I’m not surprised that all statements from the Israeli government are filled with nothing. “We need to understand what happened” means “sorry not sorry”.
This spyware is invaluable for the Israeli government because they have something that repressive Arab regimes want. These regimes can’t be bought with money, because some of them like Saudi Arabia and UAE have plenty of money. Israel needs friends and this is a great way to start and maintain friendships - provide a way for these tinpot dictators to cement their power. Sure, some people might be annoyed they were spied on but the news cycle will move on soon, while Saudi and UAE will remain staunch allies. MBS still loves them because Khashoggi remains dead.
Israel would have gotten away with it too, if it hadn’t been for the meddling kids at Amnesty International.
Some of the "incidentally collected" intelligence may be more valuable to Israeli intelligence than it is to Morocco, say, a Macron text with his opinion on the JCPA, or what he knows about a mysterious explosion at an Iranian nuclear facility. They have plausible deniability in that a client state performed the targeting, with a "private company" executing, and the are shocked to learn of this spying and "need to get to the bottom of it".
Having a hot mic on a world leader 24/7, and being able to blame someone else for it is invaluable.
It could become wrong if they lose the support of the west. Imagine the US and EU giving up on Israel. It's a multi dimensional issue and playing nice with their neighbors may be advantageous if nobody knows (publicly). But if they do and there are bigger more important relationships (namely US) start to be put at risk, it could be the wrong move.
That could happen regardless of what Israel does. I mean if the U.S or EU decides that Israel is a colonial entity like Apartheid SA, that's not going to be because some Israeli cyber startup selling a tool. The hard left doesn't really care what Israel does now, the very idea of Israel of Israel existing is a cross between colonialism and white privilege to them.
But in the mean time Israel gain actual strategic relations with countries like Saudi Arabia that mean a lot.
No chance, AIPAC, BICOM and various lobby groups ensure politicians are in the pockets of the Israel lobby. This isn't to say other countries don't have corrupt lobbying practices. But the unilateral multibillion dollar IDF funding raies questions.
A while back, I'd agree with you but I'm starting to think this is a generational issue and that the younger generations are internalizing the truth about Israel. We could see a massive shift once they get control of the country en mass. I think it has already started and is moving faster than I would have predicted even a year ago.
There is also the chance of the US losing a lot of its power through various means (ie. Dollar losing reserve currency status, US military being tested by China and losing etc.). If this happens, they may be forced to cut Israel loose. Israel has no other solid allies and so they will flounder for a while but eventually sink because once the US is out others will be free to begin economic sanctions and the country cannot survive that indefinitely.
In both of these scenarios, the lobby groups become less effective and possibly get defeated. Long term we are moving towards a world where lobbies become less powerful. Its going to take decades though.
At least you're honest about wanting to dismantle Israel, could be nice if we got rid of the 1967 border/settlements bullshit. The "occupation" doesn't mean crap to the hard left, it's all occupation.
I just wish the US never got involved in this mess. It was a massive mistake that led to numerous downstream negative consequences for the US and its people.
The "hard left" sees Israel for what it always has been: A settler/colonial state. Israel will continue to push propaganda to bury this but the truth can never be erased.
Who knows, maybe it never happens. If climate change brings about tens of millions of new refugees I don't think people will have that much time/energy to the so called Palestinian refugees anymore. They will have to get along like everyone else.
It will be interesting to see how climate change affects the area.
There is a possibility of a significant economic decline in the US caused by climate change such that the US will not be able to help Israel anymore just due to lack of resources.
Most of the countries in the region will be swallowed by the desert and that may include Israel. Even though Israel is at the forefront of mitigation technology, it does not seem like it is enough from what I have seen.
Not sure what you're asking.
I think from the dissident's point of view it's a tragedy. From Israel's point of view it's business and maintaining good relationships with people who can become an enemy in a heartbeat.
How is this different from Western countries selling arms by the billions? That's also not always about money but about diplomacy.
It's factually not equally despicable. I don't remember reading about some U.S/French company selling arms to Saudi Arabia as a major news story. Definitely not on Hacker News.
I can't speak to HN (although it seems to me that spy tools are more in line with HN areas of interest than arms sales), but if you haven't noticed that US arms sales to Saudi Arabia (and other nations) were major news stories, then I can't help you. Because they absolutely have been, and likely will continue to be.
Even if that weren't true, I don't see how the amount of press coverage something gets speaks to whether or not that thing is despicable.
I think it should be different. I don't think people should expect Israel to start because it is one of the few countries that doesn't just sell arms for profit, but for specific strategic interests.
If you want Israel to start for some reason, I think it is fair that you need to call them Gods chosen people at the minimum, because your heightened expectations would warrant that.
> Sure, some people might be annoyed they were spied on
I think it should be mentioned that other countries spy on citizens too. I fail to see what is the difference for Israel now. We have ample evidence from multiple whistleblowers that governments like to surveil their population.
Furthermore, Israel hasn't had the support it has today. Especially at the time multiple countries tried to attack it. At the time it basically got its weapons for defense on the black market. So scrutinizing questionable defense contracts is a weak accusation, especially since all other countries do sell weapons to regimes as well.
What you are really criticizing is the success. Making that clear might not really helpful, but is factual.
> I think it should be mentioned that other countries spy on citizens too. I fail to see what is the difference for Israel now. We have ample evidence from multiple whistleblowers that governments like to surveil their population.
And all of them should be called out, every time. "But those guys get away with it" isn't a defense.
That is a valid argument against unethical behavior but again, this isn't valid for the reality of arms sales. It would be better if that weren't the case, but it isn't. And the place to start is always your own government because here you are responsible and have the ability to enact change. Your government will try to move you to point fingers at other country. Exactly like you do here.
According to an old product manual[1], NSO would have most likely have been aware of whom was targeted and the content being retrieved because NSO would generally run the anonymising nodes on the Internet and seemingly insist on installing and maintaining the servers hosted at the client site where data eventually ends up. There is a note saying that customers could set this up themselves but I suspect the countries involved wouldn't have the expertise to do so. Thus to a country such as France which has been targeted, they would have to assume it is actually Israel spying on France via proxy countries. The proxy countries in return got access to spying tools they'd never be able to build themselves to spy on dissidents and rival politicians.
Per [2], US and UK officials were also targeted. Perhaps this was less commonplace though because the scheme had a greater chance of being figured out (example means: [3]) and would then give the US and UK access to the target lists of Israel and proxy countries, and the exploits used. Perhaps this is the reason 'soft targets' (countries without big ICT spying budgets) topped the target list?
"NSO would generally run the anonymising nodes on the Internet and seemingly insist on installing and maintaining the servers hosted at the client site where data eventually ends up. There is a note saying that customers could set this up themselves but I suspect the countries involved wouldn't have the expertise to do so. Thus to a country such as France which has been targeted, they would have to assume it is actually Israel spying on France via proxy countries. "
I would be shocked if NSO wasn't feeding intel its 'clients' acquired spying on their targets to Israel.
"Our clients only use the software against terrorists and criminals" => So this means that French PM Macron is a terrorist or criminal - for somebody who built this software...
Circular arguments are so convenient. And apparently "terrorists" and "criminals" (by whose definition?) have no rights whatsoever, so whatever you do to them cannot be wrong.
The problem is it kind of works. Israeli propagandists describe anyone who opposes Israeli war crimes or anyone that critiques their continued colonization of Palestinians as terrorist sympathizers. Guess what seemingly everyone in media/politics avoid?
Aren't Arabs also "semitic people" [1]? (Since Ishmael and Abraham are also descendants of Shem...). In this case "antisemitic" would also mean "against Arabs"...
You are right, there are Jews who aren't Semites an there are Semites who aren't Jews. The term “anti-Semitism” came up near the end of the 19th century [1] when it was all the rage to find scientific-sounding words for whatever you do or sell. “Anti-Semitism” sells better than plain “hatred of Jews”. I for one wouldn't give racists the satisfaction of using their own choice for cloaking their prejudice and stupidity in pseudo-science but the term seems to have taken hold everywhere.
Sometimes words don't mean exactly what their etymology suggests. So I'm sorry but, objecting to using the world 'antisemitism' to refer to "anti-Jewish racism" comes across as trying to deny Jews the ability to describe their own oppression
Hanlon's razor applies: "Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity." Many or most people incorrectly assume that anti-Semitism has something to do with Semitic people because the words (but not their meanings) are similar.
Hard disagree. One of these (anti-Semitism) is far more common than the other (references to Arabs as "Semitic"). It's like saying that you've only heard of "negro" as a color. In a culture and a place (the United States) where that is absurd, assumptions of malintent and bad faith are a better heuristic.
I don't mean to imply that the word makes any sense in this context. However, if one chooses to complain about Israeli abuses of Palestinians, it is a fact that one will be called "antisemitic".
The point you bring up is an example of "fallacy of equivocation".
Yes, words are polysemic. In this case, 'anti-semetic' is seen as "anti-jewish". That's one sense of 'anti-semetic'. You can also add another sense of that word: "against speakers of Semetic language or people". This sense is not used when people use 'anti-semetic'.
In Europe, there has been centuries of discussion about jews: it was called "the Jewish question". Anyway, this anti-semitism started as a product of religious rivalry (which religion is True? Christianity or Judaism). Then extra features were added, etc.
Actually, "anti-semitic" is against "jewish" person (as a religion) and not against "israeli" citizen (as a nationality). The last one is called "anti-sionist"...
The fact that Israel is a nation "home for jews" doesn't help, as some people think that every critic against Israel politic is the mark of "anti-semitism" even if religion has nothing to do with. Sometimes it might be the indicator of "anti-sionism" and sometimes... just the indicator of political difference! After all, you can criticize any country for its politic without critizing the counrty "per se"
Moreover, a lot of people in Israel are not jewish but muslims.
"They" being "Israeli propagandists" as referenced in the previous comment.
What you're doing is exactly what we're talking about. Trying to shut down any criticism of the Israeli government as antisemitic bigotry. It's no different than the 50 Cent Army (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/50_Cent_Army) dismissing all criticism of the CCP as sinophobia.
Clever. By labeling anyone who alleges antisemitism as an "Israeli propagandist" you can shut down any discussion of antisemitism without having to engage with whether there may be any bigotry or prejudice in play
But seriously, ask yourself if there is any way a Jew could tell you "Hey, what you're saying about Israel is kinda racist because XYZ" without you immediately dismissing them. (And maybe there is! I haven't gotten to know you in real life)
The opposite is a much more common occurrence. By reflexively labeling any criticism of Israel as "antisemitic", people shut down discussion without having to engage in the topics of settler colonialism or apartheid.
Frankly, this is one of the more frustrating aspects of my experience as a diaspora Jew: having to constantly point out that Israel != Jews in response to people who want to exploit my religious identity for their own ends.
