The Israeli government has approved the deal with China, if they didn't want it to go through they would have blocked it, their MOD has oversight on virtually all exports and international dealings.
Israel needed AMOS-6 more than anyone else because communication satellites are important for national security and are used by military and national defense agencies.
Even if somehow your crackpot theory had merit delaying the launch would have been an easier and cheaper way of tanking the deal than sabotaging a rocket.
This wasn't an Iranian spy satellite, Israel has no interests in hurting it national security, economy, and reputation by blowing their own shit up, I don't even understand why people would think they blew it up.
Its a difficult distinction to make. I don't think it unreasonable to expect some nuance on the part of moderators. My personal suggestion would be to remove subjective comments more readily in threads related to highly technical topics where there is MUCH to discuss related to the science or engineering of the piece but show some discretion in threads regarding topics which are inherently political or more subjective. So, here, I would actually say moderation is warranted. But if this were a piece on Edward Snowden, perhaps less demand for utter tact.
"Only in an irrational and unknown direction can we come to wisdom again."
The HN moderation staff has a difficult job which they do exceedingly well, and in a thoroughly nuanced fashion. Were this otherwise, discourse here would differ little in quality from what, for example, Reddit provides in such abundance.
I appreciate you feel strongly that you can tell HN's moderators how to do their jobs even better. Consider the possibility that this may not be the case.
I kind of am too. I mean, it sounded as though you were likening someone saying "please don't be rude" to someone telling someone else what to think, but that doesn't even make sense, so...
Short answer: If this was a french payload no one would be talking about this, even tho the french intelligence services have considerably more resources and a longer operational history than the Israeli ones.
Long Answer: How was that not racist?
Anyone who cannot see the quite blatant racism (and just to be clear, racism does not universally entail malice) in this "idea" does not understand what racism, cultural bias are and more specifically what is anti semitism.
Anti semitism and the overall cultural bias towards the Jewish people isn't distilled into saying "Jews are greedy".
The level of attention that the state of Israel receives today is rooted heavily in the cultural bias or European origin that surrounded the Jewish people for centuries especially since the 15th Century onwards.
A good parallel would be to explore the "Protocols of the Elders of Zion"; regardless of what was the original intent of the author (there is quite strong evidence today that it was intended to be a parody) you can't ignore the fact that it was mostly accepted as "true even if they are fake", even the most liberal intellectuals at the time could not dismiss them offhand as utter hogwash.
And that is because they were based on centuries of subtle but ever more growing cultural attribution that made the Jews easy to portray as a cabal of scheming, greedy, backstabbing individuals that are not only aiming for world domination but have already attained it and got their hands in every government and enterprise.
These "Protocols" were so powerful that they were accepted by many as a historical fact, in Japan they were so sure they were a true historical document that senior Japanese officers were saving European Jews during the holocaust both out of respect and to gain their assistance in the war effort against the Americans.
The "Protocols" today and their more modern updates are still circulated in very large numbers in Latin America, Africa, the Arab world and Asia, and they are mostly accepted as "real even if fake" and even taught at schools.
In the near East and N. and W. Africa they are so sure that Israel is all capable that they attribute it almost magical powers, the catching birds and various other animals with Israeli trackers or identification implants as Israeli spies isn't an uncommon occurrence even in more "modern" countries like Egypt and Lebanon.
Since these animals are usually executed as spies for public display the Israeli Nature Authority actually stopped marking the country on the more rare species that are tracked by it and by the Israeli chapters of the WWF in order to prevent further degradation in their numbers.
Overall the idea of the all powerful, greedy backstabbing Jewish Cabal is still very much alive and kicking, today it's just the all powerful, greedy, backstabbing Zionist Entity, but the root of much of it is the same.
Now this isn't to say that every legitimate criticism of Israel like every other nation is due to anti semitism but a lot of it is, the disproportionate level of attention that Israel receives in regards to ever action and event is simply cannot be explained by any other reasoning.
