As a New Yorker this doesn’t shock me too much. The level of “Mamdani is an anti-Semite” sentiment I saw online (Reddit particularly) felt truly hysterical. And wasn’t matched by any equivalent in the offline world.
It's not like it's a swastika, it was a skull and crossbones that turns out to have been used by the SS (I think?). I had no idea that particular image was nazi-related and I don't think most other people would have either. As far as "mistakes made by marines on shore leave" go it's pretty mild. Honestly his more recent scandals are more concerning as far as character.
Platner's upside is being a senator that's not from the student senate -> Hill staffer -> party insider pipeline. We're all pretty much sick of that character, he sounds much more authentic by comparison.
It's an extremely well known nazi symbol. Probably second behind the swastika itself. There's even that famous "are we the baddies" meme, which uses that symbol as a central pillar of the gag.
If the bones are a little longer, it's a Jolly Roger. If the teeth were longer, it would be a punisher skull. If it weren't turned at that particular angle it would just be a generic skull. If it were 2 angular lightning bolts, it would obviously be SS but a skull is really common in a lot of contexts.
If you happened to clock this particular skull shape as a symbol from an SS division, then congrats, but 95% of people just would not and that's why it didn't land as a scandal. Everyone said "Huh. I didn't know either." and then accepted "Marine gets dumb skull tattoo while drunk on shore leave" as a fairly normal thing to have happened.
If I had wheels I’d be a bicycle. I don’t see your point? It’s very obvious what it is and just because you can alter an icon to make it look like something else doesn’t change what it is.
Ignorance of something doesn’t change what it is. “Oops I accidentally had a Nazi for nearly 20 years and only had it covered up 9 months ago when it became a political liability” isn’t a good look to say the least.
My point is that it's not very obvious what it is unless you are super studied in Nazi symbology. I thought I was clear but there it is in case I wasn't.
If this were a swastika, the SS lightning bolts or even the Iron Cross, yeah, that looks pretty Nazi. Instead it's a skull and crossbones just like every other one used all over the place, including the very cool jolly roger, except this one happens to be Nazi. I didn't know, most people didn't know, he can credibly say he didn't know, and we all think the jolly roger's cool. Dog's not gonna hunt.
“My point is that it's not very obvious what it is unless you are super studied in Nazi symbology”
Or if you ever played a WWII themed video game (Wolfenstein, Call of Duty), or if you’ve ever watched a WWII show like Band of Brothers or watched a major WWII movie like Schindlers List or Saving Private Ryan. I could go on, it’s prominent in nearly any WWII media.
Honestly, I don’t know if people toting the line saying it’s “obscure” are intentionally lying because he aligns with their political agenda or are completely oblivious to any level of detail in any media.
Bro, I am not lying, there are skulls and crossbones from so many sources. I saw all those movies, I knew some Nazi units used skulls just like units of many militaries, pirates, motorcycle gangs etc. It's a cross-cultural symbol for "we fuck shit up".
If you examined so much Nazi symbology that you would immediately flag this as a particularly Nazi skull based on the angle and bone length, you are the unusual one. It's cool to have interests but understand that the rest of us just see a skull and don't have nearly the response we would to a swastika.
You do realize there are many people, especially younger folk, who will never have played or seen the media listed? And if they did not even noticed the symbol?
I’m older and have and I didn’t even know there was a special Nazi skull symbol while I do know about many of their other symbols.
Because it demonstrates it’s not some obscure piece of history that only WWII buffs would know.
A major film with one of the most acclaimed directors of all time that won the highest award you can win as a movie had the icon featured prominently on the main villain’s uniform throughout the nearly 4 hour movie. Come on my guy.
Winning "best picture awards" is not a relevant history buff thing, it is just a made-up meaningless BS awarded on favors, politics, nepotism, cronyism, and fucking the right industry gatekeeping pedophiles and sexual harassers of Hollywood mafia (Philip Berk, Harvey Weinstein, Jeffrey Epstein, etc) that are also the ones responsible or part of the same in-group as those dishing out the movie awards, and who all happened share the same religion together as the original founders of hollywood's studios, which i'm sure is just one giant coincidence and not a long-running mob-like organized crime group that ensure preferential treatment and exposure for their in-group while gatekeeping whistle-blowing outsiders using these fake awards in order to ensure they can all cover up and get away with crimes and control of their political narratives that then get parroted as historical gospel by the clueless.
I'm still in awe how easy it is to get seemingly intellectual people who built careers on pattern recognition, to accept the programming without question and refuse to recognise the patterns that are right in their face.
Not an American here, but I too never knew the skull and bones symbol is somehow associated with the Nazis. So I would disagree that it is "extremely well known".
I would expect anybody who graduated with a 4 year degree in the US to be able to recognize a totenkopf. It's probably the third most well-known Nazi symbol, and is almost certainly present in any textbook or museum about WWII (besides being a symbol is fictional media about Nazi Germany).
However, I think this is beside the point. The more relevant questions are (1) whether Platner knew what it was, and (2) whether an informed voter should want someone who doesn't know the meaning of the things they get tattooed on their body. Authentic or not, (2) demonstrates a lack of good judgement to me.
(Separately, having been to that part of part of Slavic southern Europe, it is inconceivable that any tattoo parlor that would give you a totenkopf tattoo is not plastered in other Nazi and far-right iconography. You would need to actively look past all of the other Nazi stuff and assume that the skull is the one thing that doesn't have some additional meaning.)
I'm sure he figured it out at some point and should have had it covered up sooner, but I doubt he knew what it was when he got it.
Honestly, I'd be more concerned with someone who knows too much Nazi minutiae rather than too little.
EDIT: reading the CNN story, I'm actually less convinced, this is all coming from a conservative activist ex-girlfriend. Its a really obscure symbol and then there's this quote:
"Platner argued that he had the tattoo for 17 years without anyone raising concerns about Nazi symbolism, noting that he received a State Department security clearance, reenlisted in the Army after being screened for gang and hate-related tattoos, and regularly appeared shirtless around family members, including Jewish relatives."
Sure, maybe. I'm doubtful. But that's irrelevant. He knew when he launched his campaign. He chose to keep it. Worse, there's a good chance his family and his staffers knew as well. This is Jill Biden covering up Joe Biden's dementia all over again, except this time for racism.
Platner is a rubbish candidate. But! There is a case to be made that he's better for America than Susan Collins.
Did you recognize that skull as a Nazi symbol without being told? Like, "Oh, that's the Totemkompf"?
Personally, like I said, I think the more recent sexting thing is way more damaging to his brand. "Got a dumb tattoo on shore leave and posted dumb reddit comments 10 years ago" are fine for an everyman candidate, recent infidelity is not.
Plenty of people recognize that as a nazi symbol. Its why he covers it up in photos but leaves other tats uncovered. We only found out because of a leaked video from a personal event and someone inside his life confirming.
> Did you recognize that skull as a Nazi symbol without being told?
Nope. But if you're sending your pics out, someone is going to come back to you with that feedback. In this case, we have someone who says they did that.
> the more recent sexting thing is way more damaging to his brand
Sure, why not. I don't think, at the end of the day, we have any evidence either is electorally relevant anymore.
For the record, and I hope this isn't too forward, I respect your honesty and understand it's gotta be tough being a liberal zionist with everything that's going on. I respect it so much more than just going full Stephen Miller which I've seen some friends do.
I think people are really past the point of caring. The limousine liberals of course make a fuss but sitting on the high horse has not really served democrats that well, just taking L after L. And the sitting president is Epstein-Mossad pedofile and huge number still stand behind him without any shame.
Plathner is authentic and able to see and correct his mistakes (tattoo), two important properties that candidates from the una-party lack. He is certainly not perfect, but apparently better than the rest.
Not being MAGA. I have some respect for Susan Collins. But this nonsense where a tattoo and infidelity should be disqualifying on one side while the President, popularly elected this time, sleeps with porn stars and endorses anti-Semites and KKK adjacents, is unsustainable. If we need a dude with a Nazi tattoo to win Maine, I guess I prefer to be pissed off and winning.
Yes, but that should be baseline for the Democrat candidate? Are there really no better candidates in Maine? This sort of thing would be regarded as disqualifiing in the UK even for local councilors from the far right. https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2026/may/27/calls-barns...
Fear not: “As you can all probably tell, I got a lot of criticisms about the way this government functions. But in order for us to make it functional, we’re gonna have to do stuff,” Platner said. “And you can’t just go down there and be John Fetterman and ... just sort of be an a*hole.”
Manchin was against Build Back Better, expanding voting rights legislation and codifying abortion rights.
Yes, he was better than a Republican. But he was a big reason why Democrats are seen as the do-nothing party who never achieve things. Because he stood in the way of it.
Not to mention, Fetterman isn’t Manchin. Manchin at least voted to impeach Trump, Fetterman is skeptical of even doing that.
Doesn’t confirm Pam Bondi and Pete Hegseth. Doesn’t confirm a new numpty to SCOTUS. Doesn’t blow the budget on a fake deportation push and tax breaks for the rich.
I agree Democrats have no agenda. But Republicans don’t seem to either right now. They have talking points. But the policy passed bears no resemblance to those in the slightest.
>"Democrats are seen as the do nothing party".
Quite a few people I know [eu based] used to consider themselves 'democrats' ie not republicans.
But, more and more are co.ing to the conclusion that the dems are pretty darn useless.
As if that has ever overcome the American media and political classes' fixation with bipartisanship (which is how the American system inoculates itself against left-wing policy)
That's unfortunate. Choosing a leader who lies constantly and boasts of enjoying killing people seems like an unnecessary mistake. He is attacked by people who have defended far worse and are quite cynical. That doesn't mean he should be defended. He should be attacked by a left comfortable enough in its future vision as to not compromise on basic principles.
The attacks against Mamdani were disingenuous. This suspicion has heightened when the other candidates being artificially propped up had such huge flaws. I hope we can learn to see when that dynamic pops up in other places.
As a newyorker who was raised a modern orthdox jew, but left that world for the world arts, the last few years have been weird.
On the one hand, it's been the first time I've no longer been able to take for granted that everyone in a room agrees with my political views and doesn't pre-judge me based on my background. On the other hand, I've gone back home to the suburbs and heard some really ridiculous hyperbole about what it's like in NYC.
Then there's the fact that while I support Isreal, I don't support all its actions. Nor do a lot of people in the [Orthodox] Jewish community, but they are afraid to speakup too much.
Modern orthdoox jews are kind of like Mitt Romney is for Mormons. Observant of all the rules, but also raised with a full secular education, encouraged to go to college, and expected to participate in society rather than isolate in thier community.
I like and have come to, on certain policies and candidates, ally with Mamdani. But I’m struggling to find the relevance to New York City in this article beyond supposition. I went in ready to find a foreign attack on our homeland and come away grasping at straws.
French foreign services said they discovered this, but they haven't made all material they know public. They say the contacted the NY/US authorities with what they know.
I want more than this! There is a lot of room between lying and fucking up. And if you're going to present a half-baked case on first impression, it's going to be a lot harder to regain everyone's attention when you get your shit together.
Maybe I'm just annoyed with this issue. But I came into this thread looking for anything actionable. I'm not finding it. Just the same old nonsese being flung across the same aisle.
(The whole Wired for war series on RT is interesting - https://www.rt.com/trends/wired-for-war/ - as it also describes AI techs evolving role in politics and the military).
The NY Times coverage of him is abhorrently biased. Every time I see an article about him, the headline, summary, and article itself feel like the editors were desperate to paint him in as negative a light as possible.
The man has almost overnight gotten the city to start doing things that benefit the general public, nto just the wealthy. Actions on bike lane projects that were stalled and actually taking action against slumlords.
All that barely gets a mention, but they seem obsessed with trying to find fault with everything he does.
During the NBA finals, he paid for his own ticket but they still took him to task for its expense ($1000) and the ticket coming from the "VIP ticket pool" like this was some abuse of his position or unethical of him.
Of course the mayor gets access to the VIP pool of tickets? And he didn't abuse the privilege to get tickets for anyone else - not staff, not family, not friends. Just him.
He's showing that government can be efficient. It can help people. People can actually like their local governments. And that is completely counter to the politics of these rags and their funders.
They want to talk about how government can't work, will always be inefficient, and how it must be cut.
The people who own these papers know that the obvious solution to a lot of societal problems is "tax the rich, build out social programs" and they desperately don't want that message to get out. It makes it a lot harder to setup gig and gambling economies.
They are racist, and unfortunately hard core israel supporter, which makes anybody that doesn't go with that agenda as a target.
The moment that Mandani said he will stay home and serve the people of NYC, what asked 'where are you going to make your first visit when elected' it made him a target. He showed he wasn't willing to bow down to a foreign power.
NYT still tries to put a veneer of modicum. NY Post is the one that is unbashingly always negative against Mamdani, full on attacks all the time.
I think people had enough of it, and saw through it and voted for him just in spite.
I know all the members of my soccer team voted for him. I had no clue who he was, but all the attacks backfired and made him even more famous.
