[throwaway914]

I know I'm naive: I don't understand why US companies are so sensitive to respecting Israel. I don't know why our gov is so sensitive to this either. Israel - like all countries - deserves criticism, no? This can't purely be about respecting the billions spent on US weapons to defend Israel, right? I genuinely do not understand, because I think they'd happily buy from the military anyway.

[fsiefken]

From what I understand reading the article it's not about Meta respecting Israel, but Israel actively using the Meta rules to target criticism. This is also what I experienced as a moderator for interreligious dialogue. Certain groups were more aggressive in asserting their truth, not by using arguments, debate and dialogue, but using straw man tactics, meta communication and loopholes in the moderation rules to get their way.

[SenAnder]

Part of the answer is simply that a large fraction of the US government is Jewish. E.g. according to the White House, their staff (everything from stenographers and secretaries, to labor relations representatives and foreign policy experts) is 32% Jewish (2.4% of US population), 44% ethnic minority (about even with US), and 24% non-Jewish White (55% of US)

Sources: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36119693

[ethanbond]

Nope. It’s eschatological Christians who back Israel. Has nothing to do with protecting Jews and everything to do with evangelical Christians’ end times prophecy. The world’s largest military has made decades of foreign policy decisions in accordance with these people’s doomsday fetish.

[richbell]

I'm not sure how you can definitively say "nope". It could just as easily be both, or a third reason.

[acdha]

I agree with the person you’re replying to: there are certainly plenty of conservative Americans Jews even if they’re well in the minority (roughly a third) but there aren’t enough political districts where those numbers are decisive to explain the political lock and the “back Israel to the hilt” voices overwhelmingly tend not to be those districts but ones loaded with evangelical Christians.

This makes sense when you remember why they care so much: their interpretation of the Bible holds that the end times they’re looking forward to will begin with a war involving Israel. They are not looking for peace or long-term happiness, and support any policy which increases the odds of a war. I remember them being very excited by the Gulf War and various points in the Iraq war where it seemed like someone might attack Israel because they’re basically thinking that’s their ticket to heaven showing up.

[ethanbond]

Exactly right! This belief system is so unbelievably appalling to secular folks that they literally cannot believe it. But this is what huge numbers of Americans, and a very powerful political constituency actually believe.

[SauciestGNU]

Yeah I'm not sure about "nope", but I certainly think it's a mistake to assume Jewish people support Israeli government policies.

[ethanbond]

It’s also a mistake to think the current administration’s White House staffers set decades of defense and foreign aid policy.

[SenAnder]

You seem keen on implying this is limited to "the current administration's staff", but that's just what we happen to have data on. Unless proven otherwise, it's reasonable to assume this over-representation is the rule, not the exception that applies only to the current admin's staff.

To support this, see my other comment showing the Federal Reserve chair and political donors exhibit the same over-representation (the donor data is recent, but the Fed chair is since 1970, so it's unlikely this is a new thing that suddenly came out of nowhere): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37465220

It's not limited to the staff either - of the 26 cabinet positions (including president and vice president) in the Biden White House, 7 are held by Jews (2.4% of US population), and just 6 by gentile Whites (55% of US). One of those 6 is Joe Biden himself, and all 3 of his children married Jews. Sources:

https://www.thejc.com/news/world/joe-biden-s-very-jewish-fam...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Presidency_of_Joe_Biden#Cabine...

[llamaimperative]

You can definitively say “nope” by looking at where the unquestioned US policy support of Israel comes from. It comes from the evangelical right wing in the GOP. They are not fans of Jews per se. They are fans of going to heaven and believe that Israel is a key ingredient for doing that (when the rest of us get slaughtered in a holy war).

When did 34% of the current White House staffers become responsible for decades of US foreign policy?

[stareatgoats]

> They are fans of going to heaven

I can sympathize, heaven seems at least better than the other place. What I don't understand is how eschatological (which are essentially fatalistic) beliefs translate into support for Israel. In a world governed by fate it doesn't matter what you do, it's all predetermined anyway. Which seems to align more with the core Christian teachings: we should not judge (because no-one is essentially free from their fatefully determined destiny).

