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

Israel reportedly used fake social accounts to garner support from US lawmakers

haaretz.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

611–620 of 807 posts

Re: Israel reportedly used fake social accounts to garner support from US lawmakers

#611

Post by shiroiushi »

lenerdenator wrote: post #141
tacheiordache wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the US is willing to at least work with Israel What do you mean at least work with Israel? The US is propping up Israel and without that ally Israel would probably implode. What’s messed up is how disrespectful Israel and some of their politicians are to US and their citizens. One thing I like about Israel is that they have a variety of oppinions and schools of thought. What we’re currently seeing is coming from th…

Israel is a postindustrial economy with a 600,000-man military reserve and (unofficially) a nuclear arsenal of the size and capability needed to destroy the society of any industrialized nation on Earth. Almost all of the support and protection they've received from the US since October has been mainly to keep leverage on Netanyahu and to keep the war from spreading across the Middle East. For example, if Iran's miss…

>you're probably going to see Israel bombarding Tehran, which could pull in Iraq

Why would Israel bombing Tehran pull in Iraq? Iraq and Iran have never been friends.

Re: Israel reportedly used fake social accounts to garner support from US lawmakers

#612

Post by nsguy »

mike50 wrote: post #454
lenerdenator wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Israel is a postindustrial economy with a 600,000-man military reserve and (unofficially) a nuclear arsenal of the size and capability needed to destroy the society of any industrialized nation on Earth. Almost all of the support and protection they've received from the US since October has been mainly to keep leverage on Netanyahu and to keep the war from spreading across the Middle East. For example, if Iran's miss…

Which Israeli defense contractors build airplanes and tanks? Without aircraft and spares you cannot have a modern military. The US absolutely props up Israeli with weapons and military technology that they do not produce in country. Waving around nuclear weapons and a massive number of troops are the actions of states that are weaker then project as (Russia DPRK).

Israel did use to build fighter jets. It built the Kfir. It planned to build a next gen airplane (The Lavi) but was pressured by the US to cancel that plan and instead buy F16s. The US also affects control of what Israeli weapons systems can be sold to who. Presumably part of the agreement to cancel the Lavi project was some sort of US commitment to supply Israel instead.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IAI_Lavi

Re: Israel reportedly used fake social accounts to garner support from US lawmakers

#614

Post by nsguy »

dragonwriter wrote: post #161
lenerdenator wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

According to the wisdom of US foreign policy, yes. For what it's worth, the US has also tried to work a two-state solution over the last 30 years with various degrees of vigor. That became much harder to accomplish when the Gaza Strip decided to elect Hamas to lead its government in 2006-07.

> For what it's worth, the US has also tried to work a two-state solution over the last 30 years with various degrees of vigor. That became much harder to accomplish when the Gaza Strip decided to elect Hamas to lead its government in 2006-07. It became much harder when the Israeli hard Right murdered Yitzhak Rabin in 1995 and then took over the Israeli government with Netanyahu's election in 1996. Both fairly explic…

It's worth mentioning that Rabin's murder was almost certainly related/triggered to the wave of suicide bombing attacks by Hamas that came as a response to the peace process. The Israeli right was up in arms about how the peace process was leading to terrorism. I.e. the root cause of this was Palestinians, not Israelis.

Re: Israel reportedly used fake social accounts to garner support from US lawmakers

#615

Post by mardifoufs »

wk_end wrote: post #608
mardifoufs wrote: post #579

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They have defacto Israeli citizenship because of the law of return, no? Not saying I agree with who you're replying to, but if a few dozen congressmen had the same status in Russia, wouldn't you see them as being connected to said country?

I mean, they’re “connected” insofar as they have the potential legal right to move there and acquire citizenship. The question is - is that kind of connection meaningful here? Speaking personally - I am ethnically Jewish, although I’ve never practiced, and of Polish descent. Technically, if I were to go through the necessary processes, I could acquire citizenship of Israel or Poland. Despite that: I’ve never been to…

I agree with you on all of that. I don't think there should be any mistrust either, but I understand that there could be biais towards the only Jewish state for Jewish congressmen. Again, that's completely normal (black congressmen have a biais for black related issues, Muslim Congressmen tend to be more pro Palestine)... Does that make any sense?

The downside of that though is that I've seen tons and tons of Jewish public figures completely downplay what's happening in Gaza, almost reflexively. Either that or unabashed support for the IDF. All of that is also common even amongst my more liberal Jewish friends/acquaintances. That's completely understandable in a way, to unite for that cause in this context but it also means that the biais is hard to ignore. Though I don't see it as loyalty to a foreign power at all, they are completely american/Canadian/whatever.

So I see it more as an issue that'd be similar to an all white congress voting on issues that mostly impact black people or other minorities. Is it loyalty? Nope. Is there biais (conscious or not)? Yes. The same goes for a congress with almost no Palestinian or even Muslim voices but a lot more Jewish voices imo.

