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The pro-Israel information war

jackpoulson.substack.com

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Re: The pro-Israel information war

#931

Post by johnnyworker »

adastra22 wrote: post #927
skybrian wrote: post #922

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, they were attacked first and that’s a traditional justification for war. If a government wants to go to war, this is the time to do it, while they have the support of the public. However, as we saw after 9/11, that doesn’t necessarily mean that whatever war a government proposes is a good idea. A counter-attack could still be foolish or unnecessarily brutal (as it seems to be). It might still result in a strateg…

Do you think the NATO invasion of Afghanistan after 9/11 was not a good idea? You are free to your opinion, and there are those idealists who believe such, but it would be counter to widespread consensus. The faults people have with the war on terror were/are (1) the two-decade-long occupation that followed, and (2) the completely unrelated war with Iraq. But invading Afghanistan to capture/kill the al Qaeda organiza…

Blowing up civilian infrastructure that they, as an occupier, actually have a duty to protect and restore to order and safety [1], after posing for selfies? [2] Calling people animals, rounding them up just because why not? [3] Talking about making Gaza "unlivable"? [4] The minister of defense handing out automatic weapons to settlers in the West Bank?

Meanwhile, half of the population of Gaza is under the age of 15, in one of the most densely populated areas of the world. It's unadulterated genocide in service of an expansionist, right-wing extremist government. Another difference is this media (and social web, down to HN) effort to silence and smear any and all criticism of it, to turn it into a dichotomy of who you're for (rather than what international law and basic fucking human decency would require), while Joe Biden talks about having seen photos of beheaded babies. Contrast to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protests_against_the_war_in_Af...

[1] https://www.icrc.org/en/doc/resources/documents/misc/634kfc....

[2] https://twitter.com/muhammadshehad2/status/17330661183302657...

[3] https://twitter.com/muhammadshehad2/status/17328125940611608...

[4] https://twitter.com/NimerSultany/status/1731736295666282707

[5] https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20231024-security-minister...

You can't just do random shit and say "it's for X" and that makes it okay. I can't just take everything you own and say it's to achieve world peace, you know? Or nuke the world to prevent car theft since no more world means no more cars means no more car theft. That's the level of the argument you have; zilch, backed by brutality and nothing else.

Re: The pro-Israel information war

#932

Post by GordonS »

robertoandred wrote: post #319
Scubabear68 wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m not holding them to a higher standard. Imagine if you will someone going to start large scale bombing NYC. Or London. Or Rome. The Hamas attack was unprecedented and horrific. I don’t know that it justifies declaring all out war on and entire city. I can say that without being anti-Semitic.

You don't think the Hamas attack was a declaration of war?

Gazans are an oppressed people, who under international law are permitted to fight for freedom by any means necessary.

But regardless, as more of the truth has been teased out it's become plain that what Israel said happened on October 7th was... well, absolutely riddled with lies. Beheaded babies, baked babies, babies hung up on washing lines, mass rapes - all of it debunked, but still being used by the Israeli propaganda machine. We've also learned that of those killed, civilians were in the minority - most were Israeli soldiers, then armed "settlers". And now we know that Israeli tanks and helicopters killed a lot of Israeli civilians that day. It's also been reported that Israeli intelligence was forewarned of the attack, a month before and the day before - and chose to do nothing except extend the Nova festival for an extra day.

As it looks so far (IMHO): Hamas militant freedom fightets broke out of Gaza with the aim of taking hostages to swap for Palestinian hostages held by Israel. They find the Nova festival still on, and the plan falls to shit - civilians are killed by both sides in the firefight, but militants manage to escape with some hostages before helicopters arrive on the scene and start shooting every fucking thing that moves. And then Israel pumps it up like a balloon, and many fall for it (I'm ashamed to admit I believed it all at the start) - it's used as the pretence for genocide (or at the very least, ethic cleaning) and a land grab, and the US is happy to supply the bombs because money,

Since then, the Israeli lobby and propaganda machines have been working overtime! While much Israeli propaganda is comically bad, the tactic of slandering any anti-genocidal comments as anti-semetic has been quite successful. The lobbying has been incredibly successful, managing to control celebrity messaging, buy US politicians and control mainstream media in a truly alarming way. Hell, Israeli politicians are even openly making calls for genocide and other war crimes, and what major US or UK papers/channels have even reported it?

From a tech standpoint, the genocide being carried out by Israel, with full support of the US and UK, has shown how powerful and important Twitter and Instagram are - without them, many of us (likely myself included) would have no idea what Israel is doing now, or indeed has been doing in the recent past. IMO channels like these are simply too important to be controlled by billionaires - and indeed we're now starting to see pro-Palestine content being censored on Twitter and Instagram (I'm not on Facebook, but I heard it's heavily censored?).