I could be wrong.

[ethanbond]

Because broad swaths of US Evangelicals believe that Israel needs to be "re-established" for Jesus to return so there can be a holy war. No I am not kidding. (https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/politics/wp/2018/05/14/h...)

79% of US Christians believe Jesus will have a second coming. https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2009/04/09/christians-v...

The second coming of Jesus is not for fun times. It's for war that kills ~everyone except the true believers, who then get infinite utopia.

4 in 10 Americans and about half of US Christians overall believe we are living "in the end times," and two thirds of "highly religious" adults. I.e. we are approaching that second coming/holy war.

https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2022/11/17/how-religion...

Combine that with the fact that US Congress is 90% Christian –– dramatically more so than the US public –– and a pretty alarming decision-making environment emerges.

https://www.axios.com/2023/04/23/lawmakers-more-religious-ge...

[omniglottal]

This rationale is fundamentally incorrect. God's gift of Free Will (unto Man) is specifically the power (with faith) to manifest that which is nondeterministic. Where you got this notion of determinism, and thus nonjudgment, is a fancy set of mental gymnastics which is inconsistent with any known Christian teachings.

[SenAnder]

Those Christians are also against abortion and homosexuality, but they've had far less success on those topics - school prayer was removed, and replaced with LGBT flags.

[acdha]

Uh, did you miss the last couple of years where they got a huge ruling allowing them to criminalize abortion, protect religious activities by public employees on the job, laws to ban books, and have been successfully using threats of terrorism to shut down LGBQT events?

The only reason there isn’t mandatory school prayer is because they’d have to agree on whose version to enshrine.

[SenAnder]

Their success in these areas is at best contested and limited - abortion is legal in the vast majority of US states [1] and the US army officially endorses LGBT pride parades [2,3]. It is not remotely comparable to the decades long, unquestioned bipartisan support of Israel.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abortion_law_in_the_United_Sta...

[2] https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/dc-politics/us-armed-fo...

[3] https://americanmilitarynews.com/2022/06/heres-how-us-milita...

[ethanbond]

Sorry is the suggestion here that if a certain constituency is not successful across all of its agenda items, then it surely couldn't be behind the success of some of its agenda items?

[SenAnder]

No. The suggestion is that there is a reason for this variance of success. The reason being that they share this agenda item with another group, explaining why they triumph here while they have only middling success elsewhere.

In your own words: We don’t really need to look for a single cause. All of these things are happening and interacting with each other. - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37446682

It's a simple concept - you understood it perfectly well when the topic was different. Why do you suddenly find it hard to grasp?

[ethanbond]

Uh huh... well I'm open to good reasons for this. All the ones that you've mentioned seem like run-of-the-mill anti-semitic conspiracy stuff: they're overrepresented in the current White House admin (an astounding 34% of a body that has unknown/unnamed/questionable impact on US policy regarding Israel), the Federal Reserve Chair has been held by Jewish folks disproportionately (relevant how?), the President's children are marrying Jewish folks (relevant how?).

Now, if you came out saying, "AIPAC is an extremely powerful lobbying group that lobbies for pro-Israel bills and foreign aid," you'd definitely get credit for that. Or "ADL is extremely proactive in 'managing speech' around Israel throughout American culture," you'd get credit for that too.

But no, "Jews are relatively overrepresented yet still clear minorities in positions which are not obviously relevant to US policy or cultural attitudes toward Israel" doesn't hold much explanatory power.

[stonogo]

...you think that fifty-plus years of foreign policy is because there aren't "enough" non-Jewish white people in the White House at the moment?

