Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Meta deletes Al Jazeera presenter’s profile after show criticising Israel

aljazeera.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

181–190 of 216 posts

Re: Meta deletes Al Jazeera presenter’s profile after show criticising Israel

#181

Post by gwd »

bad_user wrote: post #153
gwd wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indeed; it's possible to love a person or a country, and yet still grieve their faults and wish them to be better. I'd argue that's the only real way to love anyone or anything. On the flip side, human nature being what it is, giving any person or set of people unconditional approval is creating conditions where evil can thrive.

The criticism of Israel, coming from the left, is usually Anti-Zionism, which questions Israel's existence.

Can you expand on that?

One interpretation of "Zionism" could mean the idea that Israel should be an ethnically and religiously Jewish state that comprises the Biblical land of Israel, and that everyone else should be second-class citizens; and so simply saying that Israel should be a democracy that gives equal rights to all the people living within its borders, or that Israel should respect the Palestinian territories, would be "Anti-Zionist". Under this interpretation, "Anti-Zionism questions Israel's existence" really means "Anti-Zionism questions the existence of one particular vision for what Israel should be". That's not really a bad thing.

If, on the other hand, "Anti-Zionist" means the abolishing the Israeli government and re-partitioning the territory back into its pre-1948 states -- I mean, yeah, that's pretty bad; but I've never heard any of my left-leaning friends advocate anything like that, and such a desire would be really incompatible with everything else they're in favor of.

But these are just guesses, since you didn't provide much context.

Re: Meta deletes Al Jazeera presenter’s profile after show criticising Israel

#182

Post by SenAnder »

ethanbond wrote: post #145
SauciestGNU wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah I'm not sure about "nope", but I certainly think it's a mistake to assume Jewish people support Israeli government policies.

It’s also a mistake to think the current administration’s White House staffers set decades of defense and foreign aid policy.

You seem keen on implying this is limited to "the current administration's staff", but that's just what we happen to have data on. Unless proven otherwise, it's reasonable to assume this over-representation is the rule, not the exception that applies only to the current admin's staff.

To support this, see my other comment showing the Federal Reserve chair and political donors exhibit the same over-representation (the donor data is recent, but the Fed chair is since 1970, so it's unlikely this is a new thing that suddenly came out of nowhere): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37465220

It's not limited to the staff either - of the 26 cabinet positions (including president and vice president) in the Biden White House, 7 are held by Jews (2.4% of US population), and just 6 by gentile Whites (55% of US). One of those 6 is Joe Biden himself, and all 3 of his children married Jews. Sources:

https://www.thejc.com/news/world/joe-biden-s-very-jewish-fam...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Presidency_of_Joe_Biden#Cabine...

Re: Meta deletes Al Jazeera presenter’s profile after show criticising Israel

#183

Post by acdha »

SenAnder wrote: post #180
ethanbond wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nope. It’s eschatological Christians who back Israel. Has nothing to do with protecting Jews and everything to do with evangelical Christians’ end times prophecy. The world’s largest military has made decades of foreign policy decisions in accordance with these people’s doomsday fetish.

Those Christians are also against abortion and homosexuality, but they've had far less success on those topics - school prayer was removed, and replaced with LGBT flags.

Uh, did you miss the last couple of years where they got a huge ruling allowing them to criminalize abortion, protect religious activities by public employees on the job, laws to ban books, and have been successfully using threats of terrorism to shut down LGBQT events?

The only reason there isn’t mandatory school prayer is because they’d have to agree on whose version to enshrine.

Re: Meta deletes Al Jazeera presenter’s profile after show criticising Israel

#184

Post by SenAnder »

acdha wrote: post #183
SenAnder wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those Christians are also against abortion and homosexuality, but they've had far less success on those topics - school prayer was removed, and replaced with LGBT flags.

Uh, did you miss the last couple of years where they got a huge ruling allowing them to criminalize abortion, protect religious activities by public employees on the job, laws to ban books, and have been successfully using threats of terrorism to shut down LGBQT events? The only reason there isn’t mandatory school prayer is because they’d have to agree on whose version to enshrine.