Murdoch's News Corp, owner of the NY Post, has always hated political figures cut from the same "for the people" cloth as Mandani.
It's a pattern going back to humble origins in Australia, continued forward in the UK when they shredded Fleet Street norms, and exuberantly applied throughout their decades in the USofA.
Did they categorize anti-Israel and pro-Palestine protests as antisemitic hate crimes like the universities did when they reported similar numbers? Do you agree with that categorization?
Whilst that was certainly my gut reaction, looking at the report, they only count actual felonies where charges are laid. Protests and anti-Israel rather than antisemitic things do actually appear not to be conflated.
However... Between 2013 and 2016, when that rule came into play, reported hate crimes rose 18.9%.
This seems to be less a giant jump upwards, and more a slow and gradual increase. Concerning, but not the end of the world. Unsurprising in an environment where "hate the foreigner" is en vogue for the political elite.
I’m glad to see antisemitism doesn’t have the sting it used to have. It’s been a shield to hide behind while doing the most abhorrent things. The world is waking up.
In most western countries it is the only true suppression of free speech, as the state will mobilise it's full force against someone, no matter their position or spuriousness of the claims.
> you think it’s all elaborate fakes to trick you?
The fact content and provocativeness of the reporting has varied wildly from source to source, and in particular, between the British tabloid press, on one hand, and British institutional press (and international press), on the other hand.
I’m glad to see racism doesn’t have the sting it used to have. It’s been a shield to hide behind while doing the most abhorrent things. The world is waking up.
It’s hard to say. The Israeli government, and its agents abroad have been pushing a narrative that any criticism of the government or its policies is in fact antisemitism.
New account made just for this comment is always suspicious.
Look - the correct amount of hate crime is always 0 but using a percentage masks the amount of crime that comes from noise. Hate crime is not evenly distributed - no crime is - and a rise from 10 to 20 per month in a city of 8.5 million is not the cataclysm you're acting like it is.
Again: no hate crime is good and this increase is an unalloyed ill. It's something that deserves attention and NYPD resources, as well as public campaigns.
The last thing I want is anyone to be attacked for their religious beliefs.
But the fact that this talking point is heavily botted is indicative of broader initiatives to make sure it stays a talking point disproportionately to its impact.
Just see what reactions I'm getting for posting a NYPD stat and my other comments who are very benign (flagged, downvoted) - HN is not a welcoming place for an actual discussion on these topics.
I confused BlackCore with Black Cube, a different Israeli private oppo research and dirty tricks group of former intelligence agents. They gained attention for their dirty campaigns against Harvey Weinstein's accusers, NSOs critics and Hungarian opposition.
If you all would shut your hateful traps for a year or so, we might be able to have a productive discussion about what a horror show the Israeli government has become. But we can’t because you all have to pop up out of gopher holes thinking we are antisemitic too and the whole process starts over again because this sort of useful idiot provides cover to the defenders of these war crimes.
What conversation is left to have after 70k children and an oceans worth of Babyblood? What's left to negotiate, reconcile or discuss? Conceding that antisemites are the friction in the discussion just gives Israel rhetorical space to bomb more children. Your sentiments might be directionally correct but not productive (as if that's a valid metric anymore in this redundant debate).
Occupied governments are DESTROYING (constitutional) freedoms, rights, privacy and democracy for this babybloodthirsty state. All the while well meaning folk try to maintain a "productive" landscape of debate/discussion.
The debate is over. The discussion arena exists to sink efforts from materially stopping the babybloodshed.
Yes, actually. The Israeli state is not synonymous with Judaism, so let's not promote the classic "All Jewish bankers are greedy and evil" antisemitic trope.
Blackrock and Blackstone are of course evil in the same ways as all other major investment firms, but if you believe the Jewish identity of some of their founders has anything to do with that or if they have anything to do with the Palestinian genocide you better provide proof.
BlackRock is one of the largest shareholders of Palantir. Larry Fink doesn't hide his support of Israel's war efforts. The proof is right there, you barely have to look for it.
Of course, I'm sure none of this matters, because modern progressives walk a very fine line between taking a moral stance against the horrors committed by Israel, while strictly being allowed to criticize only the Israeli government itself as some sort of abstract entity completely detached from its citizens and religion to avoid "antisemitism" (the polar opposite of how Russia's war efforts have been criticized, in which every Russian citizen is often assumed to be complicit in some way).
> the polar opposite of how Russia's war efforts have been criticized, in which every Russian citizen is often assumed to be complicit in some way
Well they’re wrong. I know many Russians and every one is talented and kind, unsurprisingly every one speaks against the war.
The same (flawed) argument can be made that every Palestinian is complicit in the atrocities committed by Hamas. Or that every American is complicit in Trump’s tomfoolery.
I completely agree, I was just trying to make a point about the inconsistency between criticism of Russia and criticism of Israel at the peak of both nations' wars. Unconditional hatred towards every citizen for their government's actions is obviously not logical.
As is often the case, the truth is somewhere in the middle. You shouldn't expect every person who is a Russian citizen or of Russian descent to support Putin, but if a person of Russian descent does openly support Putin, it's safe to assume the two things might be correlated. Similarly, if a person of Jewish descent openly supports the Israeli government, acting like those things can't possibly be correlated doesn't make sense, either.
> criticize only the Israeli ... detached from its ... religion to avoid "antisemitism"
Because Israel, despite its claims, does not talk for every Jew, and tarring every Jew with the sins of the state is antisemitic. No weaselly air quotes required.
It shouldn't be a tough concept to hold but so many do, just as many Islamophobics do when some dickhead in a cave does something awful.
My broader point was you need to check yourself. Perpetrating these lazy racist stereotypes just forces moderate people into tribes and the discussion never moves on.
"Lecornu said the French government had asked Israel for explanations of BlackCore's actions, and also for help in trying to find out who may have been behind the smear campaign."
Here in Scotland it seems the desinfo campaign targeted mostly the SNP and Swinney. I guess it's hard to know how effective it was but his party lost 6 seats in last month's elections.
At least the French demonstrated they hold other governments accountable. Israel is shrugging off the killing of some 70k civilians, for sure they will shrug off this one too, to no one's surprise (including the French government).
Rogue states will attack Western democracy. It's a tale as old as... Well, actually, in the past few years, this one has done more on that front than all the others combined.
As of September 2025, the State of Palestine is recognized as a sovereign state by 157 of the 193 member states of the United Nations (UN), or just over 81% of all UN members.
A Dutch commentator said something incredibly profound that stuck with me: Israel is a Middle Eastern country instead of an outpost of European civilization.
I wonder what makes Europeans think Israel is an outpost of European civilization - just the skin tone? Lol.
Israel has always been a country trying to coopt the culture of its Arab neighbors. They've tried to claim shawarmas, falafel and hummus, dishes that are quintessentially Arabic, as their own.
Skin tone? The aspiration to assign Western concepts of racism to Israeli society is so uninformed, if I am to be assuming good intentions, or very manipulative. More than half of Israeli Jews immigrated from Arab countries, and look Arab by all means. Including myself. It's literally impossible to tell if someone is an Israeli or a Palestinian based on their skin tone.
Israel is literally a European colony. Europe sent a bunch of people from Europe to an already populated land to settle there and displace the natives. What definition of "outpost" wouldn't include that?
> Europe sent a bunch of people from Europe to an already populated land to settle there and displace the natives
Are we talking about recent Jewish migrants? Or migration under the British, the Ottomans, the Mongols, the Romans, the Macedonians, the Babylonians or the Sea Peoples?
This American tendency to project black-white and colonist-colonised diametrics onto the world is insanely reductive. There are settler-colonial elements to Israel's creation. That one thread of commonality doesn't make it comparable to the New World.
> Israel has always been a country trying to coopt the culture of its Arab neighbors. They've tried to claim shawarmas, falafel and hummus, dishes that are quintessentially Arabic, as their own.
That argument is just as much BS as the squabbles in the Balkans over who can claim Nikola Tesla, cevapcici, burek/börek, döner/gyros, pljeskavica and a whole other host of foods. Everyone got their own takes on food and trying to act like shawarma/falafel/hummus are "exclusively" Arabic (or Israeli) is borderline moronic.
That's precisely my point. I didn't mean those dishes were Arabic by origin, but by prevalence. In fact, evidence points out to shawarma being an adaptation of the Turkish doner that was developed variously across the different provinces of the Ottoman Empire. But the fact of the matter is that these dishes ended up being the mainstay of Arabic cuisine long after the Ottoman Empire's end.
Then a bunch of white Ashkenazi/Sephardic/Mizrahi bois ship on over from Europe and Yemen and Morocco and try to claim themselves as the originators when they clearly aren't.
And when other Europeans stopped those Europeans from murdering all the Jews, they decided to expel them to the middle east instead, creating the situation we have today.
I'm surprised that they dare to target NYC. I think NSO Group restricted Pegasus so that no US adversary would be retained as a client and the US would not be targeted.
The current US administration would have likely been in favor of it. Long term it’s a bad idea but it wouldn’t be the first time we saw groups like this only thinking about the short term.
Another entry in the 'Black' villain line, along with BlackStone, BlackRock, BlackWater etc ... really makes you think the world is run by a thinly veiled cult of evil comic style villains.
As I said elsewhere in this thread (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48522679) it applies the same to any religion. We've banned many accounts over the years for flamewar against Judaism (since that seems to be the one you're asking about).
I realize it's hard to see bad comments failing to get moderated and not feel like the moderators must have a secret agenda about the topic you feel strongly about. But the reason is simply that we don't see everything. We can't read even 10% of what gets posted to Hacker News, and we mostly don't read the threads in sequential order.
In other words, if you see a post that ought to have been moderated but hasn't been, the likeliest explanation is that we didn't see it. You can help by flagging it or emailing us at hn@ycombinator.com.
As usual, terrible quality moderation. This post doesn’t cause flame wars and you missed like a dozen in this very thread that were posted before this comment.
As for missing other cases of religious flamewar, you may be right, because (as I just explained at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48524299) we miss most of what gets posted to HN. We rely on readers to bring the worst posts to our attention.
But I'd need to see specific links to be able to say anything, and readers would also need to see specific links in order to make up their own minds about your assessment.
I like your style. The entire thread is one giant israel hate-fest, there are clear comments where people call for annihilation of israel that stay up for least 12 hours but my comment is bad? Is it not a fact that islam punishes apostasy with dearh? How is such a cult even deemed to be a religion? What educated self respecting person would try to be tolerant to islam?
I know programming/mathematical analysis are not your forte but have you given the least attention to the kind of people that upvote this nonsense in groups and flag every opposite viewpoint?
Half my comments are indeed non technical because that's what half your website is. Why do you even allow political threads, have you, even with your bay area conditioned mind, ever found anything intellectual in there? Stupid question i guess
Id seriously suggest you take a break and go for a 10-day Buddhist insight meditation. You'll stop making completely vacuous yet long and smart sounding statements and get a sense of what actual world is besides bay area bullshitting.
I don't even know who would work such a job? Like you do realize that pg is a dumb idiot who "suddenly realised" Microsoft is dead in 2008 "while having tea"? Just last year they were the second company to 4T valuation before even apple.
The thread does have bad comments, but I didn't see the ones you're talking about and I just looked through most of it. If you want to supply specific links to the worst cases, I'll take another look.
However, other people breaking the site guidelines doesn't make it ok for you to do so, and pointing the finger at others is a pretty poor way to respond.
Edit: I took another look at your account's commenting history, and you've really been breaking the site guidelines badly and repeatedly. Normally we'd ban such an account, but I'm not going to do that right now. Please fix this, though, or we'll end up having to ban you in the future.
Quite revealing when this comment has been getting downvoted. I guess some people support the fact that some people dishonestly raise money for a humanitarian cause and then steal that money.
Last time I suggested on a similar story that there's a disproportionate number of firms in Israel with an explicit focus on subversion, manipulation, spying and malware, seemingly because a large portion of the Israeli population gain a certain expertise in these fields as part of serving in the IDF and working to suppress Palestinians, I got accused of bias because apparently there's many more Israeli startups working on medical research, green technology and world peace.
If there are, they certainly would do no harm in being more vocal, firms like BlackCore is unfortunately what Israel is becoming known for around the world.
Regardless of what good things other Israeli companies might be doing, it's clear that the Israeli government doesn't have a problem with these malware / spyware companies.
Totals since 2016
Country Total Spending
China $562,676,323
Japan $504,111,211
Liberia $432,968,270
Saudi Arabia $421,890,448
Marshall Islands $382,012,024
South Korea $363,237,700
Bahamas $293,205,139
United Arab Emirates $269,529,107
Qatar $269,260,794
Israel $215,168,616
So for small countries UAE and Qatar(no surprise here, they just gifted 1 billion airplane to Trump)
This excludes US based groups lobbying for Israeli interests, which does not count under official spending by Israel, so it is not an accurate representation of the lobbying effort in the interests of Israel.