[SenAnder]

It's unlikely this is a momentary phenomenon. It's hard to find data, but this over-representation is not new. Looking at a single, albeit important, political post, in the 53 years since 1970, the chair of the Federal Reserve has been Jewish for 38 of them: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chair_of_the_Federal_Reserve

To not base conclusions on a single data point (maybe the Fed Chair is an outlier), US Jews also contributed 50% of all donations to the Democratic party, and 25% to the Republican party: https://www.jpost.com/US-Elections/US-Jews-contribute-half-o...

[trilbyglens]

There's also a lot of wacky christian folklore that is very popular in evangelical America that has to do with Israel being involved in the "end days". Some nutjobs feel that a strong Israeli state will hasten the rapture or some nonsense like that. There are a good number of those folk in elected positions, but also the evangelical crowd is inordinately influential in US politics, so it weasels it's way into many different facets of policy making. It's just one aspect of a complex picture though.

[WeylandYutani]

Is it nonsense if half of Americans believe it?

I live in a post religious society and it's easy to forget that these things still matter for the rest of the planet.

[qwytw]

> Is it nonsense if half of Americans believe it?

They don't though and there are way more sensible reasons which would explain US support for Israel.

[ethanbond]

80% of US Christians believe Jesus will return (https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2009/04/09/christians-v...)

The mainstream Christian theology is that Jesus will return in order to wage war on non-believers and secure earth as the heavenly dominion of the believers (https://www.bibleref.com/Revelation/19/Revelation-19-11.html)

This grand battle and ultimate plundering of the spoils takes place in/near Jerusalem (https://www.bibleref.com/Zechariah/14/Zechariah-14-1.html)

One apparent prerequisite to this battle happening is the construction of The Third Temple which would, of course, require control over the region in which The Third Temple must be rebuilt -- Jerusalem. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Temple_in_Jerusalem)

Also they need to find a red cow. Then Jesus can come with his flaming sword and slaughter ~billions of people.

[qwytw]

> The mainstream Christian theology is that Jesus will return in order to wage war on non-believers and secure earth as the heavenly dominion of the believers

That's really not the case, not in the literal sense anyway. Also pretty much all mainstream Christians do not spend any significant amount of time thinking about when will Jesus return and and what will happen then.

> Then Jesus can come with his flaming sword and slaughter ~billions of people.

I bet if you asked the pope what he thinks he'd say that's not what the Catholic faith teaches and he's literally infallible (well technically only in very specific cases but let's just ignore that since we're just saying stupid edgy stuff for no reason).

[gettodachoppa]

You must think you're deboonking by linking random Bible verses and obscure theory most people have never heard of?

I'm agnostic but I was raised Christian in different communities and on different continents and I have never been taught that Jesus's return is anything but a peaceful end-time where the just go to heaven (and yes, the wicked to hell). Zero mentions of Jesus waging war, if anything it's taught as the end of war and strife.

Not a single person I know associates Jesus with doing violence. I'm sure someone must believe this, but calling it "mainstream" is bad faith. What sort of "mainstream" theology is it if neither me nor anyone I know has been taught this?

[ethanbond]

> Jesus’s return is a peaceful end-time [when billions of people are sent to eternal torture]

This is why it seems like an obscure theory, because people don’t actually think about the words they’re saying.

Here’s Joel Olsteen, whose weekly sermon has 10,000,000 viewers, saying we should be happy about the bad things happening in the world because they’re a sign of the end times (after which he and his followers get to divide the spoils of the earth): https://www.charismanews.com/us/32276-joel-osteen-discusses-...

[qzx_pierri]

>Is it nonsense if half of Americans believe it?

https://owl.excelsior.edu/argument-and-critical-thinking/log...

[bmicraft]

I think what they meant to say is not that this isn't nonsense, but that it can't simply be discarded as nonsense when such a big part of the country believes it.

[qwytw]

I have no reason to think that the number of people who believe that "strong Israeli state will hasten the rapture" is not in the single digits (%) or more likely even way less than that.

[SauciestGNU]

Facts are not consensus based. It's complete nonsense.

[mvdtnz]

Yes it is nonsense.