Their success in these areas is at best contested and limited - abortion is legal in the vast majority of US states [1] and the US army officially endorses LGBT pride parades [2,3]. It is not remotely comparable to the decades long, unquestioned bipartisan support of Israel.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abortion_law_in_the_United_Sta...

[2] https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/dc-politics/us-armed-fo...

[3] https://americanmilitarynews.com/2022/06/heres-how-us-milita...

Re: Meta deletes Al Jazeera presenter’s profile after show criticising Israel

#185

Post by ethanbond »

SenAnder wrote: post #180
ethanbond wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nope. It’s eschatological Christians who back Israel. Has nothing to do with protecting Jews and everything to do with evangelical Christians’ end times prophecy. The world’s largest military has made decades of foreign policy decisions in accordance with these people’s doomsday fetish.

Those Christians are also against abortion and homosexuality, but they've had far less success on those topics - school prayer was removed, and replaced with LGBT flags.

Sorry is the suggestion here that if a certain constituency is not successful across all of its agenda items, then it surely couldn't be behind the success of some of its agenda items?

Re: Meta deletes Al Jazeera presenter’s profile after show criticising Israel

#186

Post by SenAnder »

ethanbond wrote: post #185
SenAnder wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those Christians are also against abortion and homosexuality, but they've had far less success on those topics - school prayer was removed, and replaced with LGBT flags.

Sorry is the suggestion here that if a certain constituency is not successful across all of its agenda items, then it surely couldn't be behind the success of some of its agenda items?

No. The suggestion is that there is a reason for this variance of success. The reason being that they share this agenda item with another group, explaining why they triumph here while they have only middling success elsewhere.

In your own words: We don’t really need to look for a single cause. All of these things are happening and interacting with each other. - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37446682

It's a simple concept - you understood it perfectly well when the topic was different. Why do you suddenly find it hard to grasp?

Re: Meta deletes Al Jazeera presenter’s profile after show criticising Israel

#187

Post by ethanbond »

SenAnder wrote: post #186
ethanbond wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry is the suggestion here that if a certain constituency is not successful across all of its agenda items, then it surely couldn't be behind the success of some of its agenda items?

No. The suggestion is that there is a reason for this variance of success. The reason being that they share this agenda item with another group, explaining why they triumph here while they have only middling success elsewhere. In your own words: We don’t really need to look for a single cause. All of these things are happening and interacting with each other. - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37446682 It's a sim…

Uh huh... well I'm open to good reasons for this. All the ones that you've mentioned seem like run-of-the-mill anti-semitic conspiracy stuff: they're overrepresented in the current White House admin (an astounding 34% of a body that has unknown/unnamed/questionable impact on US policy regarding Israel), the Federal Reserve Chair has been held by Jewish folks disproportionately (relevant how?), the President's children are marrying Jewish folks (relevant how?).

Now, if you came out saying, "AIPAC is an extremely powerful lobbying group that lobbies for pro-Israel bills and foreign aid," you'd definitely get credit for that. Or "ADL is extremely proactive in 'managing speech' around Israel throughout American culture," you'd get credit for that too.

But no, "Jews are relatively overrepresented yet still clear minorities in positions which are not obviously relevant to US policy or cultural attitudes toward Israel" doesn't hold much explanatory power.

Re: Meta deletes Al Jazeera presenter’s profile after show criticising Israel

#188

Post by SenAnder »

ethanbond wrote: post #187
SenAnder wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No. The suggestion is that there is a reason for this variance of success. The reason being that they share this agenda item with another group, explaining why they triumph here while they have only middling success elsewhere. In your own words: We don’t really need to look for a single cause. All of these things are happening and interacting with each other. - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37446682 It's a sim…

Uh huh... well I'm open to good reasons for this. All the ones that you've mentioned seem like run-of-the-mill anti-semitic conspiracy stuff: they're overrepresented in the current White House admin (an astounding 34% of a body that has unknown/unnamed/questionable impact on US policy regarding Israel), the Federal Reserve Chair has been held by Jewish folks disproportionately (relevant how?), the President's childre…

Government staff and cabinet [1] and 50% of all donations to Democrats, and 25% to Republicans [2], are not obviously relevant to US policy?