> people shut down discussion without having to engage in the topics of settler colonialism or apartheid
The apartheid bit can and should be engaged and eventually solved with a Palestinian state beside Israel. The settelr colonialist bit is mostly said to try and ruin the Zionist state by dismantling Zionism. No one calls the U.S a settler colonialist country. No one demands California to be returned to Mexico (it's rightful owner btw) or that the Indians get the right to their lands back (so what if not many of them are left? if we wanna dismantle colonialism let's start with it's founders).
These are requirements specific to Israel. The hard left knows very well the chances of "one democratic state" surviving are close to zero, and that the endgame is immigration of most Jews out of Palestine, to become hated refugees everywhere they go yet again. But that's the hard left's plan, and not everyone like to engage with that.
People do talk about all of those things though? Israel and the US are both settler colonial states. Acknowledging that should be the start of a conversation about righting historical wrongs, not shorthand for a proscribed solution.
As a side note, it seems like you're using "hard left" as a smear, but most of the people I follow who engage on this topic are diaspora Jews who very much do not want to become "hated refugees".
> but most of the people I follow who engage on this topic are diaspora Jews who very much do not want to become "hated refugees
There are a lot of super progressive Jews out there that are vocal about Zionism needing to end. Sometimes it's ideological and sometimes it's just wanting to fit in within progressive circles and feeling good about oneself. I mean if Israel is a child killing apartheid state who in their right mind would want to be associated with it?
Many of them aren't really comfortable with the idea of being Jewish in general (definitely not in public), and they have a good reason since anti-semtiism is still alive even in the U.S, especially in progressive circles. Also, religion and progressiveness don't generally agree that well. They definitely won't be able to fit in progressive circles and say that Israel has a right to exist, it barely works now. Bernie Sanders is struggling with his Zionism, lots of progressives think he's pretty much a racist.
It's a complicated topic, but we can make a whole discussion about Jewish life in the diaspora and the challenges it brings.
This doesn’t cohere with my experience at all. Many vocal anti-Zionists I know are also vocally Jewish. In fact, I don’t know a single person who is uncomfortable being Jewish in public, and I haven’t seen many progressives calling Bernie Sanders racist (especially with regard to antisemitism). And the right in the US has a far worse antisemitism problem than the left.
> In fact, I don’t know a single person who is uncomfortable being Jewish in public
That sounds like a reach. Many Jews don't want to wear a Kippa anymore fearing anti semitism. That's confirmed in surveys. So for the atheist ones that's not a problem but I'm sure being vocally Jewish isn't that much fun.
I use the term hard left as opposed to center left. We can use progressive.
Its nice and easy to acknowledge things when there are no claims. The Mexicans are not claiming California back and even if they were no one would take that seriously. The Palestinians ARE claiming the land back, and are being supported by growing numbers. So this whole discussion about history becomes very consequential to Israel.
Do we even disagree about the settler colonialism bit? It seems like your hesitance there has to do with a potential conclusion, rather than whether or not that accurately describes the situation.
FWIW, I’m speaking in good faith about that being the start of a conversation about reparations (although not one that I want to have here and now). I’m not trying to go “GOTCHA! now Israelis need to GTFO” as soon as we acknowledge that shared understanding.
I think we disagree, or at least I don't agree fully.
Putting what the Americans or white Australians did with what happened in Israel and saying it's the same thing seems odd to me. It's not the same thing. There are similarities and vast differences.
Also, Arabs themselves are settler colonialists by that definition. They started coming to the region during the Arab/Muslim conquests in the 7th century. No one spoke Arabic in Palestine before that.
> No one calls the U.S a settler colonialist country
What? The US is the ur-example of settler colonialism. We are the end stage, the model for the ultimate fate of the original inhabitants under colonialism: decimated and pushed back into whatever worthless land none of the settlers wanted.
> or that the Indians get the right to their lands back
People do demand that, yes.
Personally, I would love to see Native American tribes given better land than the shitty deserts they've been stuck in, but two wrongs don't make a right; no one has a right to force people off of land they've been living on for decades or centuries just because their ancestors used to live there.
That means the British had no right to unilaterally carve Israel out of Palestine in the first place, and also that Palestine shouldn't get to force Israelis off of land they've been living on for nearly a century, however wrong their ancestors were to take it; nor does Israel have the right to keep taking more Palestinian land to build new Israeli settlements.
There will always be Arabs who won't be satisfied with anything short of total hegemony. They would have a lot less support, resources, and manpower if Israel would treat Palestinians as equals and stop air-striking innocent men, women, and children because they happen to be within the blast radius of a suspected terrorist. Killing innocents to achieve political goals is no better when Israel does it than when Hamas does.
Ok what I mean is no one is seriously asking to decolonise the U.S.
Its easy to want a few Indians get a few more acres. It sounds nice and costs you nothing. But what about settling real claims? Like some tribe wants Manhattan back? Or returning California to Mexico? Thats what Israel is asked to do. To basically destroy itself to fix some past wrong that wasn't really its fault to begin with (we don't have to start this argument but comparing Zionism with what Americans did falls short).
Taking this seriously would require differentiating between the various parties. Absolutely, indigenous Americans should be compensated for the recent theft of their lands. That compensation could take the form of return of land, or if the land's current use makes that impossible then we can print some money like we do for all our stupid wars.
Mexico, however, is also a colonial state. If we compensate them, soon someone will suggest that Spain should get a piece.
I don't know about others, but when I said "Israeli propagandists" I meant literally the Israeli government's official public relations, e.g. the people who did this: https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2021/6/23/my-zionism-isra... I might disagree with random internet posters, but I wouldn't generally call them "propagandists".
> But seriously, ask yourself if there is any way a Jew could tell you "Hey, what you're saying about Israel is kinda racist because XYZ" without you immediately dismissing them.
I'd be willing to listen to their argument. It's gonna depend on what the initial statement was.
There are plenty of people who criticize Israel and are also antisemitic, and they often try to cloak it in reasonable-sounding arguments. That does not mean that all reasonable-sounding arguments against Israeli policies are automatically racist. If someone says "Israel is bombing Palestine again, you know how those Israelis are," that would sound like it could be a dog whistle. If someone says "Israel is bombing Palestine again, they're just perpetuating the cycle of violence," that seems reasonable enough--but I have seen more than a few people who would call even that antisemitic.
> Guess what seemingly everyone in media/politics avoid?
Would you be referring to the most-discussed conflict of all time? It's always funny to me when I hear on Reddit that "nobody talks" about Israeli war crimes. We're talking about it right now. Go look at Wikipedia's page of active conflicts - how many of them do you hear about the war crimes being committed? Coverage of Israeli war crimes is disproportionately *large* compared to other conflicts, not disproportionately small.
So just to be clear, your response to the criticism that 'Israeli propagandists describe anyone who opposes Israeli war crimes or anyone that critiques their continued colonization of Palestinians as terrorist sympathizers'... is to label anyone criticising those Israeli propagandists a terrorist sympathizer?
No, plenty of critics aren't terrorist sympathizers. Some critics are openly sympathetic to Hamas and Co.
Barring any context to the contrary, I'm naturally going to assume anyone complaining about being accused of being a terrorist sympathizer as belonging to the latter group. (It seems easy enough to clear up confusion by just saying "I oppose Hamas")
> Guess what seemingly everyone in media/politics avoid?
We discussed the other day as well. We clearly live in different realities which might explain why we couldn't come to an agreement.
For the reference here is what my reality looks like:
Around here there are exactly two major outlets that I am aware of that is pro Israel: "MIFF - Med Israel For Fred" (With Israel For Peace) and the conservative newspaper document.no.
The rest of known media outlets are more or less deeply anti-Israeli:
Public broadcaster NRK is probably the biggest hatemongerer (publishing "funny" skits about "jewish swines", telling that Israeli soldiers "shoots at everything that moves", having a radio host saying on air (yes, on air) that he hope the vaccine doesn't work on them and they die from COVID etc.)
On the other side you have vg.no who will always end their pieces about Israelis bombing something with a sentence or two to balance it somewhat: "The Israeli attack happened after n hundred rockets had been fired over the border the last 24 hours."
The rest falls somewhere in the middle: not calling Israelis Jewish Swines like NRK but simultaneously only reporting whenever Israel strikes back, completely ignoring why.
I have the same observations as you from Norway. From what I hear from those who have been here longer than me it has been like this since the 60ies or 70ies so it is not a new thing either.
> > Israel is written about, almost always negatively, on a daily basis on all major newspapers
You could say that about the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) as well or the dictators in Saudi Arabia. Sometimes there's a well founded reason for criticizing the state in a country.
That does not mean the ones who criticize the Israeli state or the CCP, would think that everyone in Israel or China are bad people.
P:
> same observations as you
There's a cognitive bias to notice negative sounding things written about one's own "soccer team", but not notice positive or neutral things so much.
Let's say there's 1 article about settlers taking land, 1 about the Israeli state selling suicide bomber drones to Azerbaijan, and 15 articles about vaccination, tech companies, the Pride Parade, other things -- maybe you wouldn't remember the 15 latter, only keep the 1 + 1 former in mind.
(This is as expected b.t.w. thinking about evolution and hunter gatherer tribes long ago)
> Let's say there's 2 articles about settlers taking land, and 10 articles about startups and tech companies in Israe
I'm talking about almost every news outlet writing "Israel bombed Gaza" and only one being nuanced enough to mention "Israel bombed Gaza after n hundred rockets crossed the border during the last 24 hours."
Settlers taking land is also interesting. It took quite a while before someone (and none of the big ones) cared to mention that the latest dispute was over Jewish owned land that was stolen by Jordan during their short management of east Jerusalem and sold to Arabs.
> I'm talking about almost every news outlet writing "Israel bombed Gaza" and only one being nuanced enough to mention "Israel bombed Gaza after n hundred rockets crossed the border during the last 24 hours."
It goes both ways. I haven't seen the headline "Palestinian militias shell Israeli targets in response to Israel's attempts to ethnically cleanse illegally occupied Palestinian territory" either.
> It took quite a while before someone (and none of the big ones) cared to mention that the latest dispute was over Jewish owned land that was stolen by Jordan during their short management of east Jerusalem and sold to Arabs.
Has anyone of them mentioned the massive irony in Israel returning lands stolen from Jews while at the same time keeping all the land it itself stole from Palestinians?
> Has anyone of them mentioned the massive irony in Israel returning lands stolen from Jews while at the same time keeping all the land it itself stole from Palestinians?
To the degree that land has been stolen recently except by Jordan it was by UN and the British I think.
Israeli land was either bought, traded, given by UN, won in defensive wars (and most of that have been given back in return for peace).
You could say that the land that was gained in defensive wars is stolen even if it was a defensive war, but I think that becomes unreasonable - especially since Israel has proven that they are willing to give back such land for a real, lasting peace agreement, and also since some of the land represents a massive advantage for a hostile neighbor.
During the 1948 Palestine war, Jewish troops ethnically cleansed the territory that became the State of Israel of Arab Palestinians. The land and property owned by those Arab Palestinians was confiscated by the state and handed out to Jewish immigrants. Israel does not believe that any of the land or property it confiscated should be returned to its former Arab Palestinian owners.
