns the hard way that it is the oppressor who defines the nature of the struggle, and the oppressed is often left no recourse but to use methods that mirror those of the oppressor. At a certain point, one can only fight fire with fire.

History didn't begin on October 7. October 7 was the culmination of (then) 75 years of oppression, ethnic cleansing, colonial violence, collective punishment, starvation, the denial of clean water, the denial of electricity and other basics and making conditions generally unlivable. Israeli tactics included "mowing the grass" [5] and putting Palestinians "on a diet" [6][7]. Palestinians are often held without trial [8] and when there is a trial it's a sham in front of a military tribunal. And this doesn't even touch the constant settler violence in the West Bank.

One reason we say the oppressor sets the level of violence is what happens with peaceful protests, such as the Great March of Return [9]. What happened? Israelis used them as target practice [10][11].

October 7 was violent, no question. but there were also a lot of lies about what happened [12][13][14].

And whatever you think about the tactics or outcomes of October 7, Israel has done an October 7 every day since October 7.

One point:

> the people in the ghetto were on the verge of being shipped off to concentration camps and being killed in gas chambers

There's actually no evidence they knew that. The Nazis went to great lengths to deceive such populations that they were being resettled.

and

> they had been suffering from rampant disease and starvation before the fighting.

Which is different, how?

> ... proscribed terrorist groups ...

That's how state violence works. It makes things illegal. There was a time when slavery was legal. Does that make opposing it wrong? Apartheid in South Africa was legal. Apartheid in Israel is "legal".

[1]: https://www.normanfinkelstein.com/nat-turner-in-gaza/

[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Necklacing

[3]: https://www.theguardian.com/news/2016/aug/18/uncovering-trut...

[4]: https://eamonka.com/2010/03/25/6-great-quotes-from-mandelas-...

[5]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mowing_the_grass

[6]: https://imeu.org/resources/resources/putting-palestinians-on...

[7]: https://foreignpolicy.com/2009/02/25/israel-denied-pasta-to-...

[8]: https://www.btselem.org/publications/summaries/200910_withou...

[9]: https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/campaigns/2018/10/gaza-gre...

[10]: https://www.un.org/unispal/document/two-years-on-people-inju...

[11]: https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2020-03-06/ty-article-ma...

[12]: https://www.jewishvoiceforpeace.org/resource/nyt-screams/

[13]: https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/10/12/white-house-walks-...

[14]: https://www.thepipd.com/content/blog/israeli-major-disinform...