That seems like the categorically correct thing to do, for the same reason that (for example) a domestic Korean-American nonprofit that lobbies for Korean interests doesn’t get counted as foreign money or influence.
(Perhaps it should be! But it should be consistent, whatever it is.)
> Perhaps it should be! But it should be consistent, whatever it is.
Agreed. Any lobbying that centers on the interests of a foreign country should IMO count as foreign lobbying, I have no problem in including Korean-Americans, Kenyan-Americans etc. in that too.
Well, so here's the question: what counts as the interests of a foreign country? AIPAC's entire lobbying stance is that its positions are mutually beneficial to both the US and Israel, and this is the stance that every other national/ethnic affinity group in the US uses as well.
Put another way: it seems very risky to allow the federal government to determine the propriety of political speech just because it happens to concern two (or more countries) at once.
The difference is the nature of the lobbying and the volume. Follow the rules.
An egregious, non-controversial example of things going poorly is NYC Mayor Adams and Turkey. He basically accepted bribes and favors from the Turkish government and their proxies for specific actions.
A “doing it right” example that wouldn’t have been controversial until recently is Denmark. They mostly focus on direct diplomatic policy lobbying, and leverage consultants to promote mostly tourism. Their affiliations are known and registered. Now they hire K-Street lobbyists to influence policy objectives re: Greenland, etc.
The difference is that when the papers found out about Adams being a crook… that didn’t turn into accusations of racism and fomenting sectarian hatred. In the AIPAC example, there will be a both a legitimate visceral response from Americans and astroturf from lots of prominent people.
> The difference is that when the papers found out about Adams being a crook… that didn’t turn into accusations of racism and fomenting sectarian hatred. In the AIPAC example, there will be a both a legitimate visceral response from Americans and astroturf from lots of prominent people.
I think there's a much more parsimonious explanation for this: the average American doesn't know that much about Turkey, know very many Turkish people, etc.
In contrast, the average American has been steeped in I/P and related proxy conflict news for their entire adult life. That, combined with the fact that the US has a large Jewish population means that there's a degree of salience to accusations around AIPAC that wouldn't exist if the equivalent Turkish-American political lobby entity[1] was caught bribing politicians.
It is explicitly their claim, whether you (or I) find it ridiculous or not. Here’s the copy directly from their homepage[1]:
> America is safer, stronger and more prosperous when its relationship with Israel is ironclad. AIPAC works with Democrats and Republicans in Washington to advance that partnership. AIPAC lobbies Congress to pass annual U.S. security assistance to Israel, support lifesaving missile defense cooperation, and fund joint programs that help protect our troops and our homeland
(Note that “homeland” here refers to the US, not Israel.)
I was adjacent to state level politics for a long time. The German, Korean and French economic development organizations would come around every now and again with promotional events coordinated with their embassy to promote partnerships and business opportunities. Sometimes they had lobbyists focused on general relationship building, more often for specific issues.
The Israeli ground game is different. American PACs affiliated with or specifically “not affiliated with, but always talking about” Israeli interests show up at every level of government - a good friend is a town board member of a big suburban town and they call on him, and he refuses the contributions so will likely get primaried.
The real difference is information awareness. There is a CRM somewhere the ground guys have access to, and relationships are cultivated and used. My buddy is being targeted becuase there’s a good chance he’ll be in the state legislature someday. There’s a pipeline to get targeted American politicians to tour Israel for whatever reason. When critical attention is focused on this stuff, the reaction is fast and painful for the media outlet or political actor.
The only thing close to this is China, who does similar stuff with a different playbook. They’ve been caught embedding agents of one sort or another in California and New York governments at a high level, as well as places like Florida or within government contractors with lower level people.
Note that we’ve purged the FBI counterintelligence division, so the brazenness of the “bad” stuff will get worse - nobody is watching.
These numbers are wrong. There is no possible way Liberia has spent 10% of its GDP on lobbying the US for the past 10 years. They just signed (May 2026) a lobbying contract for $1.2 million with a lobbying company in the US, which seems vastly more in proportion https://liberianinvestigator.com/liberia-ballard-partners-lo...
OpenSecrets laid off 30% of its staff due to financial problems [0] and I'm absolutely sure that site is AI generated. No idea what numbers are displayed there but no country can afford 10% of GDP for 10 years for influence in Washington.
Those numbers in no way indicate that Liberia spent 10% of its gdp lobbying the US. It looks like approximately 0.8%, which is still fantastically high
It works out to about 0.8% of Liberia's GDP. The Marshall Islands number works out to about 15% of the estimated value of the amount of financial assistance the US gives them.
I don’t know man, never heard about Finnish people decimating a population, starving kids, subverting countries, toppling governments... I’ve been in Finland last year and they’re so nice.
You mean in recent history? Because Finns were nazi allies during WWII and participated in Siege of Leningrad starving hundreds of thousands to death. They also organized network of concentration camps during the war.
Honestly, I agree with the previous comment on your need for self-reflection. Everything you're accusing Palestinians of doing, israel has done: Hides behind civilians? Check; Discounts the sanctity of children's lives? Check; Kidnapped kids? Check; Kills them, too.
Don't kill civilians. Don't kill children. Especially if they're being used as human shields. It really is that easy. Whatever desires israel may have (exterminating Palestinians, taking their land, a feeling of absolute security) are secondary to that (as in, less important), and can be addressed when their child killing and civilian killing stops.
Not to get into an argument, but most of the population in the Middle East are Muslim who don't give two shits who killed Jesus because they don't believe he was killed to begin with.
You can point to the recent invasion of Lebanon and the image of an IDF soldier taking a sledge hammer to a statue of Jesus. Those might be the upset neighbors. Rightfully so as they were told to evacuate their homes so the homes could be leveled for a "buffer zone".
If Israel wants to be taken seriously as a nation of "normal people", they need to do something about the extreme nationalism and hate in their ranks, and the racket of protecting settlers who attack Palestinians in their homes.
Nearly half a billion dollars in annual lobbying is attributable to oil money. It's okay for OPEC's foreign interests in your book, but you're focused on the tiny impact that Israel has.
Saudi money good, Israeli money bad? What's up with that?
Israeli here - I'll try to write this the least political as I can since I on one hand disagree strongly with the government and on the other my experience has been getting antisemstic (yes, not anti-zionist) comments whenever this gets discussed a lot (and likely downvotes but who cares I've been here 10 years and have more fake points than is important anyway).
Israel has several "cores" of technology. The military stuff is shameful (as well as other stuff). It's not just the NSOs (or less infamously the Wiz's/Palo Altos etc).
There are plenty of good things though - startups in the biotech/health/classic "tech" space. I'll spare you the long list of stuff like Mellanox that drives Nvidias in data centers and leave the googling of medtech to you. Lots of neutral stuff too.
> my experience has been getting antisemstic (yes, not anti-zionist) comments whenever this gets discussed a lot
I appreciate your experience. I have no doubt there's indeed been an increase in such comments. I think it's important to note that the Israeli government does work very hard to conflate Zionism with Judaism, (which itself seems antisemitic to me), making it harder for some to separate the two.
> There are plenty of good things though - startups in the biotech/health/classic "tech" space.
That's good to know, as I said in another comment, it may be time for those startups to make themselves heard more, not because they have to, but because it is in their interest if they have any expansion plans going forward, given what a poor PR the Israeli state and firms like NSO, BlackCore etc. give the Israeli tech scene.
> I think it's important to note that the Israeli government does work very hard to conflate Zionism with Judaism, (which itself seems antisemitic to me), making it harder for some to separate the two.
Yes, they are trying their hardest with their actions to fuel a new way of antisemitism.
Turns out if you are a religious fundamental colony that occupies territory based on the bible, that gives bad rap to the whole religion.
Except Zionism is not religious. It is a modern secular nationalist ideology rooted in ethnicity, shared ancestry, history, culture, and language. Indeed, socialism dominated Zionism for a long time.
Many if not most Israelis are not religious, and traditionally, religious Jews (especially the Orthodox; an extreme case is Neturei Karta) oppose Zionism and the State of Israel as a secular ersatz, believing that they must wait for the Messiah to restore Israel.
Of course, in the last few decades, a faction of Zionists have commandeered the messianic for political purposes, but this is not the origin.
You don't know your history. Zionism started in the late 19th century as a nationalist and colonialist movement; by 1917 it had already secured the support of the (soon to be) British administration of Palestine for the creation of a Jewish state there; mass immigration was already underway and flooded with hundreds of thousands of colonists a territory that had had almost no Jewish presence for a thousand years or more. Ethnic cleansing of the native population was already in the plans, as shown by the private diaries of the father of Zionism Theodore Herzl.
When in 1948 the UN formulated its partition plan (i.e. the proposal to expropriate the Palestinians of half of their land to give it to the Jewish immigrants), the land that the proposal assigned to the Jewish state had a 45% Palestinian population, which the newborn state immediately proceeded to ethnically cleanse. Besides, Israel never formally accepted the borders of the partition plan and immediately set to conquer new territory (plan Dalet).
In the 40s, Jewish migration was restricted by Britain, which changed after WWII because of the Holocaust. As already stated, the political landscape shifted when the Holocaust came to light.
As of today, 20% of Israel population are Arabic. Compare that to how Jewish population developed in Arabic countries i.e. Egypt, with practically zero Jews left. Not saying they did ethnical cleansing, but you don't end up with 20% when doing that. We will never now how the numbers had turned out without Arabic countries attacking Israel multiple times, but for sure with more than 20%.
> immediately set to conquer new territory
That's rewriting history. The initial borders and border changes happened while defending against attacks from other countries. Regarding the six day war, from what I have read, there are serious signs that support the view of the six day war being a preemptive strike.
Lol. While of course Zionism was conceived also as a solution to the persecutions that Jews were facing in Europe, it was born within the European ideology of nationalist movements of that period (which gave birth to several of the European nations of today) and of colonialism- also a widespread and uncontroversial feature of the time. Nothing specifically bad about Zionism in this respect, it's simply a product of the ideas of its time.
All the rest, about Israel existence today, is irrelevant. We can recognize the mistakes of the past to at least understand how we got to this point and what's the best and correct way forward. It's not about reverting history but at least knowing it.
Biggest problem is that many strive to revert history in some sense. You can't just dismantle a country like Israel. Israel isn't going away without a genocide on the Jewish population.
It's sad that there hasn't been any good faith decision makers for roughly 20 years. Everybody just fueling the conflict, making it miserable for everybody who directly faced the consequences. Lately, the mass murdering in 2023, followed by bigger scale killing / mass murdering.
The terrorist group Hamas as well as Netanjahu and his fascist clique must both be removed for the people in the region having a chance of a peaceful live.
The creator of Zionism, Teodore Herzl was very clear that it was a colonial project dependent on ethnic cleansing:
> We must expropriate gently the private property on the state
assigned to us. We shall try to spirit the penniless population across the border by procuring employment for it in the transit countries, while denying it employment in our country. The property owners will come over to our side. Both the process of expropriation and the removal of the poor must be carried out discretely and circumspectly. Let the owners of the immoveable property believe that they are cheating us, selling us things for more than they are worth. But we are not going to sell them anything back. (Theodore Herzl, 12 June 1895)
So, anyone who had owned a plot of land was at least deserving of property rights - but given that lots of people's in the 20th century were unfairly stripped of their property rights and never compensated, I wouldn't expect anything.
As they did not possess sovereignty in the region, I don't recognize any sort of collective national claim of ownership to the overall region.
Yes, it describes ethnic cleansing. As for colonialism it doesn't need to be described, moving en masse to a country inhabited by an indigenous population to settle it is the definition of colonialism.
This is blatantly false. Palestinians are indigenous to Palestine. No one is indigenous to Israel, which was created in 1948. Israel is a colony, defined by its non-indigenous population.
The country of Israel is based on western colonialism, taking advantage of the atrocities of WWII and the Holocaust.
It was meant as a western foothold in the middle east, which is clearly the case now. In a despicable manner, Germany now is aiding and abetting the atrocities committed by the colony of Israel, as if two wrongs make a right.
> It's not based on the Bible, it's based on where we know for a fact people actually lived under the Roman empire. If not just speculation based on a 4000 year-old mythical text, it's literal documented history.
It's the invocation of a 'promised land', which even Israeli government officials use as a justification for their actions, that is based on (a reading of) the Bible, despite Israel being nominally a secular country.
I don't think many dispute there was a significant population of Jews within the Roman Empire, many of which lived in the rough geographical area of present day Israel.
I am not sure how any sort of present day 'inherent right' stems from that.
There's plenty of room for debate about the legitimacy of Zionism, and about what (and when) a "return to Zion" should be. Such debate has been carried out vigorously for 200 years. But it has to start from agreement on basic historical facts, and rejection of non-facts founded in bigotry.
Israeli government officials are politicians and vary in perspective, but by and large the Israeli government is a big part of the "nasty colonial racist" part. Their perspective exists but is not authoritative, and it is becoming increasingly unpopular around the world (including among Jews).
