The pro-Israel information war

There’s a reason why Goldbloom charted “change in likelihood” instead of simply showing sentiments in the chart. The reason is that if you look at the raw data he made available[0], the differences in sentiment between platforms are statistically insignificant.

To say nothing of conflating anti-Israel sentiments with antisemitism.

> US views skew pro-israel, and GenZ is closer to 50/50

The latest Gallup[1] says it’s about 50/50 in the US across demographics and almost 70% disapproval of Israel in the 18-34 age range (so a little bit of Gen Z and a little bit of Millennials). No polls specifically and exclusively break down responses to the exact Gen Z age range, but I doubt that would bring it closer to 50/50.

Now, there’s, of course, the chicken and egg debate. Still, explicitly on TikTok, I’ve seen Goldbloom-esque studies that document that the algorithm is led by the user’s preferences instead of the other way around. I’ll see if I can find the URLs in my history.

0: https://github.com/antgoldbloom/tiktok_israel_hamas/blob/mai...

1: https://news.gallup.com/poll/545045/americans-back-israel-mi...

Whenever the topic of water in Gaza comes up in /r/worldnews, there's an oft-repeated bit of misinformation that Gaza doesn't have water because they dug up the EU-financed pipes to make rockets.

It's not quite based on nothing: there is footage of Hamas (or maybe Islamic Jihad?) digging up pipes to use for rockets and a Guardian article saying that Hamas could use the EU-financed pipes to make rockets, but as far as I can tell there isn't any evidence that the pipes Hamas are using are from critical in-use infrastructure.

One reddit commenter posted that the video of the pipe being dug up was to supply an abandoned Israeli settlement. Israel shut that water off a long time ago. I can't verify that's correct, but it sounds plausible.

Every injustice is homomorphic to the Israel-Palestine crisis. Ergo, people will use their opinion about the crisis as a proxy for their own politics.

In much of the west[0], you're pro-Israel because fuck Nazis - NEVER AGAIN. In America, you're pro-Israel if you're Republican, pro-Palestine if you're Democrat, or pro-Israel if you're Democrat. If you're anti-colonial, you're pro-Palestine. In Ireland, you're pro-Palestine because fuck England, or you're pro-Israel because fuck Irish nationalism. If you're Muslim, you're pro-Palestine because Zionism is an existential threat to you[1]. If you're an Islamofascist you're very pro-Palestine, if you're a Christofascist you're very pro-Israel. They're just labels you stick on yourself to signal virtue.

This is, of course, terrible for actually discussing the Israel-Palestine conflict, because anything you say about it gets a bunch of mutually contradictory political positions tacked onto it. It's especially difficult to delivering nuanced takes like "Israel and Palestine both have a lot to answer for and we'd be way closer to an actual peace agreement if every politician in both countries dropped dead tomorrow[2]", because I just stepped on like five different rhetorical landmines with that one sentence.

The homomorphism is also bijective: those political labels you're being slapped with get colored with the side of the conflict they're associated with. The most obvious example being Nazi Germany, whose war crimes and crimes against humanity are viewed through the pro-Israel lens. We talk a lot of the 6 million dead Jews but not so much of Hitler's political opponents, Soviet PoWs, black people, gay people, the Roma[3], Jehovah's Witnesses[4], Freemasons, ethnic Poles, Slovenis, and Slavs, and the mentally ill[5]. That's another 11 million victims that we just... don't even think of as victims of the Holocaust. That's how much we link everything to this one crisis.

[0] Japan inclusive

[1] Or at least this was the case in the 1970s

[2] Ok, maybe this doesn't sound nuanced to you. That's the standard of debate here... :/

[3] In America we still use "gypsy", which is terribly offensive in Europe

[4] Which itself has inspired a meme among JWs that lying to protect the faith is A-OK, which is really strange.

[5] This includes autistic kids, who were sent off to Hans Asperger - YES WE NAMED THE DIAGNOSIS AFTER A NAZI WAR CRIMINAL BECAUSE WE LEARNED NOTHING

There are about 1.8 Billion Muslims on planet earth. There are about 15 Million Jews on the planet. There are about 120 Muslims for every Jewish person. In Israel there are about 7 million Jews. The anti Israel propaganda and blatant lies on social media is sickening. To someone who knows what's on the ground, reading countless 100% false posts from many (not all!) Muslims and Palestinian supporters is downright scary. Israelis (including myself) try to educate people about who is who and what's right and what is false. This article that singles out Israel for trying to provide its (true) version of reality and facts as nefarious-is misguided to be polite.

I feel like you are not actually responding to any of the content of what he actually wrote. His point was that his anger is not tied to religion.