[pydry]

The Israel lobby is incredibly powerful and well funded. They have a lot of money to throw around, much of which they throw at the US Government, which is consequently filled with their supporters. US companies know this and tread carefully.

They've weaponized anti-semitism against their detractors. And, who wants to be accused of racism? Even false accusations stain your reputation.

The irony is that it's probably one of the most racist countries I've ever seen in my entire life. They made a shrine to a terrorist (Baruch Goldstein). The president proudly called miscegenation "a tragedy". If you can imagine a white US president openly calling for whites and blacks to stop having babies - that's the level of racism this state's supporters endorse when weaponizing anti semitism.

[weatherlite]

> They made a shrine to a terrorist (Baruch Goldstein)

Not sure what you're talking about here. Baruch Goldstein has no "shrine"* and besides fringe groups in Israel he is generally not accepted. Compare that with the monthly salaries Palestinian terrorists receive from the PLO and their rockstar status in Palestinian society.

* he has a grave, Israeli law can't really prevent that. The Israeli government has ruined most of the site of his grave despite his family's appeals.

[pydry]

His grave, the shrine: https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1998-jun-05-mn-56910...

10% of Israelis consider him a national hero, according to Israeli polls: https://www.jpost.com/israel-news/article-733523

The Minister for National Security Ben Gvir had a portrait of Baruch in his living room: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Itamar_Ben-Gvir

I'd encourage anybody who visits Israel to go and see Kiryat Arba in the west bank settlement where Goldstein lived and where he committed his shooting spree, because it puts his act into context. It's a heavily militarized ethnically cleansed enclave of about 7,500 Israelis in the center of the second largest Palestinian west bank city - Hebron.

Unlike other settlements they often live in the same buildings - in the floors above Palestinians that was confiscated from them. There is netting to trap the trash that they throw down on the citizens "beneath" them as guard in guard towers look on, pointing guns: https://twitter.com/Mondoweiss/status/1668711490025603072

It's the most visible symbol of the kind of racism American supporters of Israel endorse, some of whom are, sadly, all too evident even in this thread.

[weatherlite]

Most of his grave was ruined by the Israeli government, and you'll find no parliament members in Israel who publicly endorses Goldstein. None, not even the most radical right extremists in the current government. Privately some radical Israeli politicians like Itamar Ben Gvir probably like what Goldstein did but

a) they're in the minority

b) they're not giving any publicity to their private thoughts

Palestinian terrorists however get a rockstar status in Palestinian society including streets named after them and a monthly salary given by the PLO if they're imprisoned.

[edanm]

It's terrible that anyone supports any terrorist like Goldstein. It's even more terrible that Ben Gvir was elected, given his views.

Though just for context, there is a huge political fight within Israel, partially because of people like Ben Gvir. It's not the whole country supporting this nonsense.

And while 10% of Israelis saying he's a hero is 10% too many, I imagine it's comparable to similar numbers in other countries for similar-ish situations. Still terrible, but not exactly proof that the country is especially racist.

(Though to be fair, it's not like there's zero racism in Israel, though I think it's less about race and more about the national situation/issues around the Palestinians. I don't think it makes sense to think about the Israeli situation in the same way one would think about the racism in the States, for example.)

[pydry]

>And while 10% of Israelis saying he's a hero is 10% too many

10% is definitely enough to presume that anybody who throws out an accusation of anti-semitism in defense of Israel is racist by default.

10% is enough to presume that the illegalization of Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions in America is an explicitly pro-racist law.

It is possible to make an accusation of anti-semitism that isn't motivated by racism. It's just much rarer than it should be.

[edanm]

> 10% is definitely enough to presume that anybody who throws out an accusation of anti-semitism in defense of Israel is racist by default.

I'm really trying to parse your logic, and failing.

If I understand it, your chain of reasoning is:

1. Someone "defends Israel".

2. The way they do it in this specific case is by saying the other person is anti-semitic.

3. Because some people in Israel think fairly attrocious things and are racist, this implies that any defense of Israel is implicitly a defense of racism, therefore making the defender racist.