At the same time, property owned by Jews in the West Bank was confiscated by Jordanian authorities and given to Arab Palestinian refugees. In 1970, three years after Israel had taken the West Bank from Jordan, it enacted a law which stated that all property confiscated by Jordan should be returned to their original Jewish owners.
This is what I meant by "massive irony" but maybe it is just hypocrisy or racism.
> During the 1948 Palestine war, Jewish troops ethnically cleansed the territory that became the State of Israel of Arab Palestinians. The land and property owned by those Arab Palestinians was confiscated by the state and handed out to Jewish immigrants.
And this is why there is so many Arabs living happily in Israel today. /s
Quite on the contrary I've read that Israel asked Arabs to stay in Israel during the 1948 war - for selfish reasons - but still.
Surrounding Arab countries asked Arabs in Israel to leave temporarily to make "shoveling the Jews into the ocean" easier. Those who left "temporarily" are the ancestors of those who live in refugee camps today. Those who stayed are the ancestors of Arabs living good lives in Israel today. More or less.
edit: Confiscating the homes of those who left to make it simpler to wipe you into the sea is a bit different than bulk killing people (genocide) and taking their homes. endedit.
Also remember that far more Jews were forced out of surrounding countries and into Israel than Arabs out of Israel.
If Arabs from what is today Israel should get their homes back I suppose Jews should get their homes and shops back in Jordan, Egypt, Syria, Iraq etc?
edit: Or can we finally accept that it was botched by UN and actively sabotaged by neigbouring countries? That the sad fate of the Arabs from Israel is less the fault of Israelis and that the ones to blame are neighbor Arab states and the UN? end edit
If any of this is news to anyone just think how much more biased news organizations hide from you.
Everyone should start reading.
PS: I'm not saying Israelis are innocent. I'm saying that media has massively misrepresented the situation for a few decades, selectively presented only the things that makes Israel look bad.
Many of them are true, but as shown above the full story is a bit more nuanced...
After the war the international community pressured Israel into letting the Palestinian refugees return home. The famous UN Resolution 194 was an attempt to settle the Palestine question and to demand of Israel that it let the refugees repatriate. But the racist Israeli leaders didn't want non-Jews in their state. "Only Jews have a right of return to Israel", Israeli Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion declared.
To shield itself from criticism, Israel promulgated the idea that the Arabs left voluntarily. That they had been "called out" by their own leaders. Joseph Schechtman, working for the Israeli state, was the first to claim this in his book The Arab refugee problem from 1952. He referenced radio broadcasts and evacuation orders from Arab community leaders ostensibly calling for them leave.
Erskine Childers in his classic article The Other Exodus from 1963 went through transcripts of radio broadcasts in Palestine during 1948 and couldn't find a single instance of an order by Arab leaders calling for them to leave. Arab leaders that he interviewed vehemently denied calling for the Arabs to leave. On the contrary, he found transcripts of radio broadcasts calling for the Arabs to stay. Since then, many historians have investigated the issue and have concluded that the "called out"-theory is completely bunk.
Despite the overwhelming evidence showing that the Palestinians left for fear of getting caught in the hostilities, were "adviced" to leave by Jewish troops, or forced out at gunpoint, some Zionists still cling to the debunked "called out"-theory. That's the power of propaganda, I guess.
I find it callous and cynical to attempt to justify Israel's ethnic cleansing of Palestine with Jewish emigration from Arab countries in the 1950s and 1960s. That the Arab countries persecuted their Jewish minorities cannot justify an ethnic cleansing committed decades prior. Furthermore, some Arab states have apologized for their persecution of Jews and allowed them to return and to claim property. No such apology is forthcoming from the Israeli state.
> But the racist Israeli leaders didn't want non-Jews in their state
Is it solely about racism, really? You're talking as if there weren't around 50 years of mutual blood shedding before that moment, or that all surrounding Arab states didn't invade Israel to destroy it. The Jews had a good reason not to trust Palestinian intentions towards them (See the Grand Mufhti's meetings with Hitler to help find a "solution" to the Jewish problem for example).
In fact the Palestinians refused to split the land twice, on 1937 and again on 1947 and then they started a war, what good would it have done to let them back - to have another civil war all over again?
Yes, the Jewish Zionist leaders were racist in the sense that they wanted as many of one race - white Jews - in their state, while they wanted as few of any other race. The British had promised them a "national home" in Palestine in 1917 and subsequently they drew up plans for dealing with the Arab population. The number of Jews wishing to immigrate to Palestine ("return" in Zionist parlance) was far fewer than what they had expected so to build a Jewish majority they decided that the territory of the Jewish state had to be cleansed of Arabs. The Zionists in Palestine's leader, David Ben-Gurion, on countless occasions expressed his support for ethnic cleansing. For example, in 1937 he wrote to his son: "We must expel the Arabs and take their places."
Even after the war Israeli leaders attempted to cleanse the land of its remaining Arab population. JNF chairman Yosef Weitz in 1951 proposed that the Christian Arabs from the upper Galilee should be transferred to Argentina. Both Ben-Gurion and Israeli Foreign Minister Moshe Sharett gave the plan its blessing.
None of the Zionist leaders ever suggested that the need to ethnically cleanse the land of non-Jews was due to Arab belligerency. On the contrary, they were quite clear on that Arab belligerency was not an issue. While there were many more Arabs than Jews in Palestine, they were poorly organized, poorly trained, and lacked access to military equipment.
Yes, it is correct that the Palestinians wanted to keep Palestine as one territorial unit. Dividing it would have meant that hundreds of thousands of Arab from the Jewish part would have been transferred out of their homeland and their property would have been confiscated. Instead, they wanted to create an all-encompassing Palestinian state with a parliament in which all ethnic groups were represented. This idea was a complete non-starter for the Zionists who wanted a Jewish-majority state.
It is good when talking about the problems on one side not to completely leave out the problems at the other side.
Here are some:
> Until the Arab armies invaded Israel on the very day of its birth, May 15, 1948, no quarter whatsoever had ever been given to a Jew who fell into Arab hands. Wounded and dead alike were mutilated. Every member of the Jewish community was regarded as an enemy to be mercilessly destroyed....
> [T]he Arab population of Palestine anticipated nothing less than massacres in retaliation if the Jews were victorious. Measuring the Jewish reaction by their own standards, they simply could not imagine that the Jews would not reply in kind what they had suffered at Arab hands. And this fear played a significant role in the Arab flight.[112]
It is also worth mentioning that despite what David Ben-Gurion meant, Israels Proclamation of Independence, issued on May 14, 1948, invited the Palestinians to remain in their homes and become equal citizens in the new state.
It might also be worth mentioning that Israel even offered Arabs to return or to buy them out since.
It might also be worth mentioning that while Israeli citizens massacred (some nasty examples exist) this was not encouraged, and perpetrators could be threatened with harsh punishments instead of celebrations like on the other side.
The story goes on.
Israel is not blameless, but the way you present it it is evil powerful Israel relentlessly attacking poor Arabs.
I enjoy (for the lack of a better word, I find it disgusting to read about) learning more including were Israel was wrong, but at the same time, wherever I look it is obvious that while the things you say are correct, you systematically leave out the other side.
(And now that I think of it I might be guilty of the same, even if it is to a lesser degree.)
First of all, Wikipedia is not a great source for this topic. It's a simple fact that many more Zionists edit Wikipedia than pro-Palestinians and its coverage is therefore often slanted. Instead, consult books written by historians on the subject. Some good ones are The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem Revisited, The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, The War for Palestine: Rewriting the History of 1948, and All That Remains: The Palestinian Villages Occupied and Depopulated by Israel in 1948.
The quotes you cite are from Joseph Schechtman and Rony Gabbay, two historians who were employed by the Israeli state to "chronicle its history". Schechtman, as I mentioned, is the one who promulgated the idea that the Arabs were "called out" by their own commanders. If you want to know what actually happened, you need to consult modern scholarly works on the subject - not books written for propaganda purposes.
It is true that many Arabs fled because they were afraid of the Jewish violence. Dozens of massacres were committed in the course of the war, some of which to punish Arabs who refused to obey evacuation orders. Most of these massacres have been hushed down so unless you are a specialist you probably haven't heard of them. The Israeli state even closed its archives of the 1948 war because the documents historians found were just too embarrassing. The most infamous massacre was the Deir Yassin massacre for which news stated that the Jews had killed some 250 villagers. This was not true - the Jews had only killed about 110 villages - but the news of the massacre caused many Arab civilians to panic. For what it's worth, Deir Yassin's village elders had signed an agreement with the Jews to stay out of the fighting. This agreement was violated by the Jews who captured it in a sneak attack on April 9, 1948 - over a month before the Zionists proclaimed their state and the Arab states intervened.
So, yes, it is true that fear played a role in the refugee flight. Civilians usually try to get away from war zones. The main driver of the refugee flight, however, was military operations by Jewish forces.
According to a Shin Bet document from June 30, 1948, the most important factor in leading to the refugee flight was direct, hostile Jewish operations against Arab settlements. Abu Sitta in Atlas of Palestine comes to the same conclusion; 54.4% of the villages were abandoned due to military assault by Jewish forces, 24.6% due to direct expulsion orders, and 1% (5) were abandoned due to Arab evacuation orders. You can find details on how and when each Palestinian village was depopulated here: https://interactive.aljazeera.com/aje/palestineremix/maps-an...
Regarding Ben-Gurion, there are countless instances of him lending support for the idea that the Arabs should be transferred out of the Jewish state. Whatever the Declaration of Independence stated, it was clearly and loudly overruled by military commanders who depopulated Arab villages and then dynamited the houses to prevent the villagers from returning. For example, in one section of Yitzhak Rabin's memoir, he describes how Ben-Gurion wanted him to drive the Palestinians out Lod and Ramle:
"Not even Ben‐Gurion could offer any solution, and during the discussions at operational headquarters, he remained silent, as was his habit in such situations. Clearly, we could not leave Lod's hostile and armed populace in our rear, where it could endanger the supply route to Yiftach, which was advancing eastward."
"We walked outside, Ben‐Gurion accompanying us. Alton repeated his question: ‘What is to be done with the population?’ B.G. waved his hand in a gesture which said, ‘Drive them out!’"
"Allon and I held a consultation. I agreed that it was essential to drive the inhabitants out. We took them on foot towards the Bet Horon Road, assuming that the legion would be obliged to look after them, thereby shouldering logistic difficulties which would burden its fighting capacity, making things easier for us."
"Psychologically, this was one of the most difficult actions we undertook. The population of Lod did not leave willingly. There was no way of avoiding the use of force and warning shots in order to make the inhabitants march the 10 to 15 miles to the point where they met up with the legion."
> It is good when talking about the problems on one side not to completely leave out the problems at the other side.
I don't think I'm leaving anything out. When discussing the Holocaust no one in their right mind would bring up Jewish violence against ethnic Germans because it would be irrelevant. The ethnic cleansing of Palestine was a war crime and made much worse by the Zionist side's justifications and insistence on that the victims of that crime have no right to redress.