Which facts? Are you genetically 100% from Palestine? If not, then the fact is you're not Palestinian. Having trace genetics (possibly, possibly not) from people who once lived in a region does not give you or anyone else permission to go ethnically cleanse that region of the actual inhabitants and steal their land.
1) the genetic lineage predates the modern concept of a region called Palestine, and this argument is ridiculous because if I marry a Palestinian woman and have a kid, you're saying my kid isn't Palestinian enough to have any kind of birthright in Palestine.
2) the general idea is that people of that lineage -- having been repeatedly oppressed and kicked out of literally everywhere in Europe at least once over 1800+ years -- should return to that region and establish a nation-state in which they can live under a self-determined government.
European in-fighting does not give you permission to commit genocide in Palestine. Literally nothing that has happened in Europe has any bearing in the Middle East.
It's amazing how Trump and Bibi manage to embody the absolute worst stereotypes of their respective cultures. There's something almost Jungian about it.
I never understood this: the Palestinian children whose family and limbs are torn from them for Israeli sport are also Semites. It seems like the ultimate erasure to claim "antisemitic" for only Jews.
Etymologically you're correct that semites refers to [all] people from middle east and horn of Africa. But the label is from the European perspective, where it was used to refer to Jews. I'm sure that if they'd had a say in it, they would not have referred to themselves as Jews.
But yeah, there is indeed some irony in the term "antisemitism" in the context you describe
Semitic does not refer to people nor to a race of people, but to a family of languages including Hebrew and Arabic. The man who coined the term "antisemitic" used it to describe his own views which were specifically anti-Jew.
The only erasure is the attempt to diffuse the term to include Akkadians, Amharics, Carthaginians, Phoenicians, Black Israelites, adherents to the Nation of Islam, all 1.3 billions Arabs, what-have-you, when it always and only ever referred to anti-Jew hatred.
There is no such thing as a "semite." It's an archaic racial category that 19th century German race science used since "anti-semite" sounds more scientific than "Jew hater." Consequently, that's why it's applied to Jews rather than a larger pseudoscientific racial group.
(More broadly, "they're semites too" is the "Elon Musk is African American" of I/P discourse. You can recognize extraordinary human tragedy without re-using race science.)
I don’t know why you would assert this like it’s any of those things. You can look it up if you don’t believe me; you would be considered extremely weird for talking about “Semites” as a coherent racial or ethnic category around anthropologists.
(By comparison: nobody who isn’t a racist talks about Japhetites or Hamites, but these are the coextensive groups implied by the existence of Semites.)
Personally, I think you're going through a hard time. An individual and a country are different, but people do rely to some extent on the image of a country when judging an individual. I agree with your logic, so I'll give you an upvote
> Israeli here - I'll try to write this the least political
We are more than two years into full-on genocide and you hesitate to be political? This position reminds me of many Russians who prefer to "stay out of politics" because there are "two sides" to the conflict and it's an uncomfortable topic for them.
I didn't downvote you. You're Jewish (I stand side by side with Jewish brothers and sisters against Israel), you've expressed disagreements with the Israeli government. We're likely on a similar page then.
However:
> There are plenty of good things though - startups in the biotech/health/classic "tech" space.
Besides the point. I truly won't touch anything from that Apartheid, gen0cideal state.
c.f. the boycott of South Africa during Apartheid. Same principle.
Israeli designed/made chips are in phones, computers, all over the internet. Same with Israeli made software. Anyone using/posting to the internet is touching/supporting quite a few things from Israel.
To be clear, the job of the ordinary citizen in this situation is not to opt out. I criticise China often and yet my phone has Chinese chips. Would you have me shut up about China?. And so it is with Israel.
The job of the ordinary citizen is to do what they reasonably can to protest the gen0cidal, N'azi behaviour of its current administration with the support of a significant percentage of its populous.
Given how the troubles have turned a significant number of the population into blood-thirsty land thieves, the country should be de-N'azified like they did to Germany after WW2.
OMG, really?! Well then, because they did all those beneficial things, then I'm fine with Israel bombing hospitals, schools, and killing children by starving them while they sleep on the pile of rubble that was their home!
People justified their anti-Muslim hate after 9/11 with similar statements about polls saying most Muslims saw Bin Laden in a good light, and have anti-West views.
Not saying I agree with any of it, but I find the parallels illuminating. If anyone wonders why there's more anti-semitism now, s/he can perhaps compare it with how all Muslims are condemned as being members of a barbaric sect after any terrorist attack (yes, even attacks where the perpretator doesn't claim to be doing it for Allah).
Hold on, you're doing a little gymnastics here. People are very deliberately talking about Israel being in favour of the genocide, and quite understandably saying that their government should not be supporting Israel - with "not supporting" meaning anything from BDS to simply not handing billions of dollars to them. Some of the most vocal and strident supporters of this are Jewish. The groups attempting to connect the genocide to Judaism are the US, British and Israeli governments & news media - who are all broadly pro-Israel.
Additionally the anti-Muslim hate was not "ah let's very justifiably cut ties with some mad country" it involved widespread and open islamophobia, calls for mass deaths and indeed invasions of muslim-majority countries.
I wouldn't be surprised if the results of a poll for actual genocide would be the same, but expulsion is not genocide. I really wish people would stop diluting the meaning of genocide at every opportunity.
Which is a reasonable position, given that the Jews within this specific locale are mostly homicidal maniacs.
Given the context, Palestinians wanting to kill every last Israeli Jew is a totally defensible position. It’s a natural reaction to a band of murderous European invaders coming to occupy their homes.
No one has ever called me a kike or Christ killer. No one has ever accused me of controlling the media or banks. No one has spray painted a swastika on my house, or my synagogue for that matter.
My nation, the most powerful in the world, puts a menorah in its halls of government every year for Hanukkah. The legislative and judicial branches have Jewish members at the very top level. The head of government has a Jewish son-in-law.
Even online, I see much more pervasive criticism of my nation than yours.
Yet, listen to Zionists and I’m practically living in Weimar Germany. That dog won’t hunt.
People have criticisms of Israel. They may be fair or unfair. Address them on the merits and leave the rest of us out it. It has nothing to do with Jews qua Jews.
> Yet, listen to Zionists and I’m practically living in Weimar Germany. That dog won’t hunt.
Yeah this is so detached from reality I have to ask how you arrived at this conclusion and consider reexamining the way you consume information. Both in my own personal impression and according ADL global index USA's antisemitism is a low. Because "Zionists" have pro-Israel bias they will perceive any one who support Israel positively, and no one support Israel more than USA, so they will likely view USA as positive further lessening negtive views.
It's hard to separate for some people. Unfortunately those people tend to be the worst on both sides
In general, I think (or at least hope) your experience is the more common one. But fwiw I do have a Jewish friend who was personally cussed at and threatened by his own coworker explicitly for being Jewish (well, and probably because they were from Florida if I'm being honest, but there aren't as many slurs for that). The guy who did it was fired (whole thing was recorded iirc), nobody sided with him, he was clearly off his rocker in some way - but it doesn't take much to get shaken up - it sticks with you. And my friend was understandably, shaken up.
I know that because I used to live in Seattle, and unfortunately I had a really scary experience of being threatened (he yelled "I'm going to kill you b****") and chased down by a homeless man for nothing other than being a woman on the same street as him. So I saw my own perspective shift when it happened first hand. I was no longer excited about living downtown in a big city after that experience.
So what I'm saying is, neither me nor my friend took the experience and made it a defining thing. He still lives where he does, didn't blame the community or anything. And I'm back to taking public transit, talking to strangers on the sidewalk, and all the other stuff that comes with spending time downtown in a big city. But this time the city is Charlotte, my home city. It's probably not any safer than Seattle (maybe worse), but experiences shape perception, and I've always had really good experiences on Charlotte, including with homeless people. I could say it's because Charlotte has more police presence lately, or because there's not visible tent camps or open drug usage. But deep down, I know, crazy people are always gonna be out there, and the most trivial thing can make you a target.
So I really get the pull by people who have experienced victimization like that to talk about it. You feel kinda crazy if you don't, because you are surrounded by people who say it never happens because they've never seen it. That was such a big part I think of the Floyd protests - a lot of white people lived in a bubble and didn't know how pervasive overly violent interactions with the police can be (though the ironic part is that a lot of white people still don't realize that they can also be targeted by police with just as much malice). Most American black people already knew first or second-hand that police brutality was real and not uncommon - but until it was undeniable on video, it was treated by others as if it never happened.
So there's some honest middle ground somewhere, but the extremists are the one who have the most to gain from convincing people to believe otherwise.
There’s definitely antisemitism out there. Criticizing Israel is not part of it. The people that run to that ever. single. time. ought to be ashamed of themselves for crying wolf. They have no right to abuse the term and rob it of legitimate meaning because they don’t have a good response on the merits.
I have stood up for Jews since I was a kid, often saying "I'm Jewish" when racists/antisemitic jokes were told and I have been called those things. I've heard people say all kinds of horrific stuff about Jews. In this very thread we have:
"This is definitely made easier by the fact that the arrogance, the endless lawyering, the shady dealings, the greediness, the constant switching between attacking and playing the victim, they all match to a tee the most known historical antisemitic tropes."
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48515906
IDF conscripts astroturf on social media all day, and a lot of people do the same for free on behalf of the concept of Israel
Don’t worry about the deflections and karma flagging censorship as consensus, because its not
Jewish and Jewish Israeli people are raised to be afraid of the entire world, and think losing a perception game will result in their eradication perpetuated by everyone around them. This is due to a 1,000 year history of exactly that, so I can empathize, but not at the expense of fiction. I don’t want anyone to hurt them. I want the corrosive traits in their culture to be checked and go away.
Put all those PhD’s that some people are so proud of into other pursuits.
> Jewish and Jewish Israeli people are raised to be afraid of the entire world [...] This is due to a 1,000 year history of exactly that
Actually it goes way further. It seems that a large part of Jewish religion and culture is centered on the idea of being persecuted. A quick list goes from the Egyptian slavery, to the attack by the Amalekites, to the Babylonian destruction of the First Temple, to Haman's plot to exterminate Jews in Persia... and we're still at the book of Esther, 5th century BCE. The list goes on and on. Each of these is commemorated in a religious or civil ceremony: Passover, Purim, Hanukkah, etc.
This is to say, Judaism is built around grievance. And grievance in turn, if kept unchecked, is dangerous because it can justify unethical behaviours that are seen as reparatory.
That's true in a general sense, not true in every specific sense.
Before the mass murdering on Oct 2023, Israel didn't fight in the sense of an open conflict/war for a time. It tried to normalize relationships with Arabic countries, but didn't really work on solving the conflict with Gaza. It became more and more obvious they are trying to replace the population in the West Bank, further devalidating political/peaceful approaches by Fatah, fueling Hamas' approach of terror and murder.
Fighting for survival foremost mean to architect a sustainable solution for Gaza and westbank.
> Independent of who is in the right there, they are losing the media war.
Honestly, I like that nobody's getting fired anymore. I like that consensus has shifted on consensus-driven forums until the IDF conscripts wake up. Generations of that and nobody's opinion actually changed, people independently perceived the same things and speaking was merely suppressed by private sector and communities. Partially by our own governments too.
Now the behavior of Israeli administrations and some settlers is all so indefensible that people can sort their thoughts out about things together, publicly.
Even the astroturfing is disingenuous, people are saying the exact same points that Jewish Israeli protesters are saying towards their own government in Israel. But the fear of non-Jewish people flipping on them is even greater, so when we say the same things its paraded around as something that it isn't.
> Israel had to fight multiple wars to avoid extinction
Israel should never have been created in the first place. Generally when people invade other's land and start ethnically cleansing it, they will come under attack from people practicing self-defense. In other words, 100% of hostility created from Israel is self-inflicted.
> ... because apparently there's many more Israeli startups working on medical research, green technology and world peace.
> If there are, they certainly would do no harm in being more vocal ...
Perhaps, but - talk to someone who's done PR work for startups. Ask them what it would take for an Israeli startup working on, say, home bagel-making machines to get the sort of world-wide media attention that any Israeli creep-tech firm can get - for free - by association with a few nefarious deeds.
I wasn't insinuating anything. It's an outright accusation. If you can find the time and energy to upbraid me but not the Israeli shill I replied to then your priorities are incompatible with mine but it's not my problem.
Selling spyware and 0days is a significant industry in Israel [1]. This includes Pegasus [2][3]. Countries around the world pay Israeli companies to hack the phones of politicians, opposition leaders, union leaders, journalists and basically anyone they don't like. This is actually a common structure for intelligence agencies who are often restricted from spying domestically or on citizens. They simply farm that out to the intelligence agencies of other countries or these spyware companies. Israel has become kind of an extrajudicial cheat code. Saudi Arabia has been a big user [4]. All of this is just objective fact.
No one was officially blamed for Stuxnet years ago but it's widely believed that the US and Israel were responsible [5]. And of course we had the pager operation [6]. If anyone else had done the same, they'd be labelled as terrorists and be under economic and diplomatic sanctions.