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37473807 - Despite your "clear minorities" phrasing, at 7/26 cabinet positions, Jews are the largest group, followed by gentile Whites at 6, Blacks at 5, and Latinos at 3.

[2] https://www.jpost.com/US-Elections/US-Jews-contribute-half-o...

Re: Meta deletes Al Jazeera presenter’s profile after show criticising Israel

#189

Post by Asparagus7426 »

gwd wrote: post #181
bad_user wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The criticism of Israel, coming from the left, is usually Anti-Zionism, which questions Israel's existence.

Can you expand on that? One interpretation of "Zionism" could mean the idea that Israel should be an ethnically and religiously Jewish state that comprises the Biblical land of Israel, and that everyone else should be second-class citizens; and so simply saying that Israel should be a democracy that gives equal rights to all the people living within its borders, or that Israel should respect the Palestinian territori…

It's more of a vilifying caricature than an actual "interpretation of Zionism." Even the most right-wing branch of Zionism, revisionist Zionism, which indeed advocated for the entire biblical territory of Israel in the past, simultaneously believed in full and equal rights for its Arab/Palestinian citizens, as outlined by its founder, Ze'ev Jabotinsky.

Zionism at its core is the belief that the Jewish people have the right to self-determination in their ancestral homeland. This is precisely what "anti-Zionism" opposes. Middle Eastern/Arab "anti-Zionists" advocate for exactly what you mentioned in your second paragraph. Additionally, depending on their political affiliation, some may seek the subjugation, expulsion, or harm of the Jewish population in Israel/Palestine. The percentage of Palestinians advocating for a one-state solution with equal rights for all is at most 33%, according to the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research (PSR).

Your "left-leaning" friends may not have expressed anything like that and might simply want to express solidarity with the perceived "weaker" side. However, by proclaiming to be "anti-Zionist," they are undoubtedly associating themselves with some aspects of hardcore Palestinian nationalism. It's puzzling to me how this is compatible with traditional left-leaning stances and why any self-described left-leaning person would want to be associated with that, except due to extreme ignorance about the meaning of the words and the actual situation on the ground.

Re: Meta deletes Al Jazeera presenter’s profile after show criticising Israel

#190

Post by edanm »

gwd wrote: post #181
bad_user wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The criticism of Israel, coming from the left, is usually Anti-Zionism, which questions Israel's existence.

Can you expand on that? One interpretation of "Zionism" could mean the idea that Israel should be an ethnically and religiously Jewish state that comprises the Biblical land of Israel, and that everyone else should be second-class citizens; and so simply saying that Israel should be a democracy that gives equal rights to all the people living within its borders, or that Israel should respect the Palestinian territori…

Most people don't have that much knowledge on the matter, nor do they have a very well thought-out idea of what they're actually advocating. A simple "pro-Israeli" vs "pro-Palestinian" split is kind of ridiculos, as you say - there are many interpretations of what it even means to be pro-Israel, since Israel itself is in the middle of a political crisis in which its trying to figure out this question!

Having said that, in my experience, a lot of people have some vague sense of "Israel should not be a purely Jewish state, should allow equal status to everyone else, should give the right of return to all Palestinians [implicitly meaning that it would no longer be a Jewish majority state]" etc.

And most people don't have a good answer to the question: Poland is a state for ethnic Polish people, Spain is a place for Spanish people, Japan is a place for Japanese people; why can't there be a country that's for Jewish place? Why is a country for Jewish people somehow illegitimate?

(There are good answers given the history why this particular instantiation of Israel is a problem. So good that nobody has been able to solve these problems for so many years. But many people talking about this don't know those reasons - they just vaguely think "Israel bad, not allowing anyone equal rights is 'apartheid'" etc.)

Post reply on HN