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

The pro-Israel information war

jackpoulson.substack.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

281–290 of 1001 posts

Re: The pro-Israel information war

#281

Post by __loam »

jdross wrote: post #7

Pro-Palestinian views outrank Pro-Israeli online by around 36 to 1 on TikTok and 8 to 1 on other online platforms. https://twitter.com/antgoldbloom/status/1721561226151612602 If anything the skew within the platforms is to prioritize pro-palestinian views https://twitter.com/committeeonccp/status/173279243496103143... It also seems like these platforms create (rather than support) anti-Israeli views: https://twitter.…

> so if there's something going on online, it's not in favor of Israel.

More people live outside the United States and Israel than in them, and they use these platforms. Many of those people have been out are descendants of subjects of colonialism and Imperialism, whether at the hands of Europe or America. Many of those people view Israel as a colonial project.

And yeah, as you mentioned, a large portion of the world is Muslim.

Re: The pro-Israel information war

#282

Post by DiogenesKynikos »

ReptileMan wrote: post #253
Scubabear68 wrote: post #91

I have no skin in this game. What I have seen is a confusion (perhaps intentional) between anti-semitism, and protesting Israel’s behavior since the Hamas attack in October. Criticizing Israel’s response is not anti-Semitism- it is literally just criticizing the response.

>Criticizing Israel’s response is not anti-Semitism- it is literally just criticizing the response. Okay - then what should be Israel's response? For me what they are doing is the bare minimum with the minimum casualties from the options they have. Hamas is Gaza's government. Hamas has intertwined the civilian and the military infrastructure. Hamas has made sure that the civilian Palestinians will suffer if you targe…

Their response should be to leave the occupied territories, which aren't theirs to begin with, and to recognize a Palestinian state. Israel has held millions of Palestinians under military occupation for more than half a century, and it's way past time that that ended.

Re: The pro-Israel information war

#283

Post by notaustinpowers »

mantas wrote: post #257
notaustinpowers wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The free flow of information and lack of government control over access to that information. Much of the early Iraq war and even, to an extent, conflicts with ISIS and Yemen had the benefit of those citizens not having access to the internet. So any information many American citizens were getting was filtered through what the military allowed to be known, then further filtered by the news. With Palestine and Israel,…

I remember quite a lot of footage from ISIS around the internet. The difference was that mainstream media didn’t pick them up. Nor there was a widespread support to ISIS. Even though both ISIS was similar to Hamas and dealing with ISIS was as brutal as Gaza invasion with many collaterals.

There were lots of videos from ISIS, but there wasn't much, if any, coming from the citizens of Iraq or Syria. But we're seeing a lot of videos, photos, messages, etc coming from the citizens of Gaza.

We, as a world, are seeing civilian life and casualties during a war in near real-time. This is something that many of us have never experienced before.

Re: The pro-Israel information war

#284

Post by instaeloq »

azinman2 wrote: post #76
sertbdfgbnfgsd wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Pro-Palestinian views outrank Pro-Israeli online by around 36 to 1 on TikTok and 8 to 1 on other online platforms. > If anything the skew within the platforms is to prioritize pro-palestinian views. That platforms prioritize one over the other is just one possible explanation. An alternative explanation is that more people already have those views. And it's dishonest to present one explanation and omit the other. N…

And where do you think that comes from? Some coherent well researched culturally deep understanding of history and the current status of things by the entire population? Of course not, it’s propaganda. There are ethnic conflicts worldwide that often have more bloodshed, many occurring simultaneously right now, but this gets all the rhetoric and attention.

[flagged]

Re: The pro-Israel information war

#285

Post by khazhoux »

rushingcreek wrote: post #66
beltsazar wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It depends on "Israeli what". Anti Israeli government: It's not antisemitic. Anti Israeli people: It's antisemitic.

It’s more complicated than that. Criticizing Israeli settlements in the West Bank is not antisemitic. But suggesting that Israel has no right to exist as a Jewish state is antisemitic as it implies ethnic cleansing. Both are arguably criticisms of the Israeli government.

> Criticizing Israeli settlements in the West Bank is not antisemitic. But suggesting that Israel has no right to exist as a Jewish state is antisemitic as it implies ethnic cleansing.

This is precisely an example of the conflation of "anti-Israel" with "anti-semitic." It is entirely possibly for a person to disagree with the geopolitical decisions and military actions that led to the formation of Israel, without harboring ill will against anyone for being Jewish.

Re: The pro-Israel information war

#286

Post by catlover76 »

rushingcreek wrote: post #66
beltsazar wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It depends on "Israeli what". Anti Israeli government: It's not antisemitic. Anti Israeli people: It's antisemitic.

It’s more complicated than that. Criticizing Israeli settlements in the West Bank is not antisemitic. But suggesting that Israel has no right to exist as a Jewish state is antisemitic as it implies ethnic cleansing. Both are arguably criticisms of the Israeli government.

> But suggesting that Israel has no right to exist as a Jewish state is antisemitic as it implies ethnic cleansing.