As for BlackCore, I guess it's part of the wider story of Israel's extensive influence campaign on foreign elections and politicians. We've seen this get really overt. For example, Thomas Massie's primary was the most expensive in history when AIPAC and AIPAC affiliates spent a combined ~$35M. I actually think it's this extreme and overt because Israel has lost the PR fight and are increasingly desperate.
Another less-talked about example was the character assassination of Jeremy Corbyn in the UK, which was essentiallya Zionist takeover of the Labor Party and, lo and behold, a few years later we're locking up grandmothers indefinitely for holding up signs that say "Palestine Action" [7].
And of course we have the Jeffrey Epstein of it all where it's really obvious that Epstein was an Israeli access agent and likely Ghislaine Maxwell was as well, particularly when you look at the entire history of Robert Maxwell from WW2 to arming Jewish militias pre-1948 and the IDF after that until finally "falling off" his own yacht.
Oh and there are claims that some unidentified hacker breached the FBI's systems in 2023 and accessed files related to Jeffrey Epstein. There are claims that 500TB was destroyed and 400TB of that was recovered [8]. That's so weird.
It's depressing to me how many people support a state that is functionally the Nazi Germany of our times. Like go ahead and find me the functional distinction between Gaza and the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. But also how impervious Western politicians are to public opinion on this issue, which has drastically switched in the last few years. Opposition movements are suppressed with brutal violence.
This is just cringe conspiracy stuff. Selling CNE tooling is a business (I don't know how big you want to call it) all over the world. Israel is not a global headquarters for it.
I'll direct you to the Nat Turner rebellion [1]. Or the practice of "necklacing" in apartheid South AFrica [2]. Or the Mau Mau rebellion [3]. As Nelson Mandela put it [4]:
> A freedom fighter learns the hard way that it is the oppressor who defines the nature of the struggle, and the oppressed is often left no recourse but to use methods that mirror those of the oppressor. At a certain point, one can only fight fire with fire.
History didn't begin on October 7. October 7 was the culmination of (then) 75 years of oppression, ethnic cleansing, colonial violence, collective punishment, starvation, the denial of clean water, the denial of electricity and other basics and making conditions generally unlivable. Israeli tactics included "mowing the grass" [5] and putting Palestinians "on a diet" [6][7]. Palestinians are often held without trial [8] and when there is a trial it's a sham in front of a military tribunal. And this doesn't even touch the constant settler violence in the West Bank.
One reason we say the oppressor sets the level of violence is what happens with peaceful protests, such as the Great March of Return [9]. What happened? Israelis used them as target practice [10][11].
October 7 was violent, no question. but there were also a lot of lies about what happened [12][13][14].
And whatever you think about the tactics or outcomes of October 7, Israel has done an October 7 every day since October 7.
One point:
> the people in the ghetto were on the verge of being shipped off to concentration camps and being killed in gas chambers
There's actually no evidence they knew that. The Nazis went to great lengths to deceive such populations that they were being resettled.
and
> they had been suffering from rampant disease and starvation before the fighting.
Which is different, how?
> ... proscribed terrorist groups ...
That's how state violence works. It makes things illegal. There was a time when slavery was legal. Does that make opposing it wrong? Apartheid in South Africa was legal. Apartheid in Israel is "legal".
None of that justifies rape and torture. None of it makes Gaza remotely similar to the Warsaw Ghetto.
Why do you not apply the same logic to Israel? The occupied territories were occupied as part of a long running conflict with people who wanted to wipe out Israel.
The problem with your argument is that you end up justifying pretty much everything that is part of any long running conflict or where there has been a history of oppression. If you apply the same standards evenly you will end up justifying almost all terrorists, many genocides, war crimes, etc.
> There's actually no evidence they knew that. The Nazis went to great lengths to deceive such populations that they were being resettled.
The uprising happened after they realised what was happening. There was no armed resistance until the realised:
> That's how state violence works. It makes things illegal. There was a time when slavery was legal. Does that make opposing it wrong? Apartheid in South Africa was legal. Apartheid in Israel is "legal".
It is sometimes right to break the law. Your claim that the UK is "locking up grandmothers indefinitely for holding up signs" is verifiably false (you cite an article that says "12 hours", which is not indefinitely) and lacks context. The UK is not remotely like apartheid South Africa!
Your claims that everyone is a Zionist plotter or Israeli agent are pure neo-fascist conspiracy theory. Its about as credible as the Protocols of the Elders of Zion unless you have actual evidence.
> October 7 was the culmination of (then) 75 years of [...]
Nothing you might say after this can justify massacring, kidnapping or raping civilians.
> the denial of clean water, the denial of electricity
This is pretty unreasonable framing. Israel withdrew from Gaza, leaving behind valuable modern infrastructure like desalination plants, and then provided free water and electricity even to an enemy who constantly attacked it.
They also committed genocide as well. Surprising that even after Israeli human rights organizations acknowledge it, it still remains stuck in the mind of capitalists to support profit at any cost.
Interesting question. Trotsky argued that the Nazis were essentially a middle-class phenomena, the forces of capital and labour being weakened to naught by the first world war; once the Nazis achieved power, they had to decide between them, that choice being made on the night of the long knives and the liquidation of the brownshirts.
Anyone can name themselves anything.
Would you say that the Democratic Republic of the Congo is indeed democratic?
I am going to guess not.
'Socialism' was rather popular in the early part of the 20th century and National Socialism was a right wing response to that, hence the marketing name.
It was very much corporatist/pro capitalist in its policies and suppressed anything remotely socialist within its borders.
It was also attempting a to create a centrally planned economy that would provide for all the populations needs and eliminate the concept of class. Which to me is socialism.
“Never believe that anti-Semites are completely unaware of the absurdity of their replies. They know that their remarks are frivolous, open to challenge. But they are amusing themselves, for it is their adversary who is obliged to use words responsibly, since he believes in words. The anti-Semites have the right to play. They even like to play with discourse for, by giving ridiculous reasons, they discredit the seriousness of their interlocutors. They delight in acting in bad faith, since they seek not to persuade by sound argument but to intimidate and disconcert. If you press them too closely, they will abruptly fall silent, loftily indicating by some phrase that the time for argument is past.” - Jean-Paul Sartre
I'm saying you leaving a comment taking the name "National Socialist" literally is a well trodden path of misinformation and a long standing part of the post-war revisionism, such as the "Clean Wehrmacht" myth and the Double Genocide myth. It is not worth discussing seriously with you in particular, and I am writing for those reading these comments.
The Nazi party purposefully used the term "Socialist" as a method to draw people away from the actual socialist workers groups of the time.
These talking points are intended to blur the line of the very real evils of Nazi Germany.
These same talking points are used by actual racists, anti-Semites, and modern fascists to distance themselves from the real historical example of what happens when their views gain traction. Similar to how people who participate in Holocaust denial would be rooting for the very same Holocaust.
Well this is surprising for a few reasons. And pretty offensive. For what it's worth I'm pretty much the reverse of an anti Semite.
Pointing out that the Nazi party called themselves national socialists and had socialist policies does not make me a holocaust denier, Nazi apologist or anything else that you are attempting to label me as.
Your reaction to what I said is genuinely baffling to me. I'm a liberal through and through. The common enemy of communists and Nazis was liberals. In my view Nazis and communists are both sides of the same brutal coin.
I don't think you can be authoritarian and socialist. The structures of strict hierarchy necessary to be authoritarian necessarily oppose the egalitarian goals of socialism.
Many, many socialists condemn the Soviets, and even fought against them. Very few socialists believe that forcing the populace at gunpoint to be communist is a good plan.
Apart from the Socialist roots of the Nazi party (hence the name) and Fascism (Mussolini) , they have practiced a state planned economy which was far closer to Stalin's Soviet Union than to the United States
This doesn't mean the Nazis were not very much anti-communist, but subscribing Nazism to Capitalism is an extremely flat ideology-driven version of history
The libertarian / Randite strand of American hyper-capitalist ideology is ascendant and somewhat hegemonic in North American political education in schools and the like and it defines as "socialist" anything which involves "the government." To the point that we have people complaining in earnest that things Trump is doing that don't fit their Milton Friedman vibes are "socialist."
It deliberately strips the "social" part out of the ideological framing and replaces it with the state.
Which is also helped by the fact that "actual existing socialism" in the USSR etc did the same.
Also doesn't help that there has been effectively no organized socialist political presence in American politics (apart from the DSA pushing on the Democrats left wing, and Sanders I guess). This means that American politics reduces completely to a false "liberal" ("left" somehow) vs "conservative" dichotomy, both labels which don't describe anything about what they are anymore.
I've watched so many Americans get squirrely online when I've tried to draw a line on my own political viewpoint; no, I'm not liberal, I'm a socialist. This breaks their brains. Does not compute. Increasingly unfortunately here in Canada as well, partially as the NDP's unfortunate willingness to prop up Trudeau's Liberals when they were a minority.
I sometimes feel like we just need new, untainted, words.
National Socialists were capitalists.. You known that right? Not everything with socialsts in the name begets communism, they served Industry and Capital to the fullest and sought to crush any leftist cause.
Hitler explicitly adopted socialist & anti-capitalist rhetoric early on had heavy state control of industry and price controls in place.
Political extremist always pander to control the people who will listen to them, selling lies at worst or at best hope that depends on a lack of understanding of human behavior and economics to follow things to their natural conclusions. Nazis, Socialists, Marxists, and Communists are all authoritarian extremist who share the same values.
Apart from other mentions, they also did cutting edge research on nuclear power and weapons. Some of the scientists understood how massive an undertaking that was, however the political leadership apparently did not, or the world would look different today.
The Z3 was a German electromechanical computer designed by Konrad Zuse in 1938, and completed in 1941. It was the world's first working programmable, fully automatic digital computer. [c] Wikipedia
Most of that stuff was just torture for the sake of cruelty. It lacked the scientific rigor needed to classify it as even remotely close to research, so most of the "data" collected is completely worthless.
Turns out you can't do proper experiments when the subjects are also being starved and worked to death, when you lack a proper control group, or when you interpret all the results from a heavily racist perspective. And that doesn't even touch the completely nonsensical hypotheses yet.
Not recently, but there are things like this: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-50752217 and there have been claims the UK interfered in American politics in about 1940 to get US support in WW2.
Nearly every country does it, in nearly every other country. That's well known fact at this point. The US government is openly, actively, warning American citizens about it. FOIA continues to reveal clandestine ops including faked terror attacks that happened (and are probably still happening) all over the world.
Are you asking what A) the countries that meddle with US elections, and B) their relationship to the US, has to do with Israel, on this comment thread?
You've lost me. I took your line of questioning as suggestive of the idea that this kind of spying behavior is somehow unique to Israel.
It's not. And my larger point is that when someone hyper focuses and targets for grouping and prejudice a group of otherwise ordinary people, they shouldn't be surprised when they are called out for it.
I'm not sure what you're trying to say. Feel free to clarify.
Russians do not do that. It is contrary to our culture.
There was a lord (knyaz) in old times who even warned enemies that he is going to attack them. Of course it is not as advantageous as a covert approach. But it is very Russian.
When you hear otherwise it is those other entities targeting you, that's all.
Russia’s involvement with foreign assets is pretty well-documented. Maybe not on a hysterical level where someone believes Russian government stole elections in USA, but they definitely meddled and continue to meddle in affairs of neighbouring countries and EU, both through information campaigns and via direct actions and influence.
Talking about stuff from early Middle Ages (князи), it has zero relevance to modern culture. Russia is anything but isolationist as it should be clear since 2014/2022.
Games three-letter agencies play are the same everywhere and have zero relation to the culture. 2016 meddling did happen of course. It was also negligible and led to a huge overreaction, extremely similar to the US meddling in Russian elections in 1996 where Clinton admin indirectly prevented Nemtsov from running by supporting unpopular Yeltsin (and NGOs did a ton of "work" which barely affected anything, the main reason Yeltsin won was Filatov running the campaign, oversized spending and collusion with the media aka Xerox affair, and the "admin resource" he had).
False trichotomy
4. Small amount of people make sure to look and echo everything that paint Israel in bad light and this work, we know this work because this entire post is about a company (small amount of people) influencing New York and Scotland votes.
Your inability to distinguish "Small amount of people make sure to look and echo everything" and "All the reporting is controlled by the antisemitic media conglomerates" is noted
Seeing as billions upon billions of dollars goes into Israel's lobbying operations (including countless more from non-affiliated but pro-Israeli groups), that must be the least successful industry ever to be outclassed by a small number of random guys online.
Remilk is an Israeli food-tech startup using yeasts to produce milk proteins. Frankly I find your comment rather odd, why should a startup be more loud because other people are biased? Diplomacy is the job of the state. We have innovative index on which Israel does well and large number of unicorn per capita.
> why should a startup be more loud because other people are biased? Diplomacy is the job of the state.
