Microsoft blocks Israel’s use of its tech in mass surveillance of Palestinians

> These stories you've linked to are overcooked propaganda, where any teacher who thinks palestinians are being treated poorly - because they are living in an apartheid state, essentially an open-air prison - is labelled as promoting hate or terrorism.

The issue is far more complex than Palestinians being treated poorly, they are also treated poorly by their own rulers. Extremist ideologies are pervasive within Palestine, just look up any Palestinian opinion polling. That a very large percentage of Palestinians are taught and hold extremist ideologies is well documented. Also a military occupation is not equivalent to an apartheid state, Apartheid is segregation/discrimination based on race, the sort of discrimination you see under military occupation in regards to Israel is discrimination based on citizenship, which is a form of discrimination virtually all countries practice to various degrees.

> You could just as easily write a report about israeli schools teaching hate, and promoting terrorism if you sat in and heard how they teach a skewed version of the history of the conflict, or cherry pick teachers who's social media was angry in the wake of oct 7th. Harder story to sell to the ny times tho.

Those UNRWA teachers weren't angry in the wake of oct 7th, they were celebrating the attacks.

What percentage of the population of Palestinian governed territories(i.e. West Bank Areas A/B and Gaza) is Jewish...0%

What percentage of the population of Israeli governed territories is Muslim...around 20%

Seems pretty clear to me which side has the bigger problem with teaching intolerant ideologies.

> 17 year olds can be combatants. Sure. So either all of the dead children are 17 year old combatants or you’re ok with some child murder. Exactly how much child murder are you ok with?

My point was simply that casualty numbers are complex and that one can't simply equate Children to non-combatants/civilians.

> All of these things are happening - there is no doubt - the only thing we’re debating is exactly how much has happened. Is there a number you wouldn’t be ok with? What specific percentage of the >65k dead would have to be innocent before you’d have a problem with it? 50%… 75%… 95%?

There should be 0 civilian casualties, but those civilian deaths that do happen are almost entirely due to Hamas fighting from within civilian areas(which is of course a war crime). Unfortunately causing civilian casualties is part of the Hamas strategy[0]. When one fails to recognize the side is intentionally inducing civilian casualties then finding a solution will be much harder.

From a simple incentives analysis if one allows the strategy of using human shields to be an effective military strategy...then that would further incentivize combatants like Hamas to use human shields even more. The rules of war are deliberately written in a way that allows parties to conduct warfare, otherwise nobody would follow those rules of war. This is one reason why collateral damage is not considered a war crime while deliberately using human shields is a war crime.

[0] https://www.cnn.com/2024/06/11/middleeast/sinwar-hamas-israe...

> why the need for expensive surveillance if your chief goal was to annihilate a population?

Gaza has long been a showroom and R&D space for technologies of oppression. Field proven platforms sell.

A Jewish home isn't necessarily an exclusively Jewish home. My country is the national home of the English people, but it isn't a national home for that people exclusively (although some wish to change that). And while it certainly sees to me that the situation in Israel can best be described as apartheid, I don't see the point in using a term such as "political Zionism" that is also used by people who identify as its supporters to mean the opposite of what you say it is. I.e. some people support a binational Jewish-Arab state in the name of political Zionism. If different people have wildly different interpretations of a term - interpretations that go as far as being on opposite sides of the core issue - that term becomes useless.

As to Zionism having an explicit ethnic meaning, that is obvious and non-surprising. Political Zionism was formed in Europe at a time of ethnic and national awakening (and as a result of centuries of oppression against Jews and other ethnicities), and further shaped in the time of national struggle against colonialism and multinational empires. At least until the sixties (if not the nineties), ethnonationalism of ethnic minorities was seen as a progressive position against conservative multi-ethnic/national empires. You can see traces of such "left-wing nationalism" not only in Israel (obviously, I'm not referring to its current ruling coalition), but also in Ireland and in Asia. Ideological (rather than pragmatic) support of a Palestinian state - which is just as "racialised" as a Jewish state - is also a form of that. If you want a "feel" for that in the US, think Malcolm X or the Back-to-Africa movement, and especially Marcus Garvey, who was expressly inspired by Zionism and Irish nationalism.

Of course, even as early as the 1920s and the rise of right-wing nationalism, many on the left recognised that left-wing, "emancipatory", nationalism can quickly turn into right-wing, oppressive, nationalism and warned against that when it came to Zionism as well as other national movements of the time. I think they ended up being proven right in almost every case (including the famous examples of Israel and India), but emancipatory nationalism did play an important historical role in decolonialism, and in the case of Israel, it also helped save the lives of many Jews fleeing the horrors of oppressive nationalism (mostly in Eurpoe, but later also in the Muslim world).

But imagine Black Nationalism had succeeded and become oppressive on a national level, how hard it would have been to talk simply about "Black Nationalism", and how it would have meant different and probably opposite things to different people.

In this case you're believing the emperor. Remember the "terrorist check in list" that was just a calendar? Israeli propagandandists don't even have the respect to make up plausible lies anymore.

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