I think that I should say to you that even if I fundamentally disagree with you on the root of the problem, I find it very interesting and I actually read what you write with great interest even though (or maybe specifically because) it sometimes shatters some of my previous beliefs.
I cannot defend everything Israelis have done and I probably gave that up somewhere late as a teenager or about the time I was drafted, so half a life ago.
I also believe that I could play your position to some degree if I ever met a crazy Arab hater so there's that.
That said this thread is getting long and old. Thanks for taking time to write so carefully instead of just calling me a shill and moving on. I also hope I have demonstrated that I am not and that I'm willing to try change my position in face of evidence :-)
> Erskine Childers in his classic article The Other Exodus from 1963 went through transcripts of radio broadcasts in Palestine during 1948 and couldn't find a single instance of an order by Arab leaders calling for them to leave.
This is interesting. I'll stop writing that. (Or until I can get proof of it.)
It would be astounding to me if this was true but I also cannot square the idea of a genocide of Arabs within Israeli borders with the fact that there are many more Arabs inside Israel today than before 1948.
I still haven't made up my mknd on this, but here is what I found:
There is a lot of information there but the most interesting (too me at least since it partially contractict my llng beld beliefs) was what I found by following the Wikipedia result one step further to this page:
This page mostly supports bjourne but interestingly is also full of quotes that support what I learned:
> Furthermore, in his comprehensive book on the Arab–Israeli conflict, Righteous Victims, Morris wrote:
>> In some areas Arab commanders ordered the villagers to evacuate to clear the ground for military purposes or to prevent surrender. More than half a dozen villages ... were abandoned during these months as a result of such orders. Elsewhere, in East Jerusalem and in many villages around the country, the [Arab] commanders ordered women, old people, and children to be sent away to be out of harm's way.... [T]he AHC and the Arab League had periodically endorsed such a move when contemplating the future war in Palestine.[174]
> In a 2003 interview with Haaretz, Morris summed up the conclusions of his revised edition of The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem: "In the months of April–May 1948, units of the Haganah were given operational orders that stated explicitly that they were to uproot the villagers, expel them and destroy the villages themselves. At the same time, it turns out that there was a series of orders issued by the Arab Higher Committee and by the Palestinian intermediate levels to remove children, women and the elderly from the villages."[175]
> The Arab National Committee in Jerusalem, following the 8 March 1948 instructions of the Arab Higher Committee, ordered women, children and the elderly in various parts of Jerusalem to leave their homes and move to areas "far away from the dangers. Any opposition to this order ... is an obstacle to the holy war ... and will hamper the operations of the fighters in these districts."[176]
>>"Settlers taking land is also interesting. It took quite a while before someone (and none of the big ones) cared to mention that the latest dispute was over Jewish owned land that was stolen by Jordan during their short management of east Jerusalem and sold to Arabs. "
I think I remember reading about that. Are those the properties acquired by an extremist Jewish organization, from the original Jewish owners, in order to be able to legally evict the non-Jewish people living there?
I'd just like to remind everyone that America's Founding Fathers would be labeled terrorists by the British Crown were the word in common use back then.
Wrong and exaggerated on so many levels. What you are saying is caricature of the left extremist way of thinking.
No the yellow vest movement was nothing but peaceful, quite violent actually, throwing cobbles or molotov cocktails at police forces, using forklifts to force their way or destroy public properties, burning banks, setting cars on fire, etc.
They were even allowed to demonstrate every week for at least 2 years.
They caused the death of at least 10 people mostly through traffic crash by blocking highways.
Also they are really not representative of the French people but they wanted to impose their ideas, not democratic at all, much like what happened in the Capitol.
The Aquarius is one of these supposedly humanitarian boats that pickup immigrants just 50km off the Libyan coasts, just where the international waters start. They basically behave like traffic smugglers and encourage people to try the crossing to Sicily.
Nice try linking the yellow vests to the capitol rioters.
I doubt the Capitol rioters ever had widespread support like the yellow vests had.
In late November 2018, polls showed that the movement had widespread support in France ranging from 73 to 84 percent.
Wow, so much misinformation in a single comment it's hrd to unpack.
> No the yellow vest movement was nothing but peaceful
Did i claim the movement was peaceful? It's a revolutionary movement, of course shit is gonna burn. Now three important questions:
1) Who determines the level of violence of protests, if not the government going against the will of the people and deploying robocops and military-grade equipment on the streets to destroy any opposition? May i remind you teargas is internationally recognized as a weapon and forbidden by the Geneva convention? Let's not even talk about their "non-lethal" grenades and bullets, who are very much lethal (see Vital Michalon, Rémi Fraisse...)
2) What is considered violent? Is it more violent to break a bank's window and set fire to the bourgeois restaurant where Sarkozy had dinner on his first night as president (Fouquet's), or to ensure that the 10 millions of french people living below the poverty line (not accounting for undocumented people) struggle every day for basic food and services, causing exhaustion and death, often leading to suicide or work-related deaths? Does taking part in breaking stuff (not beating people) justify to be mutilated for life in your view of Justice?
3) We may agree that throwing a molotov cocktail at a cop is violent, whether we agree or not if it's a legitimate action. In this specific case, a cop may preemptively attack as a case of self-defense. However, that's never what i've heard or witnessed. People throwing molotov cocktails at cops are a handful, out of hundreds of thousands protesting, and these are usually thrown as self-defense from the people AFTER cops have attacked them ruthlessly. In reality, most people getting hurt/mutilated by police are peaceful protesters, because they have less self-protection reflexes than people used to black block and popular self-defense tactics. In some cases, they're people who were not even involved with the demonstration, and were just passing by on the streets when the cops assaulted them. Do you think that's legitimate action by the police to just beat down random bystanders?
> Also they are really not representative of the French people but they wanted to impose their ideas, not democratic at all, much like what happened in the Capitol.
That's not true. It was (is?) a very popular movement whose primary demand is popular democracy through people's assemblies, which is the opposite of "not democratic at all". According to your understanding, what kind of ideas do gilets jaunes want to impose and to whom? What do you think of Macron's attempted recuperation via his official citizen congress on climate change, of which he discarded all proposals when they were not going his way? Which side is more democratic? A government elected by less than 50% of the population (i'd like to remind you that we abstentionists are the biggest political party of France), or a popular movement which polls indicate has way above 50% of popular support?
> They basically behave like traffic smugglers and encourage people to try the crossing to Sicily.
That's bullshit. They didn't take money from people, for starters. Then we may wonder how rescuing people at sea when they have great chances of drowning is encouraging anyone to try and cross the sea. If due to humanitarian there were 0 deaths from crossing the sea, that COULD be an argument. However, there's thousands of deaths every year so that hardly stands scrutiny. Moreover, we could argue facilitating people to cross in good conditions is actually a good thing: why do some people enjoy travel visas and first-class tickets while others get neither? How is that fair? Especially when the former are from the richest countries on earth, whose wealth is built on the colonial and/or neocolonial exploitation of the latter?
If you want to talk about scandals in the mediteranean see, you should take a look at Frontex (european coastal guard agency), and its budgets and actions. How can "cost guards" with now half a billion euros yearly budget and over 10,000 employees leave so many people to drown? You may understand more if you take a look at their scandals (see Wikipedia) including european law violation (attempting to create an armed militia despite european regulations not allowing it), international law violation ("pushbacks"), and corruption (undeclared meetings with undeclared lobbyists from the weapons/surveillance industry is illegal for european institutions). See also this CCC talk from a few years ago about Frontex's surveillance tech: https://media.ccc.de/v/36c3-10994-no_roborders_no_nation_or_...
> Steve was not killed by the police.
What's your source? There's very compelling testimonies and arguments in favor for that case, so much so that even the prosecutor had to indict some cops for "manslaughter", which is really unusual, as cops are rarely prosecuted in France when they kill someone. Despite the police initially claiming noone fell into the water during its muscled intervention, they later acknowledged at least 14 people had fallen into the river (not all during police intervention), of which 7 have been "fished" by the firefighters and 4 by a local safety association. One of those 4 people testified that there was a fifth person who actually drowned, which is why some people from the rescue teams testified they were already aware one person had potentially drowned.
That the police initially communicated that nobody fell into the river, despite everyone knowing otherwise, is a good sign that they knew what happened and were trying to cover up, as they often do. For example, that's also what happened when they killed Rémi Fraisse: First they claimed someone had died somewhere they were not at the time where no police intervention was going on, and they had nothing to do with it. Then they claimed they threw a grenade at him but death was caused by molotov cocktails of him (in his backpack) taking fire. Then the analysis proved that the only explosives/flammables found on his body and backpack were from the grenade thrown by the gendarmerie. And now they're in a limbo of conflicting testimonies were the only things sure is that safety training has been ignored (such grenades MUST be rolled on the floor, not thrown in the air), the police warnings ("sommations") were not done properly (no loudspeaker), and the officers who gave order to throw the grenades had no authority to do so (requires a certain grade in the military).
As a French this is bullshit. Others have reacted before with facts.
It would be great to mention that the gilets jaunes (initially a reasonable oppositiin movement, it became full of antivax and destroyers if common property) are typical of such rethoric, up until the moment they get power and realze that their claims do not hold water.
Most of you, as you call your minoritary folklore mivement should get down to earth.
> initially a reasonable oppositiin movement, it became full of antivax and destroyers if common property
What's your source?
About direct action and sabotage, of course some of the movement engages in such tactics, as most protest/revolutionary movements have over the years, because that's the only way to get the message across when nobody in power wants to listen to your reasonable requests. That's the only way i know of the make the nationwide media talk of social issues and popular protests... If you have other ideas, i'm sure plenty of people are interested.
Specifically about direct action, as the name implies, the action itself is the objective. Burning trashcans and blocking streets sends a message, but attacking the institutions (eg. banks) directly responsible for our suffering, whether we agree with it or not, is a relevant political strategy that has been part of revolutionary and anti-colonial struggles since as long as history has been written, and arguably longer. Do you think the resistance movement from the 40s blowing up trains and assassinations of nazi officers was illegitimate? Or do you think the situation is possible, and the endless destruction of our planet along with deteriorating social conditions for the global populations does not warrant being angry and attacking those directly profiting from this situation?
About anti-vaxxers in the gilets jaunes movement, from what i could see it was pretty divided. Moreover, i would argue the government's lies and coverups all along the pandemic has greatly helped anti-vaxxing conspiracy theories. People don't trust the government, because the government doesn't have our interests at heart. Moreover, there is a growing distrust of the scientific community, which i personally credit to key institutions from academia and media giving scientific credit to many discredited ideas: downplaying the seriousness of climate change, advertising for urbanization as "progress" despite medical evidence pointing to inherent problems in the modern way of life, or pushing for the "green revolution" since the 50s despite solid scientific evidence that mechanized monoculture is damaging the environment and not sustainable yield-wise (we are already witnessing in Europe the first signs of desertification such as land dry, due to such techniques).