I agree with you that it is the job of the state to do diplomacy, I would argue that the Israeli state has done an extremely poor job at that, so it may be left to some of its greener industry to pick up the slack, unfortunately.
Not because they 'have to' but because they would want to if they want to expand abroad and not get overshadowed by the bad PR the Israeli state is so good at putting out.
I disagree with you that 'other people are biased'.
One of the reasons Israeli soft power is so weak at the moment is precisely because its diplomats always insist everyone is just simply biased against Israel, often invoking some thousands year old hatred of its people etc. rather than for one second introspecting on the fact that the actions of the state may indeed have something to do with that perceived bias.
It should indeed be the job of Israeli diplomats to work and promote Israel in the best light possible
In addition to this malware, which comes from an Israeli company and is used for the purpose of subverting democratic elections in foreign countries (we don't really know who mandated these interventions, but the target, John Swinney and fellow ministers, have been vocal in their criticism of the Israeli government's actions in Gaza and the West Bank, and have imposed a form of sanctions on the Israel Defense Forces by withholding state grants to arms firms that supply the IDF and freezing support for exports to Israel), they have also infiltrated some countries like the UK and US with very powerful pro-Israel lobbies acting behind the curtain by directly contacting prominent politicians.
In the UK, the Israeli company Elbit Systems produces arms for Israel through its British subsidiary, which holds major Ministry of Defence contracts including the Watchkeeper drone programme (worth over £800 million) and the Jupiter training system (around £130 million) – sources: UK Companies House and MoD contract notices. People protesting for Palestinians at Elbit sites have been arrested: between 2020 and June 2024, over 140 arrests were made at more than 50 actions by Palestine Action, but police and court records show that no terrorism charges were filed, and the High Court rejected a legal challenge against policing of these protests in May 2024. Two main lobbies cover both major parties in the UK: Conservative Friends of Israel and Labour Friends of Israel.
In the US, a similar two‑party structure exists but with far greater financial power. The American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) and its super PAC spent over $4.5 million in the 2023–2024 election cycle, mostly to defeat progressive Democrats critical of Israel, including successfully spending $14.5 million to unseat Congressman Jamaal Bowman (source: Federal Election Commission filings). The Democratic Majority for Israel and the Republican Jewish Coalition mirror the UK's Labour and Conservative lobby groups, while the US provides Israel with roughly $3.8 billion in annual military aid – a sharp contrast to the UK's limited sanctions on the IDF. Unlike the UK, no US protester has been arrested under terrorism laws for actions against arms companies supplying Israel.
In practice, Israel and Russia do similar things:
they affect or subvert foreign elections by manipulating information and social media, and they directly influence politics via foundations, think tanks, and by cultivating politicians and influencers. For Russia, this includes organisations like the Russian House in Washington and sympathetic think tanks such as the Heritage Foundation – though the Heritage Foundation is American, Russian state media and proxies have actively courted its positions.
Russia has also influenced figures like Tucker Carlson, who repeatedly echoes Kremlin talking points, and JD Vance, who has opposed military aid to Ukraine; no public evidence proves formal recruitment, but both have amplified narratives favourable to Moscow and JD Vance made a powerful endorsement of Orban, a corrupted pro-russian statesman, in the past election in Hungary.
There's a lot of offensive security talent, but this has nothing to do with Palestinians. Israeli intelligence is very advanced and is why Israel has been able to eliminate the leaders of Hezbollah and Iran.
Not everything in Israel is about or related to Palestinians. The Palestinian bias only exists in circles where every thought regarding Israel is immediately evoking a Palestinian connotation. In reality, most Israelis never interact with Palestinians.
To suggest that a sector of Israeli startups exists on the experience of people "suppressing Palestinians" is definitely biased, absurd, and is a slippery slope.
> There's a lot of offensive security talent, but this has nothing to do with Palestinians. Israeli intelligence is very advanced and is why Israel has been able to eliminate the leaders of Hezbollah and Iran.
Not everything in Israel is about or related to Palestinians.
I would suggest to you that the focus on Iran is because Iran is perceived as being an obstacle to Israeli hegemony in the region and thus undisputed Israeli rule over Palestinian territory.
Iran also justifies its actions in terms of standing up for Palestinians.
Well that and the fact that Iran is (was) the other peer military adversary in the region, with forces deployed on Israel's border, and with a longstanding declared intent of eradicating Israel.
It turns out Hezbollah and Hamas are not Persian and don't speak Farsi. Hamas are Sunni.
Most importantly, both groups exist as a direct result of Israeli persecution of their civilian populations. They weren't created by Iran, they're a predictable result that happens when you occupy people's land and oppress them, you get resistance groups.
Over the last 10 years Hezbollah has spent more manpower fighting in Syria for Iran than it has confronting Israel. I don't know how to take seriously the idea that Hezbollah is anything but an appendage of the IRGC.
As a reminder: Shia are a minority in Lebanon; it's not even close.
Yeah, but Shia are a bigger percentage of the area that Israel is currently occupying and "turning into Gaza" in their own words. There are approximately 1.5 million homeless in the area now?
Hezbollah do see the Iranian supreme leader as the leader of Shia Islam, and they do see Iran as their key ally, but they didn't even exist before Israel occupied southern Lebanon in the 80s and abetted all sorts of massacres. They have a reason to exist besides being Iranian stooges, they're real people.
One more interesting narrative frame: Fighting in Syria for Iran? Not for Assad? Was Assad a thoughtless Iranian appendage also?
None of this explains why the Quds Force was able to command Hezbollah into Syria to besiege Sunni towns and suburbs of Damascus. It's very easy to find credible sources saying that Hezbollah is an Iranian asset, and the balance of clear evidence supports that. Like Iran itself, Hezbollah uses Israel as a political foil, but their real enemies are Sunni Arabs.
None of these observations make me a supporter of the Netanyahu government; my opinions of Likud have nothing to do with my opinions of Iran and their IRGC militias.
Yeah, I'm also not saying I'm some uncritical supporter of Hezbollah.
I'm just saying they have rational interests in addition to religious/sectarian, and we can see in the current situation that it would have been nice for them to have Assad still in charge of Syria right now. Calling them an IRGC militia isn't any more correct than calling UK/Israel a "USA militia".
It's fine that we disagree, it's fine for us to present different cases to the thread, we can do that respectfully, but just to be very clear: my case is that Hezbollah is (or was immediately prior to the "decapitation") an IRGC asset, commanded at least at a high level --- "which fights to pick, which fights to join" --- by the Quds Force commanders. Several QF elites were injured during the pager strike!
I'd be happy to see Netanyahu in prison. But the horrific death toll in Gaza is a small fraction of what the IRGC has wrought in Syria, Iraq, and especially Yemen. When the IRGC orchestrates starvation sieges, as they did at Madaya in Syria and Taiz in Yemen, they brag about it. They film videos for the besieged residents jokingly eating off banquets.
Winding back to the top of the thread, all this is just to say, Israel is not necessarily wrong about the adversaries they face outside of their borders. (They're definitely not wrong about Hamas and PIJ, but they're seemingly wrong about just about everything else that happens inside their borders.)
I think you're underrating how much you've bought the framing from US/neoliberal media, though. Try to put yourselves in Hezbollah or the Houthis' shoes, you wouldn't think of yourself as a pawn, you'd think of yourself as full-agency humans with interests and allies. Sunni power is against you so you ally with the Shia power.
For example, Iran never directly intervened in Yemen, they limited themselves to sending weapons, but the Saudis did a SHITLOAD[1], to the tune of 10k troops, hundreds of sorties and a "war crimes" section on the wiki page. Yet somehow the IRGC is the most salient group in this conflict to you, despite not doing any direct fighting?
The Houthis are literally Nazis. They run a race cult. They use child soldiers. As with Hezbollah in Lebanon, they're a religious minority that nonetheless exercises de facto control over security in their country. Iran trained and armed them; the Houthis are explicitly Khomeinists.
Now you're talking. They have agency, motivation and accept help where they can get it.
And I'm not saying they're good guys but the next step is weighting their atrocities on the same standard as those committed by the Saudis with our support.
Characterizing the Houthis as a race cult is bizarre. They are a Zaydi Shia group which Iran has cultivated over the years. But they were around before that relationship and would not disappear if that relationship was severed.
Also it's dishonest not to include the actions of the Saudis and the UAE when discussing the Yemen conflict. As well as the sustained U.S targeting support in bombing the hell out of that country.
I don't know what's complicated about this. Yemen is neither a religious nor an ethnic monoculture. Ansar Allah operates a caste system inside of it. Not all Zaydiyya align with Ansar Allah. More than half of Yemen is Sunni. There are ethnic underclasses in Yemen that are literally kept as chattel slaves.
You have never, ever seen me on this site stick up for Saudi Arabia. I feel like this is a big way people get themselves into trouble thinking about MENA. In most of these conflicts, there isn't a protagonist.
Why would we expect further discussion to be productive after you've handwaved away my last comment with a single "basically non-sequiturs" line? Justify that claim first. I'm not a slot machine you can keep pulling until you find the one argument you're prepared to rebut on the merits (after I flesh it out for you).
And while Arafat was responsible for many abominable actions and many, many casualties, let's not forget that one of the first supporters of Hamas was ... oh yes, Netanyahu. Because Arafat, for whatever reason or reasons in his final years softened and the PLO was increasingly being seen by the world as the one willing to negotiate while Israel didn't want to, which made for uncomfortable questions of "why is a terroristic organization willing to figure out how to get to peace while a supposedly peaceful nation is not".
Netanyahu and his ilk realized that rather than a rapidly moderating, rapidly gaining sympathy and support PLO was not the enemy they "needed" for their own agenda - "from the river to the sea", which, let's not forget, was actually Likud's official election slogan in the 70s and 80s (a "hilarious" irony when certain people try to point to Palestinian usage of this as a "gotcha" - "See, they want to exterminate us!"), and that IDF intelligence showed that Hamas was likely to be more extremist and thus garner more sympathy for Israel, so Israel started supporting Hamas' rise.
This could mean anything from a couple of ghettos to all of the modern state of Israel depending on what you think Palestinian territory is or should be.
If you take the approach that all of it is Palestinian territory and the state of Israel shouldn't exist, then yeah, sure? that's different from the assertion that all of the intelligence related businesses in Israel are founded because of direct experience in conflict with the Palestinian people.
Maybe I have a wrong read on the situation between Iran and Israel. But my impression is that Israel is more concerned with Iran as a general threat, moreso than they are concerned that Iran will intervene on behalf of Palestinians, current Palestinian territory, or Hamas.
If Iran didn't get involved directly after ~2 years of open warfare and inarguably genocide-shaped atrocities carried out on civilians, what are they waiting for? Meanwhile Netanyahu has been talking about the danger of Iran developing nuclear weapons for decades now.
Keep in mind I was responding to a post about an assertion that there are so many military startups in Israel because so many Israelis, in their IDF service, have hands-on experience fighting against and oppressing Palestinians. I responded to a post that seemed reductive and misleading in support of that perspective.
> my impression is that Israel is more concerned with Iran as a general threat
Iran has never attacked Israel unless attacked first. As for their 'proxies' they only really exist because Israel has invaded Lebanon long before Hezbollah existed and its creation was spearheaded primarily by Lebanon's local population as a response to the invasion, with Iranian support.
Iran supports these local 'proxies' because it sees itself as a leader of the Shia and more broadly as a leader of the Muslim world and the Palestinian cause as being the responsibility of every Muslim nation (incl theirs) to get involved with.
Israel is indeed concerned with Iran as a threat, but only because they see the other governments in the region as willing to overlook the Palestinian cause, in exchange for economic links with Israel.
In that sense Iran is very much connected to the Palestinians, this assertion that Iran is just super irrational and wants to see Israel go down because they want to laugh watching it or something is nothing more than cheap Israeli propaganda.
Of course Iran is not just looking for the Palestinians out of altruism, they want a leadership position in the Muslim world and this is their way of gaining legitimacy, but the reason why Israel sees them as a threat is very much because of Iran's interest in the Palestinians.
> Iran has never attacked Israel unless attacked first
I mean, come on dude. You explaining away the actions of Iran's proxies as not the actions of Iran is just ahistorical nonsense at best. They funded them, trained them, and directed their actions.
> Israel is indeed concerned with Iran as a threat, but only because they see the other governments in the region as willing to overlook the Palestinian cause, in exchange for economic links with Israel
The complete lock down of the border between Egypt and the Gaza strip is because Egypt is beholden to Israel? Is that what you're saying here?
> the reason why Israel sees them as a threat is very much because of Iran's interest in the Palestinians
And by "interest" you're referring to backing the most violent terrorist groups in the region, who have the blood of thousands of Israeli citizens on their hands.
> Iran has never attacked Israel unless attacked first
Iran was involved in attacks against Israel and Israeli towns in the 1980s and 1990s by their mercenaries in Hezbollah and direct IRGC presence in Lebanon. This happened even when Israel supported Iran during the Iraq-Iran war, so this is strictly not true
Other incidents were the Iranian bombings of the Israeli embassy in Argentine or the Jewish center there, and attempts on the London and Bangkok embassies
Furthermore financing of Hamas during the 1990s suicide campaign with the direct goal of derailing the peace process.