Is that the chain here? Basically, you can't defend a country in which 10% of people are racist, without yourself being racist?

If so, that chain of reasoning is pretty ridiculous. That's like someone saying they like the US, and you deciding they are racist, because in a 2013 poll, 17% of Americans were against interracial marriage. It's a huge and nonsensical logical leap to go from "some action that country X has done is OK" to "I therefore support what any subset, even as small as 10% of the country, thinks".

[Brybry]

NY Times and AP News described it as a shrine when they reported on the Israeli government demolishing it. [1][2]

[1] https://www.nytimes.com/1999/12/30/world/israel-destroys-shr... / https://archive.ph/RNPRh

[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ohMB-_1lPM

[edanm]

To be clear, this is the context of the original message:

> The irony is that it's probably one of the most racist countries I've ever seen in my entire life. They made a shrine to a terrorist (Baruch Goldstein).

"They" here refers, I believe, to the country being racist.

But saying that "they" made a shrine to Goldstein, in the context of an article describing that the Israeli government destroyed it, is like saying that US society is racist because the US government demloished a statue to Hitler put up by the KKK. It's taking the actions of a tiny group, specifically in the context of the government acting against that group, and somehow saying that reflects the whole country.

[pydry]

If you put it like that it'd be like if a Hitler shrine were demolished after 5 years, 10% of Americans considered Hitler a hero and Anthony Blinken still had a portrait of Hitler in his living room.

Oh, and Joe Biden really wants blacks and whites to stop marrying.

That's the level of racism you support if you weaponize anti-semitism in Israel's defense.

[weatherlite]

There's 50% of Americans that support Donald Trump so... I don't think its unreasonable to think 10% of Americans hold extreme views.

[gwd]

Indeed; it's possible to love a person or a country, and yet still grieve their faults and wish them to be better. I'd argue that's the only real way to love anyone or anything.

On the flip side, human nature being what it is, giving any person or set of people unconditional approval is creating conditions where evil can thrive.

[bad_user]

The criticism of Israel, coming from the left, is usually Anti-Zionism, which questions Israel's existence.

[gwd]

Can you expand on that?

One interpretation of "Zionism" could mean the idea that Israel should be an ethnically and religiously Jewish state that comprises the Biblical land of Israel, and that everyone else should be second-class citizens; and so simply saying that Israel should be a democracy that gives equal rights to all the people living within its borders, or that Israel should respect the Palestinian territories, would be "Anti-Zionist". Under this interpretation, "Anti-Zionism questions Israel's existence" really means "Anti-Zionism questions the existence of one particular vision for what Israel should be". That's not really a bad thing.

If, on the other hand, "Anti-Zionist" means the abolishing the Israeli government and re-partitioning the territory back into its pre-1948 states -- I mean, yeah, that's pretty bad; but I've never heard any of my left-leaning friends advocate anything like that, and such a desire would be really incompatible with everything else they're in favor of.

But these are just guesses, since you didn't provide much context.

[edanm]

Most people don't have that much knowledge on the matter, nor do they have a very well thought-out idea of what they're actually advocating. A simple "pro-Israeli" vs "pro-Palestinian" split is kind of ridiculos, as you say - there are many interpretations of what it even means to be pro-Israel, since Israel itself is in the middle of a political crisis in which its trying to figure out this question!

Having said that, in my experience, a lot of people have some vague sense of "Israel should not be a purely Jewish state, should allow equal status to everyone else, should give the right of return to all Palestinians [implicitly meaning that it would no longer be a Jewish majority state]" etc.

And most people don't have a good answer to the question: Poland is a state for ethnic Polish people, Spain is a place for Spanish people, Japan is a place for Japanese people; why can't there be a country that's for Jewish place? Why is a country for Jewish people somehow illegitimate?

(There are good answers given the history why this particular instantiation of Israel is a problem. So good that nobody has been able to solve these problems for so many years. But many people talking about this don't know those reasons - they just vaguely think "Israel bad, not allowing anyone equal rights is 'apartheid'" etc.)