Of course, most vaccines are good. But to be honest, most people i met who you would probably label "anti-vaxxers" are not anti-vaccines, but rather skeptical of the results and side-effects, which is a good critical posture. Many people who were skeptical at first are now getting vaccinated and that's a good thing. Of course, the government trying to actually force people to get vaccinated is not helping the situation. Instead, making the vaccine widely available for free, even for those who don't have social security, would help it reach more people, and would probably help convince those who are still skeptical.
After all, the government never has our best interests at heart. In this specific case of Covid vaccines, its actions are not against our best interests (no hidden chip or autism serum in there), but for the financial interests of the pharmaceutical industry it's subsidizing through this scheme. Once again, if the government forced nobody but made the vaccine widely-available, requisitioning the pharmaceutical industry to produce it at cost, more people would be inclined to get vaccinated.
> up until the moment they get power and realze that their claims do not hold water.
So this is a divisive issue in the gilets jaunes movement since of course not everybody is an anarchist. However, a lot of people in the movement want to destroy power, not seize it. There is a strong anti-party sentiment across the gilets jaunes movement: elections are rightfully seen as the opposite of democracy (giving power away from the people), and many components of the movements advocate explicitly for decentralization of power through local assemblies, even holding "Commune of the Communes" (or assembly of assemblies) conferences to federate those smaller initiatives without centralized power.
As a conclusion, i'm not saying i feel sympathy for the entirety of the movement as we have our disagreements. For example, i don't have any sympathy for royalists and neo-fascists infiltrating the movement, and i'm glad they were kicked out of demos by the protesters themselves in some cities. However, your talking points appear to be regurgitated from government propaganda. Are you actually talking with people who identify with the gilets jaunes movement?
I can assure you as a French person the economy is the least of our worries. Yes Macron is a criminal, but not for the reasons you say. We live in the 5th richest nation on Earth, that profits from pillaging its neocolonies all across the planet, so there is an abundance of resources to feed and house everyone if the government wanted it.
Of course the government, as any government ever, is an enemy of the people and wants to wage-enslave its population to benefit those who are already privileged.
>Japan, Korea and Taiwan way of dealing with the pandemic.
Which is extremely strict rules, everybody wears masks and socially distances. In Korea you can't even have more than 4 people get together without using the government website.
You know, Israel was the first country to require a vaccine passport to go to the gym. However they simply made it so difficult to avoid vaccination that everyone did it. I'm pretty sure the Israeli government is not in the business of sterilizing Jews, so, I would say it's probably safe. Take the vaccine and get the passport and go out. It's a benefit of living in a first world country.
Sounds more like autocracy to me. Whether or not you want to have a vaccine or not is irrelevant to the fact that wanting a government to coerce people into a medical treatment is a Pandora's box I'm not sure we should really be so keen on.
You can't assess these things (or anything in real world) alone, but in context of what's going on in the whole world (and what isn't). After that, its on everybody how they view their personal freedom and themselves vs the averaged good of the whole nation/civilization.
Who gets to define the greater good? We had share morals at one time with religion but that's been tore down relentless so what are those shared ideals now.
The fact of the matter is that eradication is impossible so what are we actually trying to achieve here. Reduce impact on health care? Maybe we should ban smoking and alcohol then or maybe MacDonalds, where is the line?
Well that's certain an answer. Voters and non-voters alike are, of course, free to define "the greater good" for themselves provided they refrain from harming others while putting their definition into practice, but what moral justification do the winners of an election have to enforce their definition on anyone else or harm others to implement it just because they were backed by an arbitrarily small majority of the voters? Which is a subset of the eligible voting population, and (perhaps more importantly) an even smaller subset of those who will be affected?
Religion should be torn down given its history of violence and support of ignorance and general attitude towards reality and science. Not violently of course but through education and critical thinking skills because it cannot survive under the light of the actual truth about the reality of things.
Requiring a vaccine isn't a "Pandora's box", if that were true we would have been a dictatorship decades ago when other vaccines were required. People have no perspective on anything these days or general knowledge about history.
Isn't it a bit weird that all of the criticism is pointed at the state in which a private company made this technology and none of the criticism is pointed at the actual states that bought and used it?
The article makes a pretty good reason why it's aimed at the state. The potentially close relationship between private companies and the state and how intelligence is/was likely shared between them. If that's true, NSO Group is acting as an agent of the state - thus Israel would be spying on France and caught doing it. Thus the anger directed at the state level, as well as the company and governments. A lot of the government you would want to be upset at, well, they don't give a shit and that's why people don't like them.
Yet those reasons are circumstantial and unverified claims, whereas we know that Morocco spied on France. If, and that is an if, Israel received intelligence as a result, Morocco is still the country that crossed that line. The framing makes no sense. Why is a third party, Israel, limiting fallout instead of Morocco?
If it's clearly not a big deal, can you explain why the Israeli defense minister is in France?
An Israeli company made a weapon, assembled it, loaded it and acted as a spotter for Morocco, who's the party that selected the french targets and then pulled the trigger. Even if the intelligence wasn't shared, the Israeli government should be held responsible for its arms exports.
As if Israel would be the only country selling weapons to the Saudis and they even have a tactical excuse aside from making money. It is not an excuse and they perhaps shouldn't, but it is the reality of weapon deals today.
There’s plenty of criticism for those regimes at baseline. The goal is to reduce the amount of surveillance. It is cheaper to convince the NSO group to raise its customer standards or to provide more direct oversight than to convince each regime to stop these activities. Obviously we should try both, but I suspect pressure on NSO will reduce more harm in the short run because they have more to lose.
I bet the targeted journalists and oppositionists feel much better because countries like Saudi Arabia spied on them with software from good governments, just like the people in Mexico are glad they get shot by good german weapons instead of evil russian ones.
you're missing the point, and putting words in my mouth. Israeli hacking criticism is not anti-semitism, and thats not what I meant. But the thousands of articles coming out every week criticizing Israel are largely motivated to destroy the countries image. The antisemitism is related and undeniable as a side to all of this.
Please stop adding to flamewars, and don't post like this to HN in the future, regardless of which side you're on or how right you are or feel you are.
I am Israeli, and when I see blatant misinformation being brigaded in the tech community that I am a part of, about my country, I feel the need to respond. It is actually stressful to respond, but I feel the need to because I don't think the moderation on these Israeli threads is enough. And regarding the guidelines the posters who are targeting my comments have no problems being rude, patronizing, and breaking guidelines.
I totally get that, I understand, and I feel for your situation. But you still have to follow the rules here. Other people breaking the rules doesn't entitle you to break them. They aren't allowed to break the rules, either, and we try our hardest to be as even-handed about this as we possibly can.
There are a lot of cognitive biases at work in these situations. It always feels like the other person started it; it always feels like they did worse; it always feels like one is being "brigaded" and so on. Mostly the others are feeling the same things. Everyone has good reasons for what they're fighting for, even if those good reasons aren't expressed, and even when the arguments they're making are wrong or distorted or one-sided. Since everyone is having these similar feelings and perceptions, we all have to be super careful about moderating (in all senses of the word "moderate"), or we're guaranteed a downward spiral. That wouldn't do any of us good, regardless of our views on countries or anything else.
This spyware can install onto any iPhone or Android phone and spy on everything you do silently. It's a game changer for governments and their ability to intrude on our lives. It really vindicates everything Snowden has said on the topic.
"It really vindicates everything Snowden has said on the topic."
Did any of his statements really need vindication though? Have we not known about this forever? (e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ECHELON)
I suspect the real problem is, and always has been, our perceived inability to change any of it.
ECHELON is way worse then Pegasus though, cause ECHELON / PRISM / whatever you don't even need spyware on your phone or to be targeted to be scooped up in their net.
maybe. these are different problems existing in different scopes.
a modern echelon dragnet would get an absolute mass of encrypted data so your fear will depend on whether or not you believe governments can break that crypto, and if so, at what scale.
pegasus on the other hand is highly targeted, infects silently and completely takes over your device–the camera, the microphone, keyboard, etc… encryption will not help. nothing can save you.
echelon was dragnet, pegasus is targeted. both extremely dangerous yet i still find something about pegasus to be infinitely more frightening.
we’ve already seen very high profile journalists murdered from pegasus and i suspect we’re going to uncover more as it’s dug into further.
I do firmly believe US government, Apple and Google have the patriotic duty to stop NSO and close these zero-click, zero-day vulnerabilities. Are they seriously allowing foreign governments and other unscrupulous parties to infiltrate and spy whomever they wish, just because it is also convenient for them?
What makes this technically possible? I.e, isn't one of Apple's main arguments for needing an app store so that they can prevent this kind of thing on a hardware and software level?
This story is kind of funny: "intelligence" is a game where everybody cheat and everybody say that he doesn't. That's the basic (and maybe only) rule of the game... So when a cheater is caught, the main consequence is that... he has to find another way to cheat!!!
For a long time, Israel is known to be cheating with cyber... and I wouldn't be surprised that France is using NSO services too! Same goes for Palantir...
But it has to be non-public! Showing it publicly is a way to force everybody to find other ways... but won't change the world nor the game. And it's not about "terrorist"... just about "intelligence" and "national security"
>At noon on June 28, 2012, Vladimir Drinkman, targeted as one of America’s most wanted cybercriminals, and his wife hustled into a cab pulling away from their Amsterdam hotel. They had just been tipped off that the police were on to them, but an unmarked police car blocked their getaway. The Russian was handcuffed and arrested on charges of helping to mastermind what has been called the largest criminal hacking scheme ever prosecuted in the United States.
_____________
2
>The United States has carried out a largely unheralded roundup of big Russian hackers over the last year, grabbing them on vacation in Barcelona, Prague and Greece,
______________
or great talk by Adam Haertle, but unfortunely in Polish with English subtitles avaliable
The day of cybercriminal, or how hard it is to remain an uncaught
The difference is that US is strong and powerful and can arrest its enemies across the world, but Europe is weak and pathetic and cannot even defend itself.
Would he actually know or have a way to find out why Macron secrets are being traded to Pegasus clients, or even reign in the spyware industry at all?
Would the fragile coalition be able to handle this PM doing anything about it, or is this so far outside of their priority list that it doesn't matter and there is room for real reform?
> Would he actually know or have a way to find out why Macron secrets are being traded to Pegasus clients, or even reign in the spyware industry at all?
I don’t think this would pass muster as an excuse if Israeli industry had been selling missiles to Morocco for use against France.
Curious to see if it ends up being treated the same.
Right, the main benefit/issue is that spyware and exploits are not seen as “munitions” anywhere, and as such, escape regulation or meaningful export controls.
I don't find anything extraordinary in the fact that foreign governments spy on Macron. In fact I would expect France to do the same to other countries, and I'm sure they do.
These things make headlines when they are found by the public but they really are business as usual among governments.