This is part of a long line of Iranian aggressive actions that have led them to being isolated and in a string of wars that greatly destroyed their already diminished economic power
Except Israel invaded Lebanon before that. It also engaged in assassinations, espionage, terror and sabotage before that. In fact Israelis engaged in those even before the state of Israel was officially pronounced.
I'm not saying the Iranians or Lebanese etc. never play dirty, but this portrayal of them as just irrational and aggressive for no reason whatsoever against their peace loving Israeli neighbors is just dishonest.
For one, neither the Iranians, nor the Lebanese are occupying foreign territory. The same cannot be said for the Israelis.
Israelis will say they invaded Lebanon in the 70s/80s because of the PLO, (no Hezbollah yet) however the PLO was itself a consequence of Israeli occupation of Palestinian territory.
In conclusion; there's a fairly simple way to disarm the Iranians and strip them and their proxies of any perceived legitimacy they may hold with anyone; stop occupying Palestine.
> Except Israel invaded Lebanon before that. It also engaged in assassinations, espionage, terror and sabotage before that. In fact Israelis engaged in those even before the state of Israel was officially pronounced.
That is moving the goal posts, as these are not instances of attacking Iran, it's hard to claim Iran never attacked Israel first when it is either financing attacks against Israel or participating in them for the last 45+ years
> Israelis will say they invaded Lebanon in the 70s/80s because of the PLO, (no Hezbollah yet) however the PLO was itself a consequence of Israeli occupation of Palestinian territory.
Back when the PLO was founded there was no "foreign territory occupied by Israel", only internationally recognized Israeli borders and Gaza/West Bank which were under Egyptian/Jordanian occupation. Two countries that refused to create an independent Palestinian state
> it's hard to claim Iran never attacked Israel first when it is either financing attacks against Israel or participating in them for the last 45+ years
The Iranians supported the Palestinians Israel was attacking the same way the Soviets supported the Vietnamese. This was not the Soviets attacking the US, this was the Soviets supporting indigenous forces that the US was attacking. It's the same as the Israelis supporting Kurdish groups in Iran, Turkey etc.
These groups have their own motives and agency, the Lebanese opposed to Israel are not mere 'proxies' of Iran, neither are the Palestinians. They're opposed to Israel for their own reasons, namely Israel occupies their land.
If you're so concerned about Iran being able to come in and support them, then stop occupying foreign land and the whole reason Iran is able to make inroads with your neighbors disappears.
You won't do that of course, because Israel is the one who first conducted attacks on Iran directly. Therefore it does not get to play the card of being attacked. It invaded Syria too for no reason whatsoever, other than taking more land.
> Back when the PLO was founded there was no "foreign territory occupied by Israel", only internationally recognized Israeli borders and Gaza/West Bank which were under Egyptian/Jordanian occupation.
Which is why the PLO has a bloody conflict with Jordan, which you conveniently omit. It's almost as if they were opposed to being occupied, period.
When Israel invaded Lebanon back in the 70s/80s, it already took control of Gaza and the West Bank by that point.
> Two countries that refused to create an independent Palestinian state
I love this talking point. So because someone else was horrible to the Palestinians, that justifies Israel being horrible to them too?
> Which is why the PLO has a bloody conflict with Jordan, which you conveniently omit. It's almost as if they were opposed to being occupied, period.
The PLO tried to takeover Jordan after Jordan stopped occupying the West Bank, I don't see how that makes sense chronologically.
You could also point at Palestinian attempts at taking over Lebanon, but that doesn't really support your argument that Palestinians are aggressive due to being under occupation
Regarding the Iranians comparison with the Soviets, The Soviets were an aggressive actor and that's why the world was on the brink of nuclear war numerous times in the 20th century, causing both sides to regulate. Iran had never really toned down its aggressive behavior towards Israel, culminating in the October 7th massacre and ended eventually with Iran in complete ruins
You're doing the same thing you're accusing the other person of.
The PLO was not an inevitable force of nature, it was an organization that consisted of human beings, making conscious decisions.
The British took Palestine from the Ottomans and handed it to the state of Israel. Maybe morally it's an occupation, but if so then the USA is occupying Hawaii.
Yes that's why I brought it up. There's actually a substantially better argument for Hawaii because the USA just showed up and conquered the kingdom that was there. Whereas the Ottomans had Palestine for what, 500 years?
It's more complicated than that as the Palestinians are speaking the language of an earlier foreign colonizing empire that replaced another empire that ethnically cleansed the Jews and then colonized the area
Iran is not strictly "an obstacle" to Israeli hegemony. Its ideology since the 1970s clearly states the destruction of Israel as its goal. It clashed with Israel over Iran's desire to set up a Shia vassal state in Lebanon and it killed Jews and Israelis all over the world through terror (e.g. AMIA bombing in Argentina)
The Palestinians are merely a tool for Iran to gain influence, Hezbollah and Shias in Iraq were far more important for them historically
> you say that as if israel doesn't have the exact same ideology against iran (it does)
What are the parallels in Israeli society for Iranian school systems morning chants of "Death to Israel" and a public countdown clock to the destruction of Israel?
Are you seriously going to bring up chants when Israel is a country where they chant 'Death to Arabs' casually, watch the Gaza genocide from a hilltop and have installed vending machines to make the massacres more fun to watch?
But to answer your question directly, the Iranians would say they equate Israel with ethno-supremacy, same as apartheid South Africa. Getting rid of apartheid in South Africa was not about getting rid of while South Africans as such, it was about getting rid of the ethno-supremacy underpinning apartheid.
Sorry, but none of your examples are related to Iran or are state mandated (and are awfully cherry-picked).
Iran ideological wishes of destroying Israel are pretty much in the open, no need to try to weasel around it. While there isn't any such ideology in Israel towards Iran
Sorry, but none of your personal restrictions on type and style of evidence are pertinent to the matter at hand (and are awfully cherry-picked).
israeli ideological wishes of destroying Palestine, Lebanon, Iran, etc are pretty much in the open, no need to try to weasel around it. Heck, israel doesn't even recognize Palestine's right to exist in the first place.
What would recognizing "Palestine's right to exist" look like? They proposed the creation of a Palestinian state several times; what more would you expect?
> israeli ideological wishes of destroying Palestine, Lebanon, Iran, etc are pretty much in the open
This is pretty ironic considering that Iran, Hamas and Hezbollah are all quite explicit about their ambitions of wiping out Israel, while the reverse isn't true at all. Israelis have no desire to kill Persians a thousand kilometers away, they just don't have much choice but to fight foreign armies who attack them.
> They proposed the creation of a Palestinian state several times; what more would you expect?
The Palestinian state already exists, so the least they could do is recognize its right to exist, which is equal in every way to israel's. That is to say: if israel has an unconditional right to exist, then Palestine's right to exist is equally unconditional. Likewise, if israel can place conditions on Palestine's existence, then Palestine has equal rights to place conditions on israel's existence.
> Iran, Hamas and Hezbollah are all quite explicit about their ambitions of wiping out Israel
This is pretty ironic considering that israel is pretty explicit about their ambitions of wiping out Palestinians and taking their land, as well as destroying Palestine, Lebanon, and Iran.
> Israelis have no desire to kill Persians a thousand kilometers away
This unsupported claim is immediately belied by their actions (they initiated a war in which they are killing persians a thousand kilometers away), and also ignores that they are also killing Palestinian and Lebanese people.
> The Palestinian state already exists, so the least they could do is recognize its right to exist
There exists a national identity, but the organization that claims to be its government does not enjoy popular support, and more importantly, has never really controlled the territory that it aspires to govern.
> This is pretty ironic considering that israel is pretty explicit about their ambitions of wiping out Palestinians and taking their land, as well as destroying Palestine, Lebanon, and Iran.
This is false; there's absolutely nothing resembling Iran's, Hamas' or Hezbollah's clear, explicit goals of destroying Israel.
> they initiated a war
This perspective only makes sense if we pretend that proxy warfare doesn't count. Once we acknowledge the fact that Iran funded, armed and trained multiple terrorist groups specifically to attack Israel for years, it becomes very clear who started the Israel-Iran conflict.
If our press was honest, every story you heard about Russia would have been about Israel instead. Israel is overwhelmingly America's worst enemy and they distract from that by pretending Russia/Iran/China/Qatar is. No other country blackmails our politicians or steals so much of our money, military resources, soldier lives as much as Israel. There's no close competitor even.
Yet we're never told that explicitly and it's never framed as the abusive relationship that it is.
Anti-Zionism is not equivalent to antisemitism, this deceitful rhetorical trick needs to stop if you actually care about Jews. There are many Jews that oppose Zionism, and many Zionists who are not Jews
Opposing Israel's flagrant violations of international law is not hate speech or discrimination against Jews, regardless of how desperately you want it to be.
israel also has a substantial population of russians in the form of russian jews, so if israel is following russian disinformation tactics, it probably wouldnt be hard to trace their roots
'islamo supremacists', but not jewish supremacists? The ones just spontaneously moved into a land where people already lived 75 years ago aren't responsible?
Literally DARVO.
is a reaction that perpetrators of wrongdoing, such as abusers, narcissists, or sexual offenders, may display in response to being held accountable for their behavior. Research indicates that it is a common manipulation strategy of psychological abusers.
The jews regularly throw those settlers and supremacists to the wulfes in " land for peace deals" - ghaza, sinai, lebanon, they get papers and blue helmets and peace promises, and then again rockets, rape and suicide bombers. The later often subsidized with aid money. And the hypocrisy of europe, setting up barriers and checks near christmas markets, trainstations and then condemning israel for apartheid for doing the same.
Or inviting the proxxy-sponsors of the attacks : turkey,quatar, iran to be parts of "peace" talks. The same sort of peace talks they are now having with putin.
Want to see the real culprits? Offer the neighbors exchange deals. They send the druse and other minorities they were genociding anyway to israel and get their proxxies back in return..
They dont give a fuck about the people or who lifes how in the middle east as long as muslim lands are not ruled by unbelievers aka islamo supremacy. Just because your religion makes you powerless doesn't mean you cant dream of empires every day.
Slowly? The islamo supremacists pushed them out of the whole middle east. Look at minorities map of that region over time. Thats the true horror show. The alewites murdered as revenge for assad, the druse attacked that dont make it into the newspapers, the yesidi assaulted by ISIS and driven into the aame wind the want to drive the yehudis into.
I feel like you're misreading what I wrote. I was saying the Jews slowly returned to the region throughout the first half of the 20th century.
The person I was responding to stated that they all just magically appeared there "75 years ago" (not sure quite what date they're referring to with this), but that simply wasn't the case.
* Avisa Partners / iStrat, a French lobbying, intelligence, cybersecurity, and online-influence firm, has been accused in French investigations of information manipulation through ghostwritten articles, fake or undisclosed profiles, blogs, and Wikipedia interventions on behalf of powerful clients. Mediapart reported that Avisa was suspected of modifying Wikipedia pages for clients including French business elites and foreign powers. Wikimedia France also summarized the affair, saying Avisa or its subcontractors were suspected of numerous undeclared paid contributions to Wikipedia. Avisa has denied wrongdoing.
[1] [2] [3]
* iStrat, Avisa's predecessor, was separately linked in French reporting to fake online personas used to publish commentary about business disputes. The Avisa Partners Wikipedia summary, based on French media reports, says JDN traced fake analyst profiles and critical commentary to iStrat-era activity, while iStrat and its owners denied the claims.
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* There was also a France-linked, though not company-linked, covert influence operation in Africa. In December 2020, Facebook/Meta removed networks for coordinated inauthentic behavior targeting African audiences; one network was linked to individuals associated with the French military. Meta said the operation used fake accounts, pages posing as news or military entities, and off-platform domains. Graphika and Stanford described it as French and Russian influence operations going head-to-head in Africa.
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* The Washington Post reported the same Facebook takedown as people affiliated with the French military using fake Facebook accounts to meddle in African politics, while noting that Facebook said it did not have evidence that the French military institution itself directed the activity.
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* CLS Strategies, a Washington, D.C. communications firm, was named by Facebook/Meta in 2020 when Meta removed fake accounts and pages tied to operations in Venezuela, Bolivia, and Mexico. Meta defines coordinated inauthentic behavior as efforts to manipulate public debate for a strategic goal where fake accounts are central. PRWeek also reported the takedown as fake accounts and pages managed by CLS.
[1] [2]
* Rally Forge, a U.S. marketing firm, was linked by Facebook to a 2020 domestic U.S. operation run on behalf of Turning Point USA, involving fake accounts and coordinated behavior. Axios reported that Facebook removed 200 accounts, 55 pages, and 76 Instagram accounts.