I've seen very few serious declarations that Israel has no right to exist. I have seen even fewer genuine existential threats to it in the past 2 or 3 decades, and that's not to discount how big of a deal or how sad an event Hamas's attack was.

But I have seen a lot of pro-Israel voices, e.g. at recent Congressional PR-stunt hearings, aggressively question anyone who doesn't bow in deference to their narrative whether they agree Israel has a right to exist. That whole line of tactic is a massive distraction from the question those voices don't want asked, either of themselves or anyone else, which is "do you think Israel has the right to do what it is currently doing to the Palestinians?"

Re: The pro-Israel information war

#287

Post by Animats »

fnimick wrote: post #161
pydry wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's obviously true that calling out or implying anti semitism where it doesnt exist doesnt automatically make the accuser an racist. But it usually does. They are, while doing this, implicitly or explicitly endorsing Bibi's "exterminate the palestinians" Amalek trope, Ben Gvir hanging a portrait of Baruch Goldstein on his wall (shot up a mosque, considered to be a hero by ~10% of Israelis) and Isaac Herzog calling r…

Don't forget Smotrich, a leader in the current government, who said it was a "mistake" that the first Israeli government didn't "finish the job" of expelling all the Arabs from Israel. https://www.timesofisrael.com/smotrich-at-knesset-ben-gurion... The current Israeli government has espoused their views that Palestinians should not have their own state, that all Arabs are terror supporters who are the enemy of Israel…

This is getting into the internal politics of Israel, which are a mess. No party has anywhere near a majority. Netanyahu has had over 16 years in power, and he stays there by trying to hold together a coalition whose parties don't get along at all. How he's done that is not pretty.

(Imagine the US with Trump in his fifth term of office. Now you have roughly the right picture.)

Re: The pro-Israel information war

#288

Post by givemeethekeys »

rcpt wrote: post #221
incrudible wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The question is, what is so special about the Israeli/Palestine conflict that leads to these outsized protests? I do not recollect a similar response to the treatment of ISIS or the war in Yemen, even though both had the unconditional support of the US war machine. Even if the left could be absolved of antisemitism, the resistance groups it is aligning itself with clearly can not.

There is something particularly grating about how Israel acts with impunity on the world stage yet continues to receive unfaltering support from the US government. They secretly introduced nuclear weapons into the Middle East and refused to sign any of the treaties which are responsible for humanities current existence. According to Snowden the NSA provides them with whatever data they'd like, even that on Americans,…

What would you do if you were running the show in Israel? You’re responsible for a group of people that none of your neighbors want, even if they are the same race, ethnicity and religion, and those people have an ongoing campaign to push you out, which has been unsuccessful for as long as it has been going on. Oh yeah, their population is now many multiples higher than when all this started.

Re: The pro-Israel information war

#289

Post by cies »

sabarn01 wrote: post #189
sertbdfgbnfgsd wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Pro-Palestinian views outrank Pro-Israeli online by around 36 to 1 on TikTok and 8 to 1 on other online platforms. > If anything the skew within the platforms is to prioritize pro-palestinian views. That platforms prioritize one over the other is just one possible explanation. An alternative explanation is that more people already have those views. And it's dishonest to present one explanation and omit the other. N…

There is an ocean of injustice in the world and this one issue causes more anger than many that are equally abhorrent.

> equally abohorrent

Comparing it to the Ukraine's invasion and we can see this is so much more "invasive". There's a literal wall around 2M ppl with little agency, while most of them are refugees from the other side of the wall.

To methis is one of the most abohorrent conflicts in earth in this day and age. Given South Africa is no longer segregated, and Rwanda reconciled.

I'd be interested to hear what's equally abhorrent in your view.

Re: The pro-Israel information war

#290

Post by ToucanLoucan »

Terr_ wrote: post #105
sertbdfgbnfgsd wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Pro-Palestinian views outrank Pro-Israeli online by around 36 to 1 on TikTok and 8 to 1 on other online platforms. > If anything the skew within the platforms is to prioritize pro-palestinian views. That platforms prioritize one over the other is just one possible explanation. An alternative explanation is that more people already have those views. And it's dishonest to present one explanation and omit the other. N…

> An alternative explanation is that more people already have those views. Treading a fine line here between Bayesian priors and stereotypes, but the worldwide Muslim/Jewish population split is something like 112:1. Obviously that's not going to be the same proportion on a given media-service, but it should still inform our expectations of what is the "default" state before theorizing about platform algorithm-tweakin…

This also presumes that any Muslim will be pro-Palestine and any Jewish person would be pro-Israel, a pretty strong statement given that entire communities within Israel are staunchly opposed to their ongoing actions against Hamas, which increasingly seem to be actually against Palestinian people, whom themselves also have a wide and diverse set of opinions about Hamas.

The war is shockingly unpopular on both sides of itself and seemingly the only people who are in favor of Israel's current plan of action is the Israeli government and the people who, for PR reasons, refuse to criticize Israel since Israel has done such an excellent job propagandizing people into thinking being anti-Israel in any way is synonymous with being anti-Semetic.

Post reply on HN