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

- begins with the high estimate from [2], which uses some very questionable data (like WhatApp chats) to argue that most deaths were not counted by GHM

- extrapolates it to the present, as if the casualty rate were a constant

- multiplies it by 5, which was the multipler that was somewhat arbitrarily picked in that Lancet letter [3]

- forgets that this includes future deaths (attributable to past conflict events), and uses the past tense as if all these supposed indirect deaths already occurred

They also end up with an estimate of "about 380,000 under-five-year-old infant" deaths, which seems unlikely since there were never more than about ~340k children under five in the strip.

Overall, it's about as believable as that letter which claimed Hamas was under-reporting starvations by over three orders of magnitude [4].

[1] https://arena.org.au/politics-of-counting-gazas-dead/

[2] https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6...

[3] https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6...

[4] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42209193

For some who identify with it, yes, it means that and for others it means something completely different: a political entity that ensures a national home for Jews. In the early days of political Zionism, still in the age of empires, what they had in mind was some sort of autonomy within the Ottoman Empire.

> In Israel "...only Jews have the right to self determination "

Yes. In many countries (e.g., in America) no ethnic group has a stated right for self-determination. In the UK, it's accepted that Scotland may withdraw from the union and obtain self-determination through some process. But yeah, it's definitely a problem.

> that the people who established Israel after WWII were brutalised survivors and they brought that brutality to bear in the process of state creation, but they remain racist genocidal thugs practicing apartheid

I have no reason to believe that Israelis are any more or less statistically racist than people in other countries. The problem in Israel is not some old ideology that is largely anachronistic, but that the country has, indeed, established apartheid and that it's massacring Palestinians. The past experience of the minority of Israeli Jews with ancestry in Europe that escaped from the holocaust (BTW, those who established Israel got there long before WW2) or the majority with ancestry in the Middle East that escaped Arab nationalism is similarly irrelevant. Their crimes are just crimes.

The way I see it, there are two barbaric, bloodthirsty tribes living on that land, both currently led by illiberal, nationalistic, and increasingly religious-fundamentalist leaders, so while, as a leftist, I can obviously support neither leadership, Israel is guilty of apartheid and horrendous war crimes. I'm not optimistic. At this point my gut says that instead of fighting off British colonialism, they should have begged us to stay. The American colonies aren't doing so well, either.

And yes, I also hate how the Israeli government claims to represent all Jews. Going by the polls, they might not even represent a majority of Israeli Jews. But that's the new fascism. I'm mostly terrified of it making its way to the UK.

Not really. The European colonization of Latin America (and North America in general) was extremely bloody, and rooted in eradication and subjugation and erasure of the local culture. The native languages in the Americas are all but gone and been replaced with Spanish/Portugese/etc. We also saw what they did in the Levant, India, Africa, etc.

On the other hand, the Islamic (not Arab) conquests preserved the local culture. This is why Berber is still spoken in North Africa for example. And this is also why an extremely significant number of famous and prominent Islamic scholars came from Persia and the surrounding region (like Abu Hanifa, Bukhari, Muslim, Tirmidhi, and many more to list here). Not to mention countries further east like India and Indonesia as Islam spread. As a matter of fact, there are more non-Arab Muslims than Arab Muslims.

I attended a lecture by a Chinese Muslim who talked about the history of Islam in China - one amusing point he mentioned was how a local martial art was influenced by Wudhu' (Ablution) in Islam. This points to how there was an assimilation and acceptance between Islam and the locals, and was not an eradication.

We are seeing the genocidal calls by the israelis government officials (and polls show a majority of their population agree with them).

Under Islamic law, there is no suppression of minorities, especially People of the Book. They are free to practice and even rule by their own books and laws. Jewish historian shelomo dov goitein admits that Jews lived under the Islamic ruling better than they lived anywhere else in the world.