But yes, the reality is that it almost always lead to a very dangerous way of thinking, and not just a discussion about biais

Re: Israel reportedly used fake social accounts to garner support from US lawmakers

#616

Post by nsguy »

bawolff wrote: post #347
refulgentis wrote: post #279

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a very interesting thing, it demonstrates something uncomfortable & scary to me as a goy Zionist, who hangs out in a private, predominantly Jewish, space. Note the biggest word in the cloud: UNRWA. All my confirmation bias was in one direction in October. The oddly dissonant and desperate messaging you'd see made things extremely difficult to maintain that, like, you have to be of a very specific mindset to see…

> like, you have to be of a very specific mindset to see message after message about the evil UN and not say, "uh, did we go off the rails somewhere?" I think saying "evil" anything is wrong. But the UN is still a body made up of people, and like everything has its flaws. Its done some things that have turned out great and truly made the world a better place. Its done other things that haven't worked out so well. I c…

It's a body made out of countries. Many of which are not free, not democratic, do not support basic human rights. What has the UN done that's turned great and made the world a better place? Top 3 examples?

Re: Israel reportedly used fake social accounts to garner support from US lawmakers

#617

Post by jedimind »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #610
jedimind wrote: post #569

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That really doesn't mean much in a society that has perfected the art of manufacturing consent[0] "The survey puts numbers on trends that have become increasingly apparent: Cable news viewers are more supportive of Israel’s war effort, less likely to think Israel is committing war crimes, and less interested in the war in general. People who get their news primarily from social media, YouTube, or podcasts, by contras…

> doesn't mean much in a society that has perfected the art of manufacturing consent Everyone has a snippy argument for why opioid opinion is wrong. I’m not saying, in this case, that the majority is correct. (Nor the inverse.) Just that it is the reason Israel enjoys such support here. (Would also note that both sides fervently believe the media is conspiring against them.)

>Everyone has a snippy argument for why opioid opinion is wrong.

So why did you not give your argument? I've at least put in the work to provide evidence & arguments for my thesis, you on the other hand are just saying handwavy stuff.

>I’m not saying, in this case, that the majority is correct. (Nor the inverse.) Just that it is the reason Israel enjoys such support here.

Yes and I've explained how that is largely a product of manufactured consent and there is plenty of evidence for that. I've only provided a fraction of the available evidence here supporting that thesis.

>(Would also note that both sides fervently believe the media is conspiring against them.)

That's just completely asinine framing, at least critique the article, the argument or the data instead of making my position out to be something conspiratorial

Re: Israel reportedly used fake social accounts to garner support from US lawmakers

#618

Post by nsguy »

FireBeyond wrote: post #413
bawolff wrote: post #372

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's fair, i maybe overinterpreted. I can understand why Israelis might be suspicious of the UN. The relationship between UN and Israel seems kind of fraught in a way that isn't true of pretty much any other country. The not allowing israel to fully vote until 2010 (edit: 2014), the (arguably) unequal focus only Israel's human rights record relative to other countries, and the whole UNRWA being totally different wi…

> The not allowing israel to fully vote until 2010 You're not going to throw that out without reference to how the US and Israel have consistently been the only countries to oppose Palestinian UN membership and voting.

Palestinians are not a country. What other members of the UN are not countries? I believe other countries have opposed to the Palestinians becoming UN members. The last time around 9 countries voted against and 25 abstained. So I guess 34 did not support that purely symbolic vote (since the UN general assembly can't give the Palestinians membership, only the UN security council can).

Re: Israel reportedly used fake social accounts to garner support from US lawmakers

#619

Post by sudosysgen »

hersko wrote: post #373
hightrix wrote: post #329

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would argue it is extremely effective. Take a look a r/worldnews vs any other subreddit discussing this topic. r/worldnews is controlled. Negative comments towards Israel get comments deleted and users banned. Any other subreddit, there are people arguing from multiple directions. On r/worldnews, you only see dissenting opinions for the first hour or so until the mods "clean up the thread". Obviously, this is anecd…

The only difference with r/worldnews vs r/news or the vast majority of subreddits is that it leans right instead of far left. It's just a different echo chamber...

It's not the difference. Back when it was easy to see deleted comments, it was clear to see that there was deliberate moderation to suppress certain viewpoints and stories. Now with the API changes its much more difficult, of course.

Re: Israel reportedly used fake social accounts to garner support from US lawmakers

#620

Post by nsguy »

ToucanLoucan wrote: post #485
bawolff wrote: post #372

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's fair, i maybe overinterpreted. I can understand why Israelis might be suspicious of the UN. The relationship between UN and Israel seems kind of fraught in a way that isn't true of pretty much any other country. The not allowing israel to fully vote until 2010 (edit: 2014), the (arguably) unequal focus only Israel's human rights record relative to other countries, and the whole UNRWA being totally different wi…

> the (arguably) unequal focus only Israel's human rights record relative to other countries Two thoughts on this: Firstly, every time a country is getting criticized for it's human rights abuses it, like clockwork, raises the spectre of being "unjustly singled out" about it's human rights abuses. To be clear, I would very much like every country on earth that engages in human rights abuses prosecuted for it, includi…

[flagged]
Post reply on HN