If anything, this only reflects badly on the French services themselves if the President's phone (I assume, or hope, private phone as they are supposed to have custom, secure phones for official business) got owned.
The genie might be out of the bottle here for them. A lot of investigative journalism now coming out (1) which shows that Pegasus is really just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to Israeli spyware.
I understand how messy the context surrounding this next point is but it’s worth considering.
From what Ive been seeing over the past couple weeks, the article is probably correct in that pegasus is just the beginning of what we’re going to find out regarding how deep the rabbit hole goes with israeli malware firms, however mint press has a very long history of what may be questionable funding and there have been quite a lot of organizations who have done some pretty well researched investigating that implicates mint press in some pretty nasty propaganda.
Again, I understand how complicated and messy this kind of thing can be, but if you at all value accuracy in your analysis, it would absolutely be worth looking at some of their history regarding incredibly questionable funding and very strange propaganda for certain regimes.
As others have mentioned, the source you're citing is at best highly questionable. The amount of leaps the article makes is just out of this world, mostly that this Israeli company has Israelis involved, and that Israelis who have experience with mathematics and computer work also serve their mandatory military service in an intelligence unit of the military rather than as foot soldiers and that an Israeli company has Israeli investors.
Israel is a tiny country the size of New Jersey, the fact that there will be overlap of people and connections between them is always the case- there's nothing nefarious about it.
Anyway, looking at the author's twitter gives one a good look into what this looks like if taken outside the context of Israel:
She's an anti-vaxxer talking about how the "ruling class" of using COVID to gain control over the population, about hidden FBI assets, and a ton about how the anti-Defmation League, a group that collects data on antisemitism is really a massive spy network.
If it weren't so scary that people believe in it, it might be funny.
Israel also had amazing bipartisan support in America. It seems like Netanyahu purposefully made Israel a partisan issue in the US in order to accomplish some short term goals, which was probably very short sighted.
I've really noticed this. Right wing forums seem to have shifted significantly over the last year or 2 from the evangelical support of Israeli state, now increasingly to 'jews are the puppet master' type commentary. Also worryingly the general (and more to do with democrats) call to arms type commentary has been growing too. You like yo hope its a significant minority but it doesn't seem to get pushed down in the forums.
I really dont know how society can deal with this movement if it grows. I suspect the best way is access to quality education + plentiful & reasonably paid jobs when people enter the workforce at all levels. Not trying to be political but I feel this is one of many reasons why things like higher minimum wages are so important and a somewhat egalitarian society as I think much of the discontent ultimately comes from people not happy with their societal status.
> Meanwhile the new guard views Israel as an apartheid state, which isn’t great for Israel.
It’s great for everyone else though. As a US citizen, I’m tired of funding and being morally culpable for Israel’s terrorism and apartheid state. Thankfully as mentioned, the younger generations aren’t buying it anymore.
Edit: Since HN has decided to throttle my replies (why?). Yes I also oppose all US military adventurism and funding. We should be 100% focused on disassembling our nuclear arsenal and convincing others to do the same. This article is about Israel though, so our support of their crimes is the topic of my comment.
It is so weird to me that so many American citizens are more worried about the moral implications of the couple billion sent to Israel than the literally trillions spent on our own wars
I think you'll find that most people concerned about military aid to Israel are likewise not a huge fan of US wars either. It's just that this thread is about Israel, so of course that is the subject that is discussed.
I've read plenty of threads here talking about the US. Very few of them pivot into discussion about military spending. Certainly not 100x or 1000x the number about Israel that pivot into military aid
That has not been my experience. Frankly, I think it’s just that Israel is a more polarizing issue, so it gets more discussion. Reducing our military adventurism has a much broader base of support among non-elites.
Possible, but I don’t see a mechanism for that at this point in time. It’s not like these people hid their opinions of Israel under a bushel in order to get elected; a lot of the more vocal critics of Israel handily won re-election last year, often against vocally pro-Israel opponents. Their voters either agree, or do not view Israel as an issue sufficiently important to override other policy concerns and change their vote.
If something will force these candidates to conform or leave to a pro-Israel position, it’s not obvious how or why that would happen.
That's ridiculously short sighted and bordering on racist.
Let's bomb all of Israel's infrastructure, arm various militias in the country and put economic sanctions on them for 20 years that limits the country to a grain-for-food programme and you'll quickly see Israel join in as a regional "basketcase."
It’s not “bordering” on racist - it is racist! It is sad to see this dehumanization towards Arabs from this community. Posters like this show that they believe that maintaining and increasing US hegemony at the expense of third world peoples is moral.
I never said I agreed with US policy. I just think this is the main reason why US policy is how it is. If you don't understand why people do things, you can't convince them to do otherwise.
I agree. I just think if I was working for the US state department, and I was sizing up various countries around the middle east to build a partnership with, I would choose Israel every time. The only country that comes close is Turkey, and they have coups every couple of decades.
I think the reasons why the ME is so unstable are a bit complex, but it's also not really relevant. If you're interested in a stable regional partner, the reasons why a given country is unstable is not really something you care about.
Considering that the only metric for supporting a Middle Eastern group is that they have to be pro-Israel, of course Israel becomes the natural choice. It’s not about stability considering that Israel is a constant powder keg. That in itself is just the catch-22 of US foreign policy in the Middle East.
The right decision - if you had the best interests for the US and the region - is to completely withdraw. Any other decision leads to more conflict and hostile and opportunist groups (Iran, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Russia, et al) growing in influence with every passing moment.
The basic goal of US foreign policy has been to maintain a network of US allies and partners around the world, who can be relied upon to protect US strategic interests, like access through the strait of Hormuz.
Nations like Qatar or SA are fine, but ultimately they are dictatorships that occasionally do stuff like chop up journalists, so you don't invest that much into them. The US had a very close strategic partnership with Iran, which was in this mould, and it didn't turn out very well.
Israel, on the other hand, is a western-style settler-colonial state that has never had a coup, has a strong civil society, and frankly could have gone to the USSR at any point in the cold war and they would have been just fine.
Obviously, if you don't want the US to be a global hegemon, this policy doesn't make sense. However, the US state department almost always does, so this policy is totally rational from their perspective.
Wow! How do you lump in Qatar with Saudi Arabia? Please point us to one time where Qatar did something last heinous as Saudi thugs chopping up a Saudi journalist at the behest of the crown prince.
>Please point us to one time where Qatar did something last heinous as Saudi
Their treatment of "guest workers" (de facto almost slaves) is significantly worse than Saudi killing a single person.
Not only due to numbers affected (the Guardian counted 6,500 deaths). It's that, we expect repressive regimes to kill their opponents but when their acts are turned against truly helpless and unrelated people it's even worse.
Workers rights is a separate discussion and one in which the entire gulf region is shamefully criminal.
I asked about the unparalleled brutality of a Crown Prince ordering the dismemberment of a journalist. Remember, this is a person who we host in the White House to shake hands with a smiling president — it matters that the whole world knows he ordered the killing and that the whole world continues to look the other way. Imagine how he will deal with dissidents for the next decade?
>Workers rights is a separate discussion in which the entire gulf region is shamefully criminal.
It's not. It's a human rights issue, which has led to many deaths. Qatar has a far worse record than the rest of the Gulf.
>Remember, this is a person who we host in the White House to shake hands with a smiling president
So you don't want to do any diplomacy with unsavory regimes? With this standard, the US couldn't even talk to most of the ME, not to mention Russia and China. The world is unlikely to survive that.
>I asked about the unparalleled brutality of a Crown Prince ordering the dismemberment of a journalist.
Well, it's a separate issue that almost the entire ME is guilty of. Just look at the case of Zahra Kazemi[0]. And we have diplomacy with those people!
"was an Iranian-Canadian freelance photographer, who according to the medical examiner was raped, tortured and killed by Iranian officials following her arrest in Iran."
The ME is unstable by design. Why dance around the subject? The US supports anti-democratic dictatorships in the countries it controls.
Guess what comes with unpopular regimes? Perpetual instability due to oppressed populations. In the countries that are not controlled the US supports any group willing to fight the government — sometimes with arms and other times with endless cash to fight the government within the framework of democracy. You think either of those actions support stability?
It's ridiculous to think the instability in the middle east is by US design, there are thousands of factions vying for power and the US has to make strategic calls day by day. Had the US made bad decisions, sure, did they know those decisions were bad at the time, probably not. If you have countries where no group (ethnic or political) has a majority, then no ruling government will be "popular".
It had nothing to do with the United States and the geopolical issues it created. In fact, the Americans sent a commission to Syria which deduced that what the French and Brits were doing was very stupid, at which point the Brits and French told the Americans to piss off.
Perhaps you can first explain why you think that is relevant? AFAIK it was an agreement that the US did not participate in, nor was its intent to destabilize.
> That's ridiculously short sighted and bordering on racist.
Now, here's a true, actual, case of using accusations of racism to avoid criticism. The post you responded to said nothing about guilt.
You could (absurdly) blame the West entirely for the region's state - but most ME countries are still basketcases regardless of who's fault it is (and plenty of it obviously goes to the locals, e.g. Lebanon being a great example of a country mostly ruined by local and regional actors).
Lebanon is quite possibly the worst example you could give, not only due to Israel playing a key role in the country's instability[0] but also to the fact that the areas that were shielded by Israel and the West were immediately experienced economic and political stability[1].
Israel in and of itself is a "basketcase" country that continues to operate the world's largest open-air prison, flaunting every international directive with complete disregard for the UN and operates an apartheid-like system that sees it constantly at war with almost every other nation in the Middle East. It has been entrenched in civil war since its inception but somehow that's not enough to be considered a "basketcase" -- apparently.
2. Besides geography, some of us also know history and chronology. We recall the start of Lebanese Civil War preceded the Israeli invasion by almost five years. Lebanon collapsed long before Israel even thought about it.
In fact one of the main causes for the civil war - and the cause of the Israeli invasion - was that the PLO was able to run a state within a state and attack Israel while being based in Lebanon.
This phenomena - a third party militia embroiling the 'host' nation in its own wars, is exactly one of the outcomes of a failed state (ergo, a basketcase). For better or worse, Israel is a state. Lebanon isn't really a state, it's a collection of tribes with no local central management.
3. That said, I was thinking more of the recent collapse though. Nothing forced the Lebanese politicians to loot the state besides themselves, especially the wars 30 and 40 years ago. It's entirely locally made collapse.
The dumb algorithm you applied - find action of West/Israel years ago, ignore everything that preceded, succeeded it or caused it and ignore the responsibility of the locals (or Russia or anyone else), is one of the main causes of collapse. Its proponents ignore the welfare of the people they supposedly speak for in order to score an illusionary point against their political enemies.
Another outcome: surprisingly Israel has no reason to work overmuch to counter the insane campaign against it and the campaign's absurd claims. The campaign mainly serves its interests.
No, sorry, you don’t get it to lump the Jewish people into this. It’s incredibly dishonest on your part to even go in that direction and you should feel embarrassment for trying to steer it towards that.