[3] [4]
* New Knowledge / Project Birmingham is another ugly example. In the 2017 Alabama Senate race, Democratic-aligned operatives experimented with Russian-style disinformation tactics, including fake or misleading Facebook activity and buying retweets. The effort was reportedly small and probably did not decide the election, but it proves the category exists inside the U.S. political ecosystem.
[5] [6]
* There are also U.S.-linked pro-Western covert influence operations. Graphika and the Stanford Internet Observatory analyzed accounts removed by Twitter and Meta for platform manipulation or coordinated inauthentic behavior; later reporting said the Pentagon ordered a review after fake accounts suspected of being run by the U.S. military were taken down. Meta later attributed a campaign targeting the Middle East and Central Asia to people associated with the U.S. military.
[7] [8] [9]
* Cambridge Analytica is adjacent but not identical. It had U.S. offices and U.S. political clients, and it was part of the broader “election manipulation for hire” world, but its central scandal was data harvesting, psychographic targeting, and political ad targeting, not necessarily fake-account bot networks in the same narrow sense.
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It's disturbing to think that there are people getting paid huge amounts of money by governments, using taxpayer money to f around with politics of other countries... Meanwhile I've been trying to raise a $100K seed round for my startup which I've been working on for 14 years during nights and weekends... and I never even made it the interview phase of a tech incubator. WTF is wrong with people?
I predict that this will be flagged very soon. I would love for HN to publish some data on likes/flags, even anonymous IDs with some infos like account age and number of posts. Sure someome will argue things here get flagged cause they are political, but I don't buy that.
We've had discussions about this sort of stuff before.
As an Israeli (note the article exposing them is Israeli too) I was not aware until I saw this and I definitely intend to protest/organize about this (though to be fair I've been protesting about other stuff in the past and the climate here sucks).
> Are you saying that this isn't political? It's literally about politics.
Sure it's about politics, but it's also about tech. The intersection of politics and tech is a fascinating area, of great interest to many folks on HN, and probably within HN's charter.
I think that merely touching on politics should not be grounds for flagging a submission, even when the specifics are highly controversial (as in this case).
I do not disagree that there is a political aspect to this article. Todays news on Fable and Mythos are political too. HN has plenty of political articles, yet some are more flagged than others.
I claim there might be a pattern of supression. Are arguing against my main point that it would be good to have more transparency so I can support or refute my claim?
Do you want to count how many times words like nazi, genocide, terrorists appears in comments section about Anthropic vs here? Do you see the difference?
The main use case the governments around the world have for the investment in LLMs is being able to attack other countries and their own citizens with these kinds of campaigns.
They worked to influence elective when they were barely researched, had little evidence, and were done by small teams who can barely speak the language. To dismiss these kinds of campaigns come across as either ignorant of the past 15 years or a disingenuous dismissal.
Yeah it's an interesting article because on the one hand, PR firm doing PR and that doesn't seem very newsworthy. On the other hand, there is an extremely good case that the firms doing PR in French elections should be French PR firms and responsive to French law enforcement. Ditto Scotland and New York. I can't find an angle where it looks like a good idea to tolerate well organised and financed foreign guns for hire getting involved in a local election.
Although I do think throwing "pro-Palestine" in is a cheap insinuation. Pretty much everyone is against genocide. It doesn't tell us much about why they might be targeted for a smear campaign.
> Although I do think throwing "pro-Palestine" in is a cheap insinuation. Pretty much everyone is against genocide. It doesn't tell us much about why they might be targeted for a smear campaign.
The question if there is a genocide isn't settled, either. There are credible arguments for both viewpoints when it comes to the current iteration of the Palestine conflict.
Well, what would you do if, say, drug cartels hid out in civilian residential areas on the southern border in Mexico and would keep lobbing bombs over the border wall? If I were to guess, you'd have the US Army go in and clean up for good.
Because that's exactly what Israel is doing. They don't want to be exposed to constant bombardment out of Gaza and Lebanon any more, they have had that ever since IDF left Gaza in 2006.
However, I agree with you, what is going on in West Bank is inexcusable. Fatah is just as corrupt as Hamas, but they have not shown any sign of aggression from their end towards Israel.
> Although I do think throwing "pro-Palestine" in is a cheap insinuation. Pretty much everyone is against genocide
Uh? The US government and many of the EU governments (i.e. "the West", the world's most powerful economic, diplomatic and military bloc) are either fine with Israel doing whatever it wants or too scared to speak up. All are, in fact, supporting Israel with money and weapons, and it's in Israel's supreme interest to keep the money and the support flowing by damaging any movement and politician that declares to be "pro-Palestine".
That said, I also don't like the (widely used) 'pro-Palestine' label, which implies some kind of partisanship. You don't call the anti-apartheid people "the pro-Blacks".
It's only a while until social media could be turned off before elections if not outright banned. It only free speech for AI bots and psyops campagins. Actual voices get drowned in a sea of slop and propaganda.
I am an Israeli and though I dislike this certain brand of companies and would never work in one, I am not sure this is strictly bad.
I assume these were hired by a local candidate (unless someone can think who has a deep interest in French municipal elections)
Currently the only actors who use fake social accounts for election manipulation are the Russians, Chinese, Iran and Qatar.
The west is completely powerless in either fighting back, regulating social networks or coming up with a technological solution.
As democracies are being undermined by foreign influence, from Brexit, to the US elections, I'd rather local parties would have access to these tools than the alternative, and that would be only done using private companies.
Of course the better alternative is getting rid of fake accounts and making social media into a unicorn and bunnies hate-free zone, don't think we are headed there though
> unless someone can think who has a deep interest in French municipal elections
The State of Israel? They are paranoid about their international standing. (Really, just paranoid in general, to an absurd and pathological degree, though for understandable reasons.)
That's doubtful, I don't think Israel has the resources to spend huge sums of money to invest in manipulating French municipal elections.. That's absurd
There legitimate reason to suspect that Israel was involved in a series of anti-muslim rallies that happened across the US a few years back. The Molly Conger's covered it in an episode of "Weird Little Guys": https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/an-accidental-nazi-ral...
That's not a conspiracy theory though, the fact that political parties during elections campaign try to influence voters, sometimes in morally questionable ways, is pretty well known and common.
I had an issue with the idea that a nation in the Middle East is somehow interested in municipal elections in Europe as it somehow will advance its security interests... that's kinda way out there
Much of the Israeli government believes that the entire world is out to get them; that every generation brings a new “Amalek” (as Prime Minister Netanyahu put it); that every Gentile anywhere in the world is at risk, if exposed to the right trigger, of waking up tomorrow wanting to start another Holocaust. Prominent Israeli politicians talk like this all the time. Here in the US, I see Zionists make similar arguments constantly ("Israel is the only country where Jews can be safe", "antisemitism is part of the European DNA", etc.).
This (delusional, paranoid, insane) attitude is central to the national ideology, and the #1 reason why the country is so messed up.
Because of it, they see any politician anywhere expressing any criticism of them whatsoever as an existential threat, someone who could turn into the next Hitler and genocide them all. That's why they just increased their PR budget to over $700 million.
> Much of the Israeli government believes that the entire world is out to get them; that every generation brings a new “Amalek” (as Prime Minister Netanyahu put it);
Sorry to inform you but the idea that every generation breeds someone that will try to destroy the Jewish people is firm in Jewish religion (and with merit). That is repeated in every Passover. It is also based on quite firm historical grounds though.
> that every Gentile anywhere in the world is at risk, if exposed to the right trigger, of waking up tomorrow wanting to start another Holocaust
That's your interpretation, as for someone that is versed in the local language and culture, I think it is wrong
> Here in the US, I see Zionists make similar arguments constantly ("Israel is the only country where Jews can be safe", "antisemitism is part of the European DNA", etc.).
This (delusional, paranoid, insane) attitude is central to the national ideology, and the #1 reason why the country is so messed up.
Like it or not, but Zionism has said that European antisemitism is pathological and will end in disaster for the Jewish people. That might be regarded as paranoid in 1932, but zionist jews were largely saved while other less paranoid Jews were completely exterminated in an actual real genocide.
The message which you characterize as paranoid is quite easy for Israelis to understand as most of the country is descendent to refugees from genocide, ethnic cleansing or both
> That's why they just increased their PR budget to over $700 billion.
Sounds like a lot. In any case, I don't see how any of this explains Israel's obsession with municipal elections in France. But I guess it's a difference in axioms. Once you believe Israelis are insane, then you don't need to rationalize your own beliefs, even though they lack any logical ground
> That's why they just increased their PR budget to over $700 billion.
Million, not billion, sorry for the typo.
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Yes, the paranoia is for understandable historical reasons. It didn't come out of nowhere, I get that. Most paranoid people are paranoid due to real traumatic experiences that happened to them. But none of that makes it any less harmful or destructive. At worst, it becomes an endless cycle of self-fulfilling prophecy.
(Israel is hardly the only example of an entire society going down this dark path. E.g. Germany: horrible traumatic experience of losing WWI -> paranoia, "we must have been betrayed" -> "the Jews did it" -> Nazism, the Holocaust.)
I would say that it is even more of a paranoid, delusional conspiracy theory to say that GP is subscribed to a conspiracy theory, or is paranoid or delusional
Ignoring the actual situation as I don't care to go into that right now, just talking about the mechanisms working with here. I did have access accidentally to buy cheap social stuff. Not that it would be hard to run it myself, just wouldn't be worth the effort to make it run well for controllably long time.
But anyway, i didn't do anything with it, but i always thought, how do easy it would be for a competent, young, informed government, to realize counteracting the digital influence of foreignn governments is much more important than whatever else they prioritise. Exaggerated, maybe, but it should be at least top 3 or whatever exact position in ones priority list. Because especially: it's so easy, to spend a few thousand euros to hire some really competent people who might just pay some shady social account broker, now even with the use LLMs , much more scalably & effectively, to counteract and do even better stuff than what they do.
But then, remembering bernays, i am happy they are incompetent. The day they reach competency with the toolset that is yet in infancy, i will regret not having tried to control who is running this. On the other hand, you just can't risk doing this. It will lose your control eventually. And without being a conspiracy theorists, it won't be long until more pips (people in power) will notice the ease of influence- and propaganda (in bernays understanding, the one who rebranded it as public relations), through these tools.
Luckily, i've never been in a knife fight. Though i've heard, that with an unskilled fighter, you have pretty bad chances of not getting hurt. But a skilled one is a death sentence.
Of course i don't want to be attacked by a knife. And i don't want to take some other unskilled street gangster and train him. Of course, some people get humbled if introduced to power. But many corrupt. And those hungry for power, are rarely those, who should have it. This could be an hour long discussion. But just look around the people you know well. Maybe yourself in certain situations or relationships. Every humans has the potential.
You guessed wrong. As far as I know, there's no such lobby, and I find your suggestion of its existence to be antisemitic. But the pro Israel lobby is quite open and public. Aipac's spending, for example, is public knowledge, and you can look it up for yourself.
Is the USA finally doing something about foreign lobbyists here? Trump is like the ultimate tool here for foreigners to gain influence, no matter the country. Yuri explained this already in the 1980s (!!!): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9apDnRRSOCk (it's the KGB view, so biased too, of course, but if you extend it, then also connect it to Epstein, you have basically undermined democracy effectively; a shame Yuri is dead, he would have had a field day with "analysing" Putin).
OP is talking about American's here. AIPAC is made of and paid for AIPAC, like other political packs or other American groups. AIPAC is just Americans, doing the American political thing.
I always thought this was a new thing until I read The Palestine Laboratory by Antony Loewenstein. Over more than 50 years Israel has developed a global export industry around military, surveillance, and security technologies that were developed and tested through its control of Palestinian territories, and that these technologies are then marketed and sold worldwide. Buyers are often bad actors that use it to kill and suppress other populations including in Armenia/Azerbaijan, Myanmar, Rwanda genocide, authoritarian governments and many other examples cited in the book.
Wow, again I am dismayed by the antizionism and anti-Israel sentiment. The popularity of this short, weak article on this website, and the vitriol and hate in the comments is unreal. Can't you all go to Reddit?
In 2016 the UK based Cambridge Analytica was blamed for Trump's win in 2016. Then he won again in 2024 without them. Meanwhile both USA parties invested heavily in social media campaigns.
In my country local government elections are in a few months and political parties are already flooding my social media with rage bait (primarily Instagram and Facebook).
This short article is about a private company, not linked to the government, that may or may not have been retained by locals, that may or may not have breached foreign interference laws, and that certainly did not lend its targeted candidates an overwhelming advantage (Mamdani was the most popular candidate in the NYC mayoral election). But because it is about Israel everyone goes crazy.
Is the "meddling" just running campaign ads? I don't really see how an election where voters' brains were hijacked by tiktok ads funded by foreign governments is less legitimate than one where voters' brains were hijacked by tiktok ads funded by local organizations.
You don't see a difference between local and foreign organizations influencing an election?
Most countries only allow citizens to vote. By your logic, they should let anyone vote, because what's the difference between a citizen and a foreigner when it comes to elections?
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