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Israel police uses NSO’s Pegasus to spy on citizens

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Re: Israel police uses NSO’s Pegasus to spy on citizens

#71

Post by tsimionescu »

voz_ wrote: post #34
terr-dav wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a democracy of the first-class citizens only. Don't forget it's an apartheid state!

This is not grounded in reality. Arab citizens can vote and participate, and there are Arab parties in Israeli government. If you want to see an apartheid, go look at any other country in the middle east. Let's see how Jewish representation looks there...?

Many countries in the Middle East are islamic theocracies, so they limit religious freedom by their very constitution. However, even in Iran, a person of Jewish heritage who converts to Islam should not have any (official legal) barriers to entry in political life. In a country ruled by a church, that seems relatively reasonable.

Re: Israel police uses NSO’s Pegasus to spy on citizens

#72

Post by underdeserver »

Barrin92 wrote: post #17

People used to quip that Prussia is an army with a country rather than the other way around, it seems like if you add the modern intelligence sector that describes Israel. With all the concerns about 'Military-civil fusion ' as it's called in China or Russia I always found it funny that Israel might as well be the country that has merged both spheres most successfully but nobody really seems to care at all.

I think you are grossly overestimating the interconnectedness of it all. Yes the defense sector is large. NSO employs what, 300 people? The Israeli tech sector as a whole employs about a million, including tens of thousands working for Microsoft, Nvidia, Intel, Google, Apple, Amazon, IBM, Oracle, Facebook, Dropbox among others.

The cloak and dagger people are a drop in the bucket.

Re: Israel police uses NSO’s Pegasus to spy on citizens

#73

Post by myth_drannon »

encryptluks2 wrote: post #23
myth_drannon wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It was not, no matter how the company tries to market itself to foreign clients. Israeli intel has more important work to do than develop software to spy on journalists and others persons of interest for big ego dictators.

Quoted post unavailable.

No post body was provided.

Re: Israel police uses NSO’s Pegasus to spy on citizens

#74

Post by jonny_eh »

Seattle3503 wrote: post #27
jonny_eh wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did you mean "Prussia was an army with a country" or "Russia is an army with a country"?

Prussia. There was a period of time in history when Prussia was known for its very militaristic culture.

Got it. I was confused because I didn't catch that they were talking about the past.

Re: Israel police uses NSO’s Pegasus to spy on citizens

#75

Post by jacobolus »

yonixw wrote: post #55
efdee wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But isn't that just a roundabout way of describing whataboutism?

Whataboutism has its limits. When the far left, specifically Tankies, and left communities online, are literally being China apologists while calling Israel a genocide-apartheid-colonial country... you kind of know the logic fallacies are the other way around.

It’s pretty absurd to declare that “tankies” (presumably meaning “Western European communist party members who explicitly supported the Soviet subjugation of Eastern Europe”) is co-extensive with “the far left”, when most of the left considered Soviet foreign policy abhorrent.

Beyond that, here in the USA, I don’t know anyone who I would consider both a “China apologist” and a “leftist” (“far” or otherwise) – China has not been anything remotely resembling socialist for at least a generation, and the China apologists I know all vote GOP (or would if they could vote).

Unless by “apologist” you just mean “has a low expectation that China’s political system is going to collapse or radically democratize in the near future, and thinks that some level of economic and diplomatic engagement is necessary despite China’s human rights record”.

Re: Israel police uses NSO’s Pegasus to spy on citizens

#76

Post by woodruffw »

eli_gottlieb wrote: post #57
woodruffw wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a bad situation: we don't currently have a good litmus test for good-faith criticisms of Israel (of which there are an overwhelming number) versus treatments of Israel as coextensive with and the mouthpiece of the Jewish diaspora (which it certainly isn't). The former is righteous criticism; the latter is gussied up antisemitism. Edit: and, to be absolutely clear, it is in Israel's continued interest for us to n…

IMHO, it's hard to come up with a litmus test because both sides of the debate kinda like the standard motte-and-bailey structure of "criticisms of Israel". In fact, not only are the arguments often motte-and-baileys, there's often a super-bailey , a bailey for the bailey that basically invokes some kind of "I win either way" gotcha. For example: Motte: Israel's use of Palestinian "guest workers" who have no opportun…

Who could have guessed that one of the world's oldest ethnoreligious territorial debates could be so pernicious ;)?