[twixfel]

>And most people don't have a good answer to the question: Poland is a state for ethnic Polish people, Spain is a place for Spanish people, Japan is a place for Japanese people; why can't there be a country that's for Jewish place? Why is a country for Jewish people somehow illegitimate?

I think the point is that those countries you say are "nation states" are in fact turning away from being nation states, or already have. Most of Europe learned from the 19th and 20th centuries that nationalism (despite being very romantic in many ways) ends in disaster. I am from the UK and it cannot be said to be a nation state, if it ever was. My country is full of people with immigrant backgrounds from all over the world with full citizenship rights who are a million miles from being "ethnically English" or "ethnically Scottish". As it should be.

So yeah in my opinion, an "English nation state" is undesirable. I don't want it. I'm glad we're not one.

[edanm]

I understand and somewhat share that sentiment. But I think you're wrong in a few ways.

Firstly, I think it's only some segments of the population that are turning away from being nation states, and I think that idea is far less common than us liberals think. Many countries are facing "crises" because of immigration. I mean, the UK itself did Brexit partially because of fears of being too beholden to other countries, which isn't exactly the same thing as going back to a nation state, but I think comes from a similar place.

Secondly, as a Jew, I am extremely aware of the history of my people. While I really wish that I didn't live in a world which might one day decide to kill me just for being Jewish, I unfortunately don't live in that world now. I unfortunately have to want there to be at least one country in the whole world which will for sure always take in and defend Jews, because the world has proved the need for that many times throughout history, obviously with the Holocaust being the worst example.

How do I square my progressive sensibilities with my thinking that there needs to be a Jewish country? I don't know. Most people don't have that problem - not many Swedes have to contend with the idea that the country will no longer be Swedish, and that no other country will want to take them in. That's just not a relevant concern for Swedish people.

It is an acutely relevant concern for me.

[weatherlite]

> There are good answers given the history why this particular instantiation of Israel is a problem

Give us a few, I'm interested.

[edanm]

I mean, Israel now is located on land that was partially owned by Palestinians. Many Palestinians were driven from their homes, partially by various Arab leaders of the region, but also by Israel itself. The Palestinians certainly have a legitimate grievance with what happened in 1948.

In addition, a lot of the occupied territories are effectively lands in which Palestinians are to some extent "imprisoned", neither having their own country, nor being granted any kind of citizenship. These lands were won in a war, true, but the standard course of action is either to return them, or to annex them, neither of which Israel has chosen to do (for obvious demographic reasons). But the end result is a situation in which millions of Palestinians were driven out of their home in 1948, and are now refugees living in territories with no self-determinance.

Israel isn't without a complicated history and a complicated existing situation. The same can be said of many countries, btw.

[Asparagus7426]

It's more of a vilifying caricature than an actual "interpretation of Zionism." Even the most right-wing branch of Zionism, revisionist Zionism, which indeed advocated for the entire biblical territory of Israel in the past, simultaneously believed in full and equal rights for its Arab/Palestinian citizens, as outlined by its founder, Ze'ev Jabotinsky.

Zionism at its core is the belief that the Jewish people have the right to self-determination in their ancestral homeland. This is precisely what "anti-Zionism" opposes. Middle Eastern/Arab "anti-Zionists" advocate for exactly what you mentioned in your second paragraph. Additionally, depending on their political affiliation, some may seek the subjugation, expulsion, or harm of the Jewish population in Israel/Palestine. The percentage of Palestinians advocating for a one-state solution with equal rights for all is at most 33%, according to the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research (PSR).

Your "left-leaning" friends may not have expressed anything like that and might simply want to express solidarity with the perceived "weaker" side. However, by proclaiming to be "anti-Zionist," they are undoubtedly associating themselves with some aspects of hardcore Palestinian nationalism. It's puzzling to me how this is compatible with traditional left-leaning stances and why any self-described left-leaning person would want to be associated with that, except due to extreme ignorance about the meaning of the words and the actual situation on the ground.

