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The pro-Israel information war

jackpoulson.substack.com

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Re: The pro-Israel information war

#331

Post by givemeethekeys »

krapp wrote: post #238
ristlane wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

It's the same standard the entire world held the US to after 9/11. A response to the attacks by Al-Qaeda was justified, the 20 year "Crusade" across the Middle East was not. A response by Israel against Hamas terrorism is justified - a campaign of extermination and genocide is not. It isn't even a high standard, "don't commit genocide" has been the bare minimum requirement for any modern country, much less democracy,…

Can you provide examples of a Genocide where the population of the people being exterminated multiplies during the genocide process?

Re: The pro-Israel information war

#332

Post by catlover76 »

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,…

I would say the US has been limp-dicked in the past few weeks with their admonitions and entreaties that Israel try to avoid killing civilians (as if there isn't a strong case to be made that this is part of Israel's goal, both as a matter of simple revenge and also a strat for getting their hostages back).

However, criticizing our government as weak would require believing it cares about Palestinian lives in the first place, which is a highly questionable assumption at this point.

Re: The pro-Israel information war

#333

Post by dijit »

cies wrote: post #289
sabarn01 wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ab…

Gaza borders Egypt and the West Bank borders Jordan.

If they are blockaded by the country that they cant get along with then it is at least partially on Egypt and Jordan that they are given no way out.

Re: The pro-Israel information war

#334

Post by digging »

brailsafe wrote: post #136
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…

The alternative explanation seems unlikely. I'd think that if it were true, there'd be even one single instance of that having come up in conversation prior to bad graffiti and printed propaganda showing up all over my neighborhood. Getting a glimpse of what people allow themselves to be subjected to on the various platforms seems to indicate it's younger, easily influenced, volatile reactionary people suddenly being…

You've specifically isolated yourself from people who would talk about the issue, so you're not in a position to determine whether or not people have been talking about it. In my social circles, the conversation about injustice in Palestine is over a decade old.

Re: The pro-Israel information war

#335

Post by bushbaba »

cies wrote: post #289
sabarn01 wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ab…

The wall wasn’t always there. Just like how the wall trump put between US and Mexico wasn’t always there. Actions have consequences and the West Bank situation regressed from continued suicide bombing and terrorist attackers.

Re: The pro-Israel information war

#336

Post by nitwit005 »

odiroot wrote: post #116

That's a really... weird article to read. It's like reading a fantasy book about another universe. Or a desperate attempt at "inception". Reddit, at least, seems to be (rightfully or not) dominated by a strongly anti-Israel narrative. Even the "great" BBC is not willing to call a spade a spade.

Most of the complaints I've seen are in the opposite direction, complaining about how pro Isreal reddit is.

I'm sure it depends on what subredits you look at. The moderators are essentially free to enforce their politics.

Re: The pro-Israel information war

#337

Post by bushbaba »

DiogenesKynikos wrote: post #239
sabarn01 wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Right now, there is nowhere else in the world where so many civilians are being killed. Nothing else even comes close. 20k deaths in just two months is a massive death toll for such a short conflict. For comparison, it's more than the civilian death toll in the nearly 2-year-old war in Ukraine. The other thing is that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has been going on for decades, and many people have formed strong o…

20k deaths includes Hamas militants. So far the militant to civilian casualty ratio is actually lower than most other modern urban conflicts. Some being as high as 10 civilians for every 1 militant death.

Re: The pro-Israel information war

#338

Post by cies »

wk_end wrote: post #32
holmesworcester wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Another possible explanation for this skew is that TikTok and IG are primarily video platforms. The videos of destruction and death in Gaza are far more horrific than corresponding videos in Israel, because the scale of what Israel is doing to Gaza is so much greater than what Gaza has done to Israel. Another way of saying it is, it makes sense that someone who spends hours on apps optimized for empathy-based addicti…

It's also the nature of the violence. It's generally acceptable to show shots of bombed-out buildings and the like, or even display injured or dead bodies. The footage we and Israel have from Hamas depicts first-hand murder, rape and torture - all things which are going to violate TOS.

[flagged]

Re: The pro-Israel information war

#339

Post by dragonwriter »

sabarn01 wrote: post #241
TillE wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's one of very very few issues where America and most of the west have stood firmly in support of violence and oppression for decades, even on issues like settlements where the US formally acknowledges the illegality and takes no action. Of course people care primarily about the actions of their own democratically elected government, that's the whole point. There's no need to protest when people agree with their go…

Settlements are of course wrong, but I don't really see any concrete action that Israel could take other than removing settlements. Even if they did that the fundamental facts on the ground wouldn't change. I don't see how they lift the blockade and any 2 state solution seems a nonstarter.

> Settlements are of course wrong, but I don't really see any concrete action that Israel could take other than removing settlements.

It could do a lot in the West Bank (where the fully or partially PA administered territory is divided into 166 non-contiguous regions), and anything there xould be done in a way that it looks like a win for the Fatah-led PA, weakening the perception that Hamas and its violence is the only entity capable of delivering for the Palestinian people, undermining Hamas politically.

OTOH, the whole reason Israel fostered Hamas during the direct occupation of Gaza was to create an Islamist competitor for the more secular and sympathetic to non-Muslim states PLO, and the reason they've (and government ministers have said this explicitly) continued to support them in between periods of active conflict is to deflect pressure for peace and a two-state solution, so there’s zero chance of the Netanyahu government doing this.

Re: The pro-Israel information war

#340

Post by grumple »

kingkawn wrote: post #58
rushingcreek wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s obviously true that criticism of Israel isn’t inherently antisemitic. But that’s also a convenient excuse used by people who are actually antisemitic. Both of these things can be true at once.

[flagged]

1200+ Israelis, mostly civilians, were brutally murdered on 10/7.

There have already been real-life anti-semitic attacks on people and property. There have been synagogues and cemeteries burned, people murdered, shot, and stabbed, businesses trashed. [0][1][2][3][4] You can find hundreds more sources of recent, very real, physical violence against Jews and Jewish places worldwide.

Jews have been subject to thousands of years of very real pogroms, genocide, and conspiracy theories. These are not "possible" bad outcomes, they actually happened, we're seeing some of it now, and we have every reason to believe that it will happen again.

0. https://www.cnn.com/2023/11/04/world/an-existential-threat-a...

1. https://www.timesofisrael.com/historic-synagogue-in-tunisia-...

2. https://www.timesofisrael.com/armenia-opens-probe-into-arson...

3. https://www.reuters.com/world/us/us-antisemitic-incidents-up...

4. https://www.lemonde.fr/en/international/article/2023/11/05/i...

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