I agree with your analysis: it's very easy to play the trump card at the onset and rest safely knowing that your position is insurmountable. Argumentatively, it's the equivalent of two opposing armies refusing to leave their respective high grounds to get down to the dirty business of war (or peace, in this case).

I am not an Israeli and I have never been to Israel, so I'll spare the world from another opinion on how to solve the problem. It is only my perspective, as a diaspora Jew, that many of Israel's actions qua sovereign state are not defensible on the basic plane of human rights.

Re: Israel police uses NSO’s Pegasus to spy on citizens

#77

Post by myth_drannon »

underdeserver wrote: post #72
Barrin92 wrote: post #17

People used to quip that Prussia is an army with a country rather than the other way around, it seems like if you add the modern intelligence sector that describes Israel. With all the concerns about 'Military-civil fusion ' as it's called in China or Russia I always found it funny that Israel might as well be the country that has merged both spheres most successfully but nobody really seems to care at all.

I think you are grossly overestimating the interconnectedness of it all. Yes the defense sector is large. NSO employs what, 300 people? The Israeli tech sector as a whole employs about a million, including tens of thousands working for Microsoft, Nvidia, Intel, Google, Apple, Amazon, IBM, Oracle, Facebook, Dropbox among others. The cloak and dagger people are a drop in the bucket.

Yes, like Rafael and Elbit are x100 bigger and are more high-tech but all eyes are on bottom of the barrel 0 day exploits company.

Re: Israel police uses NSO’s Pegasus to spy on citizens

#78

Post by p1necone »

jacobolus wrote: post #75
yonixw wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Whataboutism has its limits. When the far left, specifically Tankies, and left communities online, are literally being China apologists while calling Israel a genocide-apartheid-colonial country... you kind of know the logic fallacies are the other way around.

It’s pretty absurd to declare that “tankies” (presumably meaning “Western European communist party members who explicitly supported the Soviet subjugation of Eastern Europe”) is co-extensive with “the far left”, when most of the left considered Soviet foreign policy abhorrent. Beyond that, here in the USA, I don’t know anyone who I would consider both a “China apologist” and a “leftist” (“far” or otherwise) – China h…

In modern parlance 'Tankie' is generally used to refer to people on the left who support authoritarian governments. (see second paragraph in definition section: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tankie#Definition)

So yeah basically the intersection of "left wing" and "thinks the Chinese government is great" (which as you point out is not a particularly large group of people, at least in the USA).

Re: Israel police uses NSO’s Pegasus to spy on citizens

#79

Post by samstave »

selimthegrim wrote: post #41
samstave wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If we learned nothing from STUXNET/DUQU.... Israel has literally the most advanced capabilities in this area that we are aware of... I mean - do you recall, as a part of the Snowden leaks, there was a small amount of information that came out that there was some channel/mechanism by which israel was effectively given a firehose of data from the collective five-eyes... I don't quite recall the details, but it was a re…

It wasn’t just on Palestinian-Americans?

AFAIR: It was supposed to be limited to some sort of agreed hose... but it was revealed that they were getting the full blast...

Re: Israel police uses NSO’s Pegasus to spy on citizens

#80

Post by yonixw »

p1necone wrote: post #63
yonixw wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Whataboutism has its limits. When the far left, specifically Tankies, and left communities online, are literally being China apologists while calling Israel a genocide-apartheid-colonial country... you kind of know the logic fallacies are the other way around.

That's just 'What about China', with a sprinkling of assuming that the entire left is one homogeneous group. (They're not, and most of the left makes fun of tankies too.)

No, Because you can simply answer "China bad too, so back to you..". If you can't say it, welp, we got you, It's not the Israel government\policies you hate...
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