[twixfel]

The Palestinians were/are already there. The Israelis have as much right to that land as modern day Anglo-Saxons (i.e. English people) have to North-West Germany and Jutland, i.e., none. Having said that, just as I support the continued existence of any other country, many of which were built on conquest and colonisation (e.g. the United States of America), I support the continued existence of Israel, but it's a very difficult to argue that the expansion of Israel and the colonisation of the Southern Levant by Jewish settlers was justified or morally right, just as it's difficult to justify the Anglo-Saxon conquest of what became England or the settlement of the Americas, whilst not believing either that the US or England should cease to exist.

[Asparagus7426]

No one is denying that. What is often overlooked, however, is that Jews were always part of the historical landscape of Palestine. They were only a minority in Palestine because of European interventions (Romans, Byzantines, and Crusaders). Referring to Jewish settlement as "colonization" is ridiculous because, like the Palestinians, Jews are indigenous to this region. Even more so when considering the cultural aspect of indigeneity to a region. Judaism is a direct continuation of Canaanite and Israelite culture, which predates colonization. Whereas modern Palestinian culture is the result of the Arab/Islamic conquest of the Levant.

The issue that some people characterize as colonization is, in reality, a matter of migration. In fact, one of the early demands of the Palestinian nationalist movement in the 1930s was to halt Jewish immigration, and they sought to enforce this demand through violence. And this violence snowballed to the current ethnic conflict between arabs and jews. If we compare this to the present day, imagine a bunch of trump supporters marching through the streets attacking/murdering Mexican immigrants. It's a no-brainer that these people would be considered racist criminals. But this is exactly what happened in Palestine in the 1930s. And the situation changed only for the worse. Yet, people (especially the left) still sides with those criminals instead of supporting a lasting peace between the Jews and Palestinians.

[ta2234234242]

> Israel - like all countries - deserves criticism, no?

Maybe go look up Jonathan Pollard. If Israel is our close friend, why would they need to spy on us?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonathan_Pollard

https://www.military.com/history/jonathan-pollard-was-one-of...

[unmole]

> If Israel is our close friend, why would they need to spy on us?

The same reason why the US spies on the Bundeskanzler.

[swexbe]

Rules for thee

[Paradigma11]

Same reason the US spies on all of its friends?

An actual reason I have heard is that it is as important to have independent information on your allies than it is on your enemies. Even if it is only for better coordination.

[ralusek]

US spies on itself and everyone else.

[stonogo]

It's a deep political tie with a complex past. Here's decent book on the subject: https://academic.oup.com/book/7112 The Wikipedia article on "Christian Zionism" may also shed some light.

Basically, boosting Israel makes politicians popular with big swaths of their electorate. Pissing those electorates off makes things tough on a corporation, so they generally try not to.

[dheavy]

Lobbying?

As a secular Jew in Western Europe, I've distanced myself from my religious community due to its insistence on tying my identity to Israel. Where I live, it's less taboo to critique Israel than in the U.S., but still tricky.

Advocates of Israel's right-wing politics have blurred the line between criticizing Israel and anti-Semitism, an endeavor helped by actual anti-Semites. I've grown up with these supporters, but can't quite call them a "lobby" due to their loose organization and lesser influence here compared to the U.S.

Speaking out brings risks: being labeled a leftist extremist, clashing with fellow Jews, or unwittingly aiding anti-Semites. And that's if you are Jew.

This creates a pervasive, cautious silence that I imagine is even more stifling in countries with highly organized pro-Israel lobbying.

[arp242]

I was once "reported to ADL" for my anti-Semitism.

My horrid crime that made me literally Hitler?

Disagreement if a tag should be named "jews" or "judaism" on the Politics Stack Exchange site. I made an off-hand comment that I renamed the tag from "jews" to "judaism" and the very first response was that I had been "reported to the ADL" (whether they actually did: who knows? Probably not).

