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Israel live-tweets assault on Gaza

arstechnica.com

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Re: Israel live-tweets assault on Gaza

#131

Post by xenophanes »

cup wrote: post #61
xenophanes wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

are you disputing facts like these?

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/01...

Re: Israel live-tweets assault on Gaza

#132

Post by xenophanes »

haberman wrote: post #81
xenophanes wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I find your argument unconvincing, but reading more about it did lead me to this page, so at least I can now say I understand Israel's official position on the matter: http://www.mfa.gov.il/MFA/Peace+Process/Guide+to+the+Peace+P... Paraphrased, their position is: we won the 1967 war, and because there was no formal country in the West Bank prior to that, we can keep the land that we won in that war legally. Since we…

That's not what that link actually says. it doesn't say Israel as a country owns the place b/c of the (defensive) war. It argues the place has a status such that there's nothing wrong with individual israelis choosing to build homes there. it also makes some important points you left out, e.g. that trying to kick all jews out of the area would be ethnic cleansing, and that whatever you think of this issue it cannot justify terrorism.

the issue with millions of hostile persons becoming israel voters is not paralleled by any similar issue with some settlements in palestine. first, isn't the population figures of the settlements more in line with the amount of arabs already in israel than with trying to take over? second, the israel settlers are not, as a whole, hostile/violent/dangerous to have in your country, so there's no reason to mind them. palestinians, while some individuals are decent folk, as a group they are dangerous, like it or not it's simply a fact: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/01...

Re: Israel live-tweets assault on Gaza

#133

Post by skrebbel »

xenophanes wrote: post #127
skrebbel wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Dude, you called them nazis and then you assume i'm mad about any kind of criticism? you can't figure out it's actually that specific statement that's a problem? the excuse that "i am only criticizing israel (which just happens to be the jewish state, what a coincidence), not jews" is an extremely common statement of anti-semites. using it without further elaboration only makes you look more anti-semitic.

"Dude", I'll again admit that that comment was out of line.

Nevertheless, I have a hard time understanding what you hope to gain by your approach here. While you may be quite right that stating "i am only criticizing israel, not jews" is common among people who hate Jews, did you ever consider that this does not imply the inverse? It does not mean that everyone criticizing Israel hates Jews. As a programmer, you must understand this.

IMHO, the fastest way Israel support organisations can lose popular support in countries outside Israel is by calling people who criticize them (no matter how tastelessly) antisemites. I never understood why commenters like you and pro-Israel organisations appear to be so trigger happy with the term. It moves the entire discussion from the sphere of fact and opinion to the sphere of taboos.

I'll happily discuss fact and opinion with you. So whether or not Israel did right or wrong things - that's an HN-worthy discussion. But playing the antisemite card on a criticism of a government, even if this criticism is exceptionally harsh and inappropriate, that just doesn't work. I called a bunch of politicians something horrible. You called me something comparably horrible.

Re: Israel live-tweets assault on Gaza

#134

Post by ominds »

philwelch wrote: post #121
kamaal wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>>as if it is a game. Its not even a game actually. I mean you are comparing two forces of totally unequal magnitude. Israel probably has several hundreds of times a more military power, air power and naval power than the Palestinians. The Palestinians do not even have a remote chance of even touching Israel. >>it's almost like they aren't even serious about killing people and using military force. Your opponents hav…

> The Palestinians do not even have a remote chance of even touching Israel. Tell that to all the Israelis killed by Palestinian terrorism.

What an idiot. Calling genocide and occupation legal and the struggle against occupation terrorism. Poor Israelis who have been killed by these terrorists! Here are the number of Palestinians/Israelis killed since 1948. This is no two-state battle as it's portrayed to be. These numbers indicate nothing but genocide. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israeli%E2%80%93Palestinian_con...

Re: Israel live-tweets assault on Gaza

#136

Post by glomph »

xenophanes wrote: post #131
cup wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Calling the majority of Palestinians as indecent people is nasty.

are you disputing facts like these? http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/01...

I am shocked you would actually try and make that argument about a whole country of people and still have the guts to call someone criticising the Israeli government antisemetic. What possible moral high ground do you have now?

Re: Israel live-tweets assault on Gaza

#137

Post by DanBC »

ChuckMcM wrote: post #69
DanBC wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I'm really sorry that I derailed your thread.

You make some interesting points, and they could have led to some useful discussion.

I'll try (and I'll avoid the traditional flame-war aspects of the discussion.)

I think the difference may be the perceived power balances: in one situation there is an oppressive regime censoring communications to hinder rebels who are protesting against that oppressive regime. In the other situation there is a network who would be asking some account holders not to make posts on their network. Their servers, their rules.

We might dislike twitter for taking a stance, but it's not censorship.

Re: Israel live-tweets assault on Gaza

#138

Post by Shorel »

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…

I'm trying to be objective and not emotionally involved about this issue.

This is what I understand: historically you don't defeat and dominate your enemy and after some generations all is good. Historically you killed everyone to ensure no new generations would come back to fight back.

This means that historically all children were murdered too. Total eradication of entire civilizations.

The modern western warfare now respects children and woman. This is a HUGE change, and the consequences are still being discovered.

Now everything is a public relations issue. I don't agree or disagree with what's happening, I simply watch in fascination as an external unrelated entity.

Re: Israel live-tweets assault on Gaza

#139

Post by gyardley »

skrebbel wrote: post #99
gyardley wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are ways to be critical of the Israeli government without being antisemitic. You could be critical of, say, something relating to unemployment insurance. But that's not what people are usually talking about when this argument comes up - instead, they're criticizing Israel's right to exist or Israel's right to defend itself (which amounts to the same thing). When they're not being so explicit, they want Israel t…

Hm. That's a very good point. But I believe that there's one hole in your argument: it's that a country defending its right to exist means that it's allowed to commit atrocities. I strongly believe that Isreal has a right to defend itself. In fact, I think they have every right to do what this thread was actually about: track down and assasinate a terrorist. You cannot deny, however, that Israel has been less than ki…

It's actually very important to point out when people are being antisemitic, just like it's important to point out when people are being racist or sexist. Most people don't like to think of themselves as bigots, so pointing out their bigotry sometimes wakes them up a bit.

For example, you obviously don't like being called an antisemite, and you don't want to think of yourself as an antisemite. I hope that pointing out your very real bigotry will bother you enough that you'll spend some time exploring the underlying facts and thinking more about why the Jewish state is held to a standard no other nation is, and whether its actions are actually 'atrocities' or whether this belief comes from other antisemitic propaganda and lies.

Best of luck.

Re: Israel live-tweets assault on Gaza

#140

Post by ilyay »

babesh wrote: post #83
blvr wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 significa…

It is not true that all races have equal rights under Israeli law. Try immigrating to Israel if you are not Jewish. The message is clear and simple: Don't mess with us, we will f k you over. Whether it is nice or not is a different matter.

All Israeli citizens have equal rights. You can gain citizenship if you have a Jewish background, just like someone with an Irish background can gain an Irish citizenship.
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