Steer what to where? Are you saying Israel's history and present are not connected to Jewish history and the 20th century atrocities? That's an extremely bizarre position to hold.
What isn't connected to Jewish history? Let's see… Christianity's out, as is everything influenced by that. Same with Islam. Considering conquerers, trade, settlement – even just the impact of the United States – that leaves… not very much.
The atrocities of WWII are more recent than the start of Jewish history, but it's called “World War II” for a reason. Think of the impact of the Geneva Conventions, for just one example.
They would've happened very differently if Judaism wasn't a thing, so I'd say they were connected. Judaism is at about as important as the Roman empire, or the people who introduced horses to the Americas – though perhaps less important than the people who crossed the Beringa land bridge.
Anti-semitism, including of the extremely violent variety, did not start with WWII. The Balfour Declaration was a response to Jews wanting to get the hell out of a Europe that hated them and liked to go kill them every so often.
The Balfour Declaration was a request from a banker so powerful that he could order the British government to create a new colony. It has nothing to do with anti-semitism.
Anti-semitism has nothing to do with the movement to create a homeland for the Jewish people (which then tried to garner the support of various governments, which is where the Balfour Declaration comes in)? It has everything to do with it.
Were there various colonialism-related issues involved too, of course. But pretending like that's the entire story is quite disingenuous.
This is clearly colonialism by definition. It’s the entire story because there is no justification for oppressing and colonizing others, even if the people doing it also face discrimination. It’s not an excuse and shouldn’t be part of the conversation.
I think there's an interesting argument to be had here about the point at which "self-determination" becomes "colonialism". A group that is sufficiently geographically diffuse does not have a right to self-determination (ipso facto, because it's not the majority anywhere). Your position seems to be that an attempt by such a group to concentrate geographically somewhere in order to exercise the right to self-determination is fundamentally illegitimate because any such attempt is "colonialism".
Is that an accurate representation of your views? If not, what is?
> Your position seems to be that an attempt by such a group to concentrate geographically somewhere in order to exercise the right to self-determination is fundamentally illegitimate because any such attempt is "colonialism".
If that relocation involves creating a new state or otherwise taking power over the region, then yes that’s my definition of colonialism.
> If that relocation involves creating a new state
Creating a new state is what the right to self-determination is all about, yes.
It sounds like we have some fundamental disagreements on definitions here, though I would be interested in your take about how you feel the right to self-determination can be meaningfully exercised by a geographically dispersed group, if at all.
I don’t think a new state can ethically be created without a democratic choice to do so by the existing population of a region.
I think a humanitarian route would be to lobby for open immigration in existing democracies. For instance, I think we all would have been a lot better off if instead of creating the state of Israel, we offered US citizenship to anyone who needed it after WWII. I’m also a proponent of a modern day open border policy for the US (where I’m a citizen).
I don't see how open immigration solves the self-determination problem, unless the premise is that:
1) You allow open immigration.
2) You then allow a democratic vote, including by the new immigrants, to partition the existing state (the essence of self-determination).
which comes back to pretty much my original premise: that the only way for a geographically dispersed population to have self-determination is to be able to move to a single area where they can them democratically vote to have that area become autonomous or sovereign...
Needless to say, the pre-existing population of that area would likely not perceive this process favorably.
The other option I see is to posit that in modern democracies the principle of self-determination is unnecessary. I suspect a number of people in Catalonia and Scotland would disagree...
> The other option I see is to posit that in modern democracies the principle of self-determination is unnecessary.
For geographically dispersed people? Yes, sovereignty is impossible and undesirable as you’d have to take it from the locals wherever you were getting the land from.
For people living under an oppressive regime (or one they view that way), it’s a different story. They are the locals and thus should have a government that fits the local population.
You can’t create sovereignty out of thin air. You have to take it from someone if you’re going to give it to someone else. All the land on this planet has been accounted for for some time now.
Well Jews lived under oppressive regimes wouldn't you agree? It couldn't get much more oppressive. So their only choice was to try settle a place completely empty or where the locals would greet them. Zionism considered this btw, all plans failed. There weren't that many options.
Their choice was to fight the oppressive regimes where they lived, not become the oppressive regime for other people. Of course not all Jewish people are Zionist so there were other options aside from colonizing Palestine.
Its really not though, the declaration never went into specifics on what parts will become Jewish exactly for this reason. It said a Jewish home IN Plaestine, not that all of Palestine will become Jewish. And even if it is "the definition of colonialism", what does it have to do with anything now?
A colony is the establishment of a new state on or in territory occupied by someone else. This is as textbook a case of colonialism as there is.
> And even if it is "the definition of colonialism", what does it have to do with anything now?
It’s literally the basis for every problem we’re discussing. Israel didn’t magically become not a colony, it’s enforced its apartheid state since it was created by western superpowers.
> A colony is the establishment of a new state on or in territory occupied by someone else
That's you interpreting Balfour / Zionism the way you see fit, there were movements in Zionism that wanted to split the land, in fact the main movement wanted to split the land since 1937 for sure (agreeing to the Peel committee split plan) and maybe even before that.
But the declaration itself just says - a national Jewish home in Palestine. There were unoccupied territories in Palestine 100 years ago. In fact there still are, even when this tiny land inhabits 15 million people and not just 1.5 millions like 100 years ago.
If Balfour wanted to say explicitly that all of Palestine is to become Jewish he would have said so.
It doesn't even say a state or a country, just a "national home". You're attributing to Balfour more than what was written.
Define unoccupied. It was scarcely populated, definitely then and definitely by today's standards, and the Palestinian national movement was only in it's infancy. Most Palestinian wanted to be part of Syria back then afaik.
It wasn't inconceivable that two people can create two states there then, and still isn't now. So no, I don't buy that everything was a colonialist plot. Some Zionists saw it as an expansionist enterprise and some didn't. We know for sure that on 1937 Zionism was seeking a split to the land or at least willing to make it happen. If the Palestinian agreed to the Peel committee in 1937 which offered Israel a very small state we wouldn't have been having this discussion now.
Why is the Balfour Declaration a main point in your argument? It could have not happen and yet Jews would still have been desperate to find a state of their own. I am not sure how it relates to anything besides it being a piccant topic (a powerful banker!)
This is the other thing: the US backed Israel because Israel was strong; Israel was not strong because the US backed them.
At the end of the mandate period, Israel was the only country in the region with a real military, because the UK had just spent the last decade training and arming that military.
At the time, the US was virulently antisemitic (see McCarthy era stuff for examples), as was most of europe.
Well, the CIA released a report that said very clearly Israel would win the 6 day war[1] without any real trouble, and this is largely considered the point at which the US started backing Israel seriously.
Obviously, it's very complicated, but I think the basic picture of the middle east at the time is a bunch of states that were dysfunctional by design, with borders drawn up by powers like the UK who had the colonial modus operandi of creating states that were fraught with ethnic and sectarian tension, so these states would rely upon them for support.
When the mandatory period ended, the Israelis had two massive advantages: they had a classic, european style 'nation', not some post-colonial territory that had literally never worked as a nation ever; and they had an army that had been fighting a civil war against the palestinians for its whole existence, with british support and training. So it's not really surprising they win the first Arab-Israeli war. Then after that, they basically can build on this to secure more support and more weapons, and build stronger military institutions, etc.
In 1948 Britain armed the Arab armies(or just left the equipment). Israel had to procure some crappy weapons undercover all around the world, but even that was not enough. Their airplanes didn't even have enough bombs, dropping bottles(or was it sacks) to scare away 10 countries strong army.
I'm not familiar with the source, but can you give us a reason why one should be pro-Israel in this instance? I see nothing wrong with condemning the actions of the Israeli government, nor questioning why one of the prominent exports of the Israeli technology sector is surveillance.
I keep being contacted several times a year by established Israeli companies to add spyware into my projects. A couple of weeks ago I was offered $5000 as a sign up bonus by Bright Data (formerly Luminati), before that a growth specialist from Similarweb contacted me to gather intelligence about how to aquire Firefox for Android extensions, it was so slimy I've reported the latter to Mozilla employees.
I can't come up with a single country with such a disproportionate amount of shady companies specialized in online tracking and surveillance compared to the small population size.
> I'm not familiar with the source, but can you give us a reason why one should be pro-Israel in this instance?
No one is saying you should be pro-Israel in this instance. But an anti-anything stance should be reasonable and based on facts.
The fact that a country with a very large high tech sector is home to some questionable companies doesn't say much about the country as a whole.
>I can't come up with a single country with such a disproportionate amount of shady companies specialized in online tracking and surveillance compared to the small population size.
That's probably because you're unaware of the size of the Israeli high tech sector, which is completely disproportional to the country's size. From Wikipedia [0]:
> It [Israel] has the second-largest number of startup companies in the world after the United States, and the third-largest number of NASDAQ-listed companies after the U.S. and China. American companies such as Intel, Microsoft, and Apple built their first overseas research and development facilities in Israel, and other high-tech multi-national corporations, such as IBM, Google, HP, Cisco Systems, Facebook and Motorola have opened R&D centres in the country
As a EU citizen I don't criticise Israel for their weapon exports to much as that would be heavily hypocritical and it would also neglect the fact that EU officials actually want to implement said surveillance towards its citizens. That is not a fault of Israel, even if you want it to be.
I would feel pretty stupid to criticise Israel when it comes out that my own government ordered their software. They supposedly didn't buy it, but it was on the table for negotiation.
I'd argue you still have responsibility for your government's actions, regardless if you voted for them. Your responsibility as a citizen is to hold your government accountable, whether that's by voting, writing letters, talking, protesting, or (in the extreme case) civil disobedience or rebellion.
Unfortunately, the more important it is to hold your government to account, the harder it is. I, personally, don't have the strength to do that, for all I talk of it.
Yes oversight and influence on the government is responsibility of citizens. It does not mean that citizen is responsible for government's actions (as in I am member of a group of people to blame for their government's actions). These two responsibilities are two very different things.
Then why it is sold to oppressive regimes to spy on people and crush activists? No, it is done for profit and profit only and it is our duty to condemn lack of government control in that sector.
The answer is very simple: because these capabilities exist in Israel. Cybersecurity is rampant in the Israeli security apparatus, and spawns both offensive and defensive companies. NSO, Cellebrite and others are simply the flip side of companies like Checkpoint ($16bn), SentinelOne ($13bn) and Imperva and countless others.
As you get released from military duty as a 20-something developer with world class cybersecurity skills, you either go offensive or defensive (and we all know which one is more exciting and possibly better paying).
It's not surprising that an industry develops around skilled workforce. Happens all the time with companies around universities.
How is that a reason? This stuff is always justified by claiming it ensures the safety of people. Another justification has never existed for any of these.
It keeps up a good working relationship with many countries who would otherwise be pressured to be hostile towards Israel. It's a diplomatic tool and it worked, see the new Abraham Accords.
I cannot imagine how someone could possibly be pro-Israel in the specific context of cybercrime and cyberwarfare. They are literally enabling regimes to blackmail and murder innocent, good people.