Re: The pro-Israel information war

#933

Post by GordonS »

odiroot wrote: post #116

That's a really... weird article to read. It's like reading a fantasy book about another universe. Or a desperate attempt at "inception". Reddit, at least, seems to be (rightfully or not) dominated by a strongly anti-Israel narrative. Even the "great" BBC is not willing to call a spade a spade.

What you say about Reddit is certainly not my experience. /r/UKPolitics for example - anything posted about Istael/Gaza is now moderated out. And comments are dominated by people still parroting the debunked stories about mass rapes and baked babies.

Re: The pro-Israel information war

#934

Post by yyyk »

anonair wrote: post #920
yyyk wrote: post #738

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Take that logic further. Israel's enemies outnumber it by 10x or more and are more than ruthless enough to sacrifice as many as necessary*. There's no way ever that Israel could avoid having the other side having more casualties. The same would apply to every minority. If your suggested law of war isn't 'majority or ruthless minority, get to do everything they want because they have more causalties', than you need an…

> Hamas to allow civilians to use its tunnels as shelters. That is absurd. Israel bombs “facilities used by Hamas”, civilians going in Hamas tunnels will be a direct target for IDF.

It should not be difficult to declare a tunnel a shelter with the UN. Also, any one who could dig so extensively could dig shelters. Hamas officials have a more parsimonious explanation:

https://www.msn.com/en-in/news/world/civilians-are-israel-un...

Re: The pro-Israel information war

#935

Post by rg111 »

mclightning wrote: post #908
throw_m239339 wrote: post #802

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why does how many Muslims there are have to do with anything? Israel is not at war with the Muslim community they are at war with a single country which is not even all Muslim. Seems like shaky rhetoric. But the muslim community is at war with Israel and the jews, given the rabid antisemitism in every corner of MENA and beyond, like in Indonesia and Pakistan. Antisemitism is the normal in all these places. I guess…

What a load of BS.

Muslims tend to very anti-Semitic. Not anti-Israel, anti-IDF, or anti-Zionist, but anti-Jews.

I saw many a Muslims quote Quran on how all Jews are evil and such.

And this is so rampant.

Re: The pro-Israel information war

#936

Post by wiseowise »

d0mine wrote: post #888
wiseowise wrote: post #566

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With Ukraine there’s a clear victim and clear aggressor. Textbook good vs evil.

> aggressor You mean NATO with its orders of magnitude power encroaching East despite their empty promises in 90s?

How is this related to one sovereign nation invading another sovereign nation?

Re: The pro-Israel information war

#937

Post by hypeit »

roflyear wrote: post #926
hypeit wrote: post #3

If I'm ever fired for taking a pro-Palestinian stance, I will spend the rest of my life suing everyone involved. The capital community has crossed so many lines in their witch hunt for pro-Palestinan voices that it's not even funny. Our industry has reached a breaking point and I'm not sure what's going to happen since most of the VCs are extremely pro-Zionism and a huge portion of people under the age of 45 are pro-…

I definitely have a client who would fire us if I said anything remotely against Israel.

Which is normally a very bad thing, but during a genocide it's a million times worse. I think a lot of people can feel that they're not allowed to say something right now that they should probably say, or at least be allowed to say.

Re: The pro-Israel information war

#938

Post by wslh »

jdross wrote: post #7

Pro-Palestinian views outrank Pro-Israeli online by around 36 to 1 on TikTok and 8 to 1 on other online platforms. https://twitter.com/antgoldbloom/status/1721561226151612602 If anything the skew within the platforms is to prioritize pro-palestinian views https://twitter.com/committeeonccp/status/173279243496103143... It also seems like these platforms create (rather than support) anti-Israeli views: https://twitter.…

It is weird but this thread was not flagged but all of these were:

- https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38582486

- https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38582471

- https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38582239

Re: The pro-Israel information war

#939

Post by cies »

theli0nheart wrote: post #449
cies wrote: post #338

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Here's one: https://www.october7.org/ And another: https://oct7map.com/

Its not showing any proof of things happened of that nature.

We know now that a lot of the 1100+ that died in the oct7 attack were IDF. That the IDF shot at festival goes indiscriminately from attack helicopters. That the 40 babies story was a lie.

So how many civilliants died on oct7 at the hands of Hamas?

Also, how is hostage taking different is Hamas does it? Because a lot of the palestinian prisoners exchanged where (a) not subjected to trial, and (b) children. Hamas takes prisoners = hostages; Israel takes prisoners = security measures (of what ever euphemism you like).

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