Even if we only isolate the conflict in the large scheme of things it's meaningless the amount of casualties is laughably low, lower than every other conflict that has been going on since it was founded by multiple orders of magnitude (70 years of the Israeli Arab conflict at large have seen less casualties than one year of the Syrian civil war, and as far as civil wars go the Syrian one isn't very bloody).
Every event and incident involving Israel somehow turns into a conspiracy theory in a heartbeat even tho the Israeli intelligence services are not remarkable in any real way, have considerably less resources than most western agencies, and compared to the comblock/eastern ones are considerably less "aggressive".
The funny thing is that if you do look at this from a conspiratorial point of view the only country that had the reason and the ability to both sabotage the rocket and get away with it is the United States.
The US always goes out of it's way to block every potential technology transfer from Israel to China [0], while Israel was building the relationship with China for decades.
The US has the ability to do w/e it wants with the rocket while Israel not only loses close to half a billion of dollars in the event but actually risks of starting a war with the US if discovered, I'm pretty sure the US invaded countries for less than blowing up a US made rocket on a US military base after infiltrating it with operatives and sabotaging it.
But as I've said if this was a French satellite no one would have even be thinking about all of this.
Belief that the Israeli intelligence services are, in the modern era, more likely to engage in certain types of action against particular targets than, say, their French counterparts need not be based in any anti-Jewish sentiment.
It can be based, e.g., on the degree to which Israeli intelligence services have been found to be doing certain things (e.g., carrying out operations targeting the US) compared to others.
While I think in this particular case, from the available evidence with which I am familiar, that would probably be flawed analysis, I can certainly see it being made without any racism.
One can have an especial distrust of the Israeli government -- on reasonable or unreasonable grounds -- without being anti-Semitic, just as one can have an especial distrust of the US government without that being grounded in antipathy against the dominant racial group in the US.
>Belief that the Israeli intelligence services are, in the modern era, more likely to engage in certain types of action against particular targets than, say, their French counterparts need not be based in any anti-Jewish sentiment.
You are either giving too much credit to the Israelis, or nearly not enough to the French.
>It can be based, e.g., on the degree to which Israeli intelligence services have been found to be doing certain things (e.g., carrying out operations targeting the US) compared to others.
This is a very flawed estimate, everyone spies.
>One can have an especial distrust of the Israeli government -- on reasonable or unreasonable grounds -- without being anti-Semitic, just as one can have an especial distrust of the US government without that being grounded in antipathy against the dominant racial group in the US.
Then again you do not understand what "anti semitism" is it is the cultural bias the fact that it has a name doesn't make it into something special.
The cultural bias towards constantly distrusting the Israeli government like there is some intrinsic reason to not trust them because they always have a hidden agenda (like every other government) is tied quite strongly to the cultural bias of distrusting the Jewish people at large.
The constant distrust of the US government is also heavily influenced in the cultural bias, much of it american in origin which was exported to the rest of the world via popular culture in the form of TV, movies, books and stories.
You can't just make-up new definitions for words to fit your narrative.
Distrust of a government does not correlate to racism against the people under it. And since there's no basis for comparison you have no way of knowing the level of distrust one has for any or all governments. Therefore you can't gauge if there is any bias in the level of mistrust for the Israeli government.
By your logic, anything other than blind acceptance of any and all actions by the Israeli government is likely racist in nature.
The OP asked if it was possible that the government sabotaged the launch because the national company behind the payload was in the process of selling itself to a foreign company and rival power.
There was no hint or insinuation of racism, you chose to see what wasn't there. You talk about paranoid rationale of countries killing birds thought to be Israeli spies as absurd, your rant trumps that paranoia.
The question itself is quite valid because, on the international stage, Israel is known for playing hardball and not above making attacks against allies or on foreign soil. However it's clear that other countries, particularly the US, have a far greater interest in that deal falling through. In any case it's not unreasonable to suspect sabotage though Israel isn't the most likely suspect.
That doesn't make sense in this context. Presumably, in your example, the Israelis knew the answer would have been "no." In this case, the Israelis could've just themselves said "no" -- which would've been the result they wanted.
