The pro-Israel information war • Hacker News Board

Re: The pro-Israel information war

#941

Post by papito » Sat, Dec 09, 2023, 5:03 PM UTC

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.…

TikTok is a Chinese product, and therefore inseparable from the Communist Party. This may also be a factor. It's the safest (read: more moderated and controlled) large social media platform. Why? It may seem valuable to cause havoc in the US electorate at a critical time, splitting the age groups and driving a wedge hard.

For the terminally-online students this issue has almost become a litmus test - "If you are pro-Israel, you are not one of us. They say so on TikTok."

This is a very good example of how social media completely takes over and leads the herd blindly in one direction, either through manipulation, or through just natural hype and bandwagon effect.

In the past we had a few friends who would subject us to peer pressure and convince us to do stupid shit.

Now these kids are in global peer pressure groups of millions.

Re: The pro-Israel information war

#942

Post by kaba0 » Sat, Dec 09, 2023, 5:05 PM UTC

woodruffw wrote: post #815

Aunche wrote: post #769

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There has never been a war in history where one side stops because they killed enough people. War ends when the enemy surrenders. The Japanese killed a few dozen civilians in Pearl Harbor. America killed 10,000x as many during their bombings of Japan. Had they not surrendered, they likely would have killed an order of magnitude more. The only alternative would have been for the US to completely blockade Japan indefin…

By most standards, what the US did to the civilian population of Japan was an atrocity. I don’t have easy answers here. But I think we’ve lost an important piece of the plot here if we can’t look at one terrible human tragedy, and then another, and then ask ourselves whether the first had to beget the second.

Well, the Japanese military was so evil, that the nazis literally had to tell them to chill out. Every civilian death is a tragedy, but as with most wars, the longer it goes on, the more casualties it will take. Sometimes people simply have to make the least evil decision, as the alternative is just worse.

Re: The pro-Israel information war

#943

Post by flyinglizard » Sat, Dec 09, 2023, 5:06 PM UTC

aprilthird2021 wrote: post #757

FailMore wrote: post #601

I have not read this article. I am sad to see it here. I am Jewish and Hacker News has been my one sanctuary from all that has been going on. I feel a dreadful sadness about this whole situation, and unfortunately I have found that any issue I have looked into in any detail descends into a battle of claim and counterclaim. I have had to just give up and let it play out, not only what has happened and what will happen…

I used to feel like you until I befriended a Palestinian in college. He had to take a year off because Israel denied him a permit to leave Gaza to attend college in the US. He had every document and paid tuition, but the Israeli government did not let him leave. Since then I realized I cannot just let what's happening over there stay over there. I would want him to have cared and known and tried to help if I were in…

Egypt, not Israel, is where most Gazans travel through. Sounds like Hamas wouldn’t let him leave and he pinned this on Israel.

Re: The pro-Israel information war

#944

Post by rendall » Sat, Dec 09, 2023, 5:13 PM UTC

KittenInABox wrote: post #120

rushingcreek wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s more complicated than that. Criticizing Israeli settlements in the West Bank is not antisemitic. But suggesting that Israel has no right to exist as a Jewish state is antisemitic as it implies ethnic cleansing. Both are arguably criticisms of the Israeli government.

I actually wonder how to navigate this actually. Like, I have seen criticism of things Israel has enacted in order to ensure that the population is a majority-Jewish, Jewish-own-all-the-political-power. Is that antisemetic to argue against anti-arab laws, if those laws are in place to ensure that Israel is a jewish state first and foremost, as opposed to Israel being a jewish state , if that makes sense?

What anti-Arab laws?

Re: The pro-Israel information war

#945

Post by rendall » Sat, Dec 09, 2023, 5:16 PM UTC

chimeracoder wrote: post #113

rushingcreek wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s more complicated than that. Criticizing Israeli settlements in the West Bank is not antisemitic. But suggesting that Israel has no right to exist as a Jewish state is antisemitic as it implies ethnic cleansing. Both are arguably criticisms of the Israeli government.

> But suggesting that Israel has no right to exist as a Jewish state is antisemitic as it implies ethnic cleansing. You've got it backwards. The only way for Israel to exist as an ethnostate is through an ethnic cleansing. That's not specific to Israel; that's inherent to the concept of an ethnostate. The assumption that Israel can only exist as an ethnostate is itself a political assertion - it's the hallmark of rig…

> The only way for Israel to exist as an ethnostate is through an ethnic cleansing.