That such an incredibly boring, banal, and benign disagreement exploded in accusations of anti-Semitism so quickly has made me rather distrustful of these accusations in general unless I can verify things. Anti-Semitism is real, but so are narcissistic people abusing it to "win the argument". If you need to defend yourself with "but I'm not anti-Semitic!" then you've already kind of lost the argument, right?

[trogdor]

One of my favorite books is “Kindly Inquisitors” by Jonathan Rauch. Highly recommended. Among its core messages is that accusations of bias are often used to stop discourse. The strongest response against a factual claim is that it’s wrong. Not that it’s racist, anti-Semitic, homophobic, etc.

“If there be time to expose through discussion, the falsehoods and fallacies, to avert the evil by the processes of education, the remedy to be applied is more speech, not enforced silence.”

-Justice Louis Brandeis

[myth_drannon]

It's less about your Jewish identity tied to Israel and more about you and your identity not tied to the country you live. It's two sides of the same coin and the argument is much older than Israel. Your loyalty will be always questioned it's just that now it has more "Israeli flavor". Different people, same idea. Things didn't change much since the Dreyfus affair.

[weatherlite]

> Where I live, it's less taboo to critique Israel than in the U.S., but still tricky.

Is it really so hard to "critique" Israel? I see daily calls for Israel to be abolished one way or the other (either violently with the help of Iran or with a Palestinian return). You can hear these opinions from politicians, on the news and social media, campuses and schools.

You might be labeled as a leftist as you said because this is generally a leftist stance, that's fair no? If I held a rightwing view I will probably be labeled as a right winger. Most Israelis I know think twice before they identify as Israelis in certain parts of Europe, they don't want a random cab driver to start lecturing them about apartheid (or do something worse). So I'm really intrigued why you think its such a taboo thing to criticize Israel or even openly call for its destruction.

[tamimio]

- A lot of the US senators have dual citizenship, US/Israelis.

- Strong lobby in both political parties.

- Boomers with their Judeo-Christians “values”.

- Israel intelligence agencies controlling/influencing ADL, ADL pressuring three letter agencies in US to further influence big tech.

- The usual tactics of infiltration into big corps especially ones that can influence public opinions, you can read a little about Roy Bollock case

>The ADL operates as a private intelligence agency, sending spies, infiltrators, disruptors, and agents provocateurs into the camps — both Jewish and non-Jewish — of those who disagree with its view of Jewish interests. Also like an intelligence agency, it maintains a huge database containing personal information on politicians, writers, dissidents, activists, publishers, bloggers, and even unaffiliated private citizens so that — should any of these people “get out of line,” in the opinion of the ADL — they can be threatened, “exposed,” blackmailed, and thus silenced with maximum effectiveness. [1]

- And especially for Facebook with their shady business, they live on selling the users data to advertisers, the company won’t do anything to cut that money flow, take a look at twitter in the same case how ADL managed to cut around 60% of ads companies, it’s mostly about money and influence.

[1] redice.tv/news/the-adl-and-domestic-spying-roy-bullock-case-revisited

[29athrowaway]

There are laws that limit how much you can criticize Israel at this moment

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-BDS_laws

[tyingq]

I mean it boils down to oil and presence/influence in areas close to the oil.

[colpabar]

It sucks that so many people will say that the US involvement in the middle east was mainly about oil but that logic never gets applied to israel's (illegal) expansion and the implicit US support for it. There is SO much oil there. Oh well, I guess it's more fun to blame the evangelicals and ignore the insane profit motive.

[weatherlite]

Yes everyone is always so respectful of Israel, I only read good things about Israel on the media /s

[weregiraffe]

The Western world has a 2000+ years long history of antisemitism (starting back in the Hellenistic era when the Mediterranean polytheist majority was not amused by Jewish minority strict monotheism, and vice versa). Every criticism of Israel must be viewed in that light, because 95% of it is just the endlessly rehashed antisemitism.

[blueflow]

Every criticism of Israel must be viewed on a factual basis and whether its unfounded or not.