Opinions on Israel-Palestine seem to depend on generation.
Boomer journalists are pro-Israel and millennial journalists seem to be pro-Palestinian.
In the recent conflict NYT and WaPost were pro-Palestinian unlike the conflict in 2014 when they were neutral. In 2008/2009 they were openly pro-Israel.
In light of the Raven reveals from 2019 [0], I don't see what makes NSO stand apart and get so much bad rep (besides the obvious fact that any spyware is bad). In Raven, ex-NSA contractors not only supplied the spyware but actually helped operate it on-site, at least in the UAE. My guess would be that NSO et al compete with US-based players on price, not effectiveness.
So the angle I find fascinating is the amount of pile-on on NSO/Israel this campaign effectively generates. Anti Israeli sentiment has become the watering hole where wokes and alts of all stripes can get their fuzzies and co-exist (at least for a while :/)
[0] https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/usa-spyi....
You started a vile flamewar with this comment. Obviously, that's mostly the responsibility of the commenters flaming each other and crossing into religious and other forms of nastiness, but still—dropping a lit match at a gas station is negligent if not trolling.
As for the commenters downthread: posting personal attacks, religious attacks, nationalistic attacks, and similar kinds of things is utterly against both the letter and the spirit of the rules here, and if you keep it up we will ban you. Please read https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and take the intended spirit of this site to heart. If you can't do that, please don't comment until you can.
I think there's always been scrutiny. It's been clear for a long time that Israel has very sophisticated IT security/intelligence capabilities and that in addition to using them for it's direct national security and military goals, these capabilities have been commercialised.
The ugly truth is that offering these capabilities to whoever will pay for them is a good business to be in. In addition to getting paid for it, Israel also gets access to all the intelligence gathered by their services for these clients. It's a win-win for them.
The only way to stop them doing this would be to make the costs of these activities greater than the benefits. I'm not sure how that can be done.
I know that this is probably an innocent comment on your part, but the wording of "with Palestine" implies that there are two places in a fight, one called Israel, the other called Palestine.
This is a simplified explanation of why this label is not correct.
Palestinians are in fact three distinct groups of people who all self-identify the same way. There are the group of people who are Israeli citizens. They used to identify as Israeli Arabs, but they've recently (in the last five or so years) begun to self identify as Palestinians.
Then there is the group in the West Bank formerly Jordan. This is land that Israel captured in the 1967 war, when there was a unified effort by the neighboring nations to attack/destroy Israel, but Israel won. It returned a majority of the land it captured (more than two thirds), kept some. But Jordan did not allow citizens living in this land the ability to return to Jordan, and they became refugees, being neither Jordanian (according to Jordan) or Israelis (according to Israel).
The situation is similar in Gaza, except there is is Egypt, and is on the other side of the country. The refugees there are former (or descendants of) Egypt.
Both places have had the opportunity to petition the UN to be a recognized country, but they've not done so.
You may ask why these three groups call themselves the same thing. Why "Palestinian"- because for many of them, this unified label also implies in it the idea that Israel should not exist and the land should be reverted back to Palestine, the name that Israel (and Jordan) had before it was split and allocated as Israel.
The PLO, the governing body of the West Bank, would like to see the destruction of Israel and it to be returned to Palestine, but they're also pragmatists and some (many) believe they would accept a two-state solution.
The governing body of Gaza, however, is Hamas, an internationally recognized terrorist organization which is on a religious mission to kill all non-Muslims (and by Muslim they mean a very specific sect/belief system) from the land- no Jews, no Christians, etc. They're very similar in ideology and methodology to ISIS, but ISIS and Hamas don't get along either due to differences in their own philosophies.
Lastly, there are Israeli Arabs, that is fully Israeli citizens who were part of or descendants of the land from when Israel was formed (or who migrated to Israel) have grievances due to the way Arabs are treated in Israel. There are legitimate grievances on their part for sure, and there are a wide variety of solutions- from political reform, new laws about equality, or funding (think US inner-city poverty) to the destruction of Israel, and everything in between.
There are problems with creating a two state solution because there's no land border between the West Bank and Gaza. They're on opposite sides of the country, essentially. It's a bit more complex, but look at it on a map and you'll see the issue. It would be unreasonable for a unified people to have Israel sitting in the middle of its country, or for Israel to give up a huge swath of land and be split into two.
And Israel, under the previous government, allowed 400,000-500,000 people to create settlements in disputed land that was supposed to be kept free of people in an agreement founding the demilitarized zone.
If you're an American, that's basically the population of Washington, DC. Now what the heck do we do with those people?
But my point is there's no single "conflict with Palestine"- there are separate conflicts, each with their own peoples, issues, grievances, etc.
> Hamas, an internationally recognized terrorist organization
Canada, the European Union, Israel, Japan and the United States have designated Hamas as a terrorist organization. Australia, New Zealand, Paraguay and the United Kingdom have designated only its military wing as a terrorist organization. It is not considered a terrorist organization by Brazil, China, Egypt, Iran, Norway, Qatar, Russia, Syria and Turkey. In December 2018, the United Nations General Assembly rejected a U.S. resolution condemning Hamas as a terrorist organization.
They are religious extremists who believe that the entire land should be free of anyone whose religious beliefs do not match theirs and they don't mind killing innocent people, including their own people- women, children, etc. to further that goal.
The fact that some countries such as Russia and Turkey won't label them as terrorists doesn't change their beliefs, nor does it change how dangerous they are not only to Israel, but to their own people. They take the "long view" that if they need to sacrifice a few dozen, hundred or thousand of their own people to achieve their goal, even if it takes centuries, they're willing to do that.
It hurts not only Israel, but the people of the Gaza strip as well.
I don't want to split hairs about who calls labels them what. As I said, my explanation is simplified.
"
Israel, by virtue of its being Jewish and of having a Jewish population, defies Islam and the Muslims.
"Let the eyes of the cowards not fall asleep."
"
Article 27 talks about how the PLO(another terrorist organization) must be rejected because it is secular.
So not only are you doing the exact thing you are accusing and criticizing me of doing(because you don't like it), but you didn't address the very clear quote I posted, which is not out of context at all. And then you finish your attack by pretending you are neutral.
>> mean come on, lazily copying and pasting something you spent 3 minutes reading is poor form.
Exactly what you are doing
>> I would encourage folks in this thread to bring a bit more objectivity to the issue.
Obvious pandering trying to make your self seem neutral when you are not even responding to my quote to your comment, but another comment as you are combing the thread making sure "your side" is winning.
And who could deny the benevolent intentions of Turkey, Syria, Iran, Egypt, China, Qatar and Russia? (I have no idea what the Norwegians are thinking).
Have you got a citation that Hamas is on a religious mission to "kill all non-muslims".
From what I have read and understood, it's primary focus is to resist the Zionists which repeatedly encroach on Palestinian land.
Imo, making a comparison to ISIS is a tad bit lazy given the historical buildup to the problems in Israel. Just because a bunch of guys have big beards and shout in Arabic doesn't really make them equivalent in their aims.
As was the military goal of the Roman empire 1000 years before that. There's a reason pacificare is alternately translated as "to pacify" and "to subdue", the Romans didn't make that distinction either.
> Have you got a citation that Hamas is on a religious mission to "kill all non-muslims".
Read their own literature, read Wikipedia, read any source on Hamas. This isn't a hidden agenda, this is their stated goal.
> it's primary focus is to resist the Zionists which repeatedly encroach on Palestinian land.
I addressed the issue of "Palestinian" in the previous comments. There are extreme Zionists and there are people like me who support the idea of a safe place for Jews even if we don't support the previous Israeli government- the current one is too new to have an opinion on. And we're Zionists too. I want to see peace and equality for all the people.
> Imo, making a comparison to ISIS is a tad bit lazy given the historical buildup to the problems in Israel. Just because a bunch of guys have big beards and shout in Arabic doesn't really make them equivalent in their aims.
It would be lazy if I were doing that, but I wasn't.
I was explaining their ideology, explaining why it's different than the PLO. As for have big beards- Jews have big beards too, and some of the Jews with big beards in my family speak Arabic as their native language, so what's your point?
Please stop adding to flamewars, and don't post like this to HN in the future, regardless of which side you're on or how right you are or feel you are.
Do you know what the concept of Gentile[0]? It refers to a pretty clear distinction between a jew and non-jew.
Zionists have used this concept in the past to make a distinction between the "souls" of Jews and non-Jews. This has led to very discriminatory views towards minorities in Israel (just look at the polls/surveys for independent data).
This has led to a two-tier system in the minds of many Israelis, whereby they are the "chosen" people, and that Israel is their land, and their land only.
Now if you deny this to be case, explain why the treatment of Palestinians is so bad, that Israel blatantly violates international law to build settlements, and so on. I haven't seen any mass demonstrations in Israel against the government. Given Israel is a democracy, this must imply that a lot of people agree with this state of affairs, is it not?
Please stop adding to flamewars, and don't post like this to HN in the future, regardless of which side you're on or how right you are or feel you are.
Well I think Jews learned the hard way they are different, so it makes sense to have a word for someone who isn't Jewish. The settlements are a controversial topic in Israel, a fact is all of Gaza's settlements were dismantled and besides a very vocal minority no one in Israel gave a damn.
" Israel, by virtue of its being Jewish and of having a Jewish population, defies Islam and the Muslims. "Let the eyes of the cowards not fall asleep." "
I posted it above and was downvoted. This quote, and the rest of their charter is filled with crazy stuff.
You can deny it, but there is a severe problem with antisemitism among Hamas and the Palestinian population. Even in kids because they learn it in school.
Ignoring that you are being patronizing and everything you wrote above could be said about you, but the difference, is I am not feigning "objectivity" like you or pretending to be neutral. Also your out of context quote doesn't magically cancel mine. I didn't write Hamas's charter, and why you are defending it, is all too obvious.
Please stop adding to flamewars, and don't post like this to HN in the future, regardless of which side you're on or how right you are or feel you are.
But... it's in the bible! John Hagee wants to see Armageddon! Never mind the fact that most modern Israelis (and all of their leaders) are of European rather than Semitic descent...
Please stop adding to flamewars, and don't post like this to HN in the future, regardless of which side you're on or how right you are or feel you are.
Good condensation. Aside from that, to the parent, it has nothing to do with the recent hostilities in Gaza and the West Bank. The leak of phone numbers from NSO to the press happened in 2020.
This spyware is invaluable for the Israeli government because they have something that repressive Arab regimes want. These regimes can’t be bought with money, because some of them like Saudi Arabia and UAE have plenty of money. Israel needs friends and this is a great way to start and maintain friendships - provide a way for these tinpot dictators to cement their power. Sure, some people might be annoyed they were spied on but the news cycle will move on soon, while Saudi and UAE will remain staunch allies. MBS still loves them because Khashoggi remains dead.
Israel would have gotten away with it too, if it hadn’t been for the meddling kids at Amnesty International.