I don't understand that logic. Would you mind explaining?

Do you live in North America? I identify this perspective with Americans and Canadians and not, say, Norwegians.

Re: The pro-Israel information war

#946

Post by rcpt » Sat, Dec 09, 2023, 5:31 PM UTC

Aunche wrote: post #769

woodruffw wrote: post #542

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have nothing to add here, other than to thank you for expressing this so cogently. It’s not always “right” to measure just action in terms of lives saved or lost, but it’s hard for me (and so many other American Jews) to see anything right or just about 10 dead Palestinians for every dead Israeli.

There has never been a war in history where one side stops because they killed enough people. War ends when the enemy surrenders. The Japanese killed a few dozen civilians in Pearl Harbor. America killed 10,000x as many during their bombings of Japan. Had they not surrendered, they likely would have killed an order of magnitude more. The only alternative would have been for the US to completely blockade Japan indefin…

> The Japanese killed a few dozen civilians in Pearl Harbor.

They killed 20M Chinese.

Re: The pro-Israel information war

#947

Post by [deleted] » Sat, Dec 09, 2023, 5:54 PM UTC

silexia wrote: post #677

Why can't I downvote this article here? There is only an upvote button.

[deleted]

Re: The pro-Israel information war

#948

Post by pxc » Sat, Dec 09, 2023, 5:55 PM UTC

pxc wrote: post #884

goalonetwo wrote: post #465

Coming from Europe and living in the US for the last couple of years, I'm shocked at how society here is clearly pro-israel. It is very clear that in the US the life of an israel citizen is valued way above the one of a palestinian. It is sad to lose that level of humanity. all of the discourse also conveniently ignores that Israel created a large-scale open-air prison in Gaza and removed any hope left for people liv…

Israel is the United States' colonial outpost and our leaders know it. Our press knows it. That influences the public discourse, especially that which flows from official channels and major news outlets. And Israel has a huge lobby here to reinforce all that. There's a religious dimension, too. Some kinds of Protestants see a modern Jewish state in Palestine as a precondition for the Second Coming of Christ, and acti…

This is, by the way, exactly what President Biden was getting at on the Senate floor decades before his presidency when he said that 'if Israel did not exist, the United States would have had to invent an Israel to protect her interests in the region'.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FYLNCcLfIkM

Re: The pro-Israel information war

#949

Post by bitcharmer » Sat, Dec 09, 2023, 5:56 PM UTC

mrtksn wrote: post #153

seydor wrote: post #35

I think the behavior of the EU is more problematic TBH. Ursula VdL went heavily pro-israel the first day kind of giving carte blanche to israel for the following days This situation is not a good look for western response in general. The world is watching. Reminder that Srebrenica was 8000 deaths, but 17100 palestinians are justified losses.

She probably destroyed her career with this, since acted way beyond her limits. I still wonder, was she overcompensating due to her being German? It's very normal for EU to be pro-Israel, that's EU's official position and IMHO it's the correct one but EU's position is also pro-Two states solution and EU has significant humanitarian missions and political support for many of the Palestinian demands. Some EU countries…

> It's very normal for EU to be pro-Israel, that's EU's official position and IMHO it's the correct one

Why would supporting ethnic cleansing be a correct position? Can you explain?

Re: The pro-Israel information war

#950

Post by bitcharmer » Sat, Dec 09, 2023, 6:00 PM UTC

Dowwie wrote: post #916

YeBanKo wrote: post #358

This article made it to front with 297 pts and generally it negative towards Israel. I don't think any of the articles about Hamas atrocities and their use of social media made to cause panic and fear made it that far on HN. Back in Oct about a week after the attack Bloomberg 's reporting on the attack and the beginning of the ended up being flagged on NH and only has 23pts: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37910…

It's easier for anti-Israel propaganda to be more successful here when the people leading Y-Combinator, who own and manage Hacker News, are also anti-Israel, some possibly antisemitic. If it didn't take sides and mandated neutrality, it would flag content from both sides. If a moderator on HN acts out of line with the policy or sentiments of YC leadership, they would be corrected. The battle of ideas begins with who…

> some possibly antisemitic

Ah yes, there it is. You didn't even wait untill the second sentence to use this empty term. Because of comments like yours this word completely lost its meaning. Intelligent people just ignore it now.