First, sanctions on Iran have zero to do with its authoritarian government - the US has no problem selling to authoritarian governments - but rather the geopolitical conflict stemming from a slew of lovely US actions such as overthrowing the democratically elected leader of Iran and installing a repressive and brutal dictator which destabilized the country to a degree that the events of 1979 and after were possible.
The efficacy of economic sanctions is complicated and debated, but one can absolutely say there is little compelling evidence that they result in positive outcomes for anybody.
The U.S. funded and actively supported Saddam. We don’t mind trading with and funding dictators so long as they are our dictator. That said, the IRGC deserves to be eliminated and it is OK to sanction Iran.
The petty dictatorships are forming their own trading club: China, Russia, Iran, North Korea.
The combination of shallow + inflammatory on divisive topics is guaranteed to make HN discussion worse, at least for its intended purpose, which is curious conversation.
This was the reason why Cuba was kept out of the “organizations of Americas”. When they finally let this stupid reasoning go, it was too late. And Cuba was no longer interested in being part of the org.
Democracy is a doorstop for foreign enterprises and influence. The locals suffer.
That's not a dictatorship. It's a leader without powers to make laws. The leader makes decrees. And the leader is selected by a small council. It is akin to the monarchy in Britain.
Have a look at Wikipedia -- there can be a small group of people who are the dictators, doesn't have to be just one:
"A dictatorship is an autocratic form of government which is characterized by a leader, or a group of leaders, who hold governmental powers with few to no limitations."
Except the leader is not a group of leaders. It is just one leader. And he answers the council who can vote to remove him. This is far from a dictatorship
It seems that most of the world (population- and GDP-wise) is drifting towards authoritarian rule with immutable Dear Leader. Russia, then Turkey, then China, India is arguably getting there too. You're placing Iran in the same bucket. Maghreb countries? Middle East? Central Asia?
As far as dictatorships go, Iran actually has some political life.
That would eventually make your position untenable.
Then you need a part which is only produced in China, or a chemical compound which is only produced in India, or you need a plane ride and it has titanium parts from Russia?
I expect a significant change of tone once you need to change your own usage patterns because of your principles. Or a straight out "fight dictatorships, but only when it's convenient".
I would be happy to see a long-term plan to phase out trade with China. Of course that couldn't change from one day to the next, but I wouldn't mind a plan to phase out trade with countries like China.
America doesn't care whether a country is a democracy or a dictatorship. Saudi Arabia is a dictatorship and America does business with them, even sells them weapons to murder Yemenis with. Iran was a democracy but America and the UK deliberately undid that.
In some ways that makes it worse. When Hamas abuses the population we can at least say that the majority of people have never had a chance to vote for anyone else. In contrast the Israelis chose Bibi. This is what the majority of the population wants.
Isn't there some form of governance that chose Hamas as leaders? I might not understand the distinction from how Gaza is governed vs. Israel though.
I'm also curious if the motivation for abuses as call it matters. I think there was some significant event that Hamas coordinated that then prompted a response from Israel?
There was an election eighteen years ago in 2006; Hamas won a plurality but not a majority. So most Palestinians didn't vote for them then, and since then none have. Most Palestinians alive today weren't old enough, or even alive, to have voted in 2006.
So you really can't call Hamas's rule democratic in any meaningful sense.
A country doesn't become a dictatorship simply because not everyone is allowed to vote in elections. The US used to require land ownership to vote, then women weren't able to vote, and even now felons can't vote (at least in some states). None of those things meant that the US was or is a dictatorship.
I'm not saying "everything is just fine over in Israel". But the original context was about not trading with dictatorships, which Israel is not.
Yes, just like apartheid SA had free and fair elections.
Palestinians have no rights in their homeland, Israel invaded it and every time they take more land they simply claim the original occupants aren’t part of the country their home is/was in.
There's a lot to say about Israel, but what you said isn't true.
Israel didn't "invade" the land. Jews moved into the land legally, and then the rulers of the land at the time gave it to the UN to recommend what to do with it, given that there were two peoples there. The UN recommended splitting it into two parts, one for each people (the Arabs and the Jews). The Jews agreed to this plan, the Arabs didn't. The Jews then declared independence, and other Arab countries launched a war on Israel, urging the current Arab inhabitants of that land to flee, and return when the land is taken away from the Jews.
Some of the original Arab inhabitants fled (there are massive debates on whether they fled because of the urging of the Arab leaders, or out of fear). When Israel won the war, these original inhabitants were unable to return.
Other Arab inhabitants of that land stayed, and they and their descendants are now Israeli citizens, that have full rights and can vote just like any other citizen (Arab Israelis make up 20% of Israel).
So:
> Palestinians have no rights in their homeland,
Not true. 20% of Israeli citizens are Palestinians.
> Israel invaded [their homeland]
No, Israel didn't exist, and the Jews who came to Palestine weren't "invading" anything, they arrived legally for the most part (and many were turned away, even during the Holocaust, and ended up dying).
The Zionists conspired to take over Palestine since before they even set foot in the middle east. Your historical account is carefully crafted propaganda to make it seem like the Zionists didn't simply bully their way into Palestine, but that is exactly what they did and no amount of biased twisting of facts will ever be able to explain how the Palestinians who are the natives of that land, ended up landless and stateless, whereas the Zionists stemming from foreign European and Middle Eastern countries ended up with a fully recognized state.
Your forgot to mention the Zionist terrorism, the Zionist pogroms and massacres, the very biased western diplomats involved in splitting a land that was not theirs, and the fact that neither the Turks nor the Brits had any legitimacy over Palestine.
The Palestinians did nothing wrong, but they ended up the victim of a bunch of fanatical ethnonationalists who wanted to build a Jewish state on their land.
> Israel didn't "invade" the land. Jews moved into the land legally, and then the rulers of the land at the time gave it to the UN to recommend what to do with it, given that there were two peoples there.
Right, and remember, slave owners didn't kidnap people, slaves were legal property.
Moreover, there were not two people living there, there were the people who had been living there for thousands of years, who had been claimed by Britain (though not colonized). Claiming there were "two people" is revisionist BS.
> The UN recommended splitting it into two parts, one for each people (the Arabs and the Jews). The Jews agreed to this plan, the Arabs didn't.
That is, the government sold half your home to a stranger, they agreed to this, you however unreasonably did not. What an asshole you are.
> The Jews then declared independence, and other Arab countries launched a war on Israel, urging the current Arab inhabitants of that land to flee, and return when the land is taken away from the Jews.
The jews, who just moved into a country, and seized a pile of land and property from the occupants of that country without the occupants consent "declare independence", starting a war. Civilians flee there home so as to not be killed, these are called normally called refugees, but in this case they are Palestinians which Israel has established are not people. When the fighting ends, the refugees returned to their homes to find that the Israeli government had now given their homes to yet more settlers. Opposing that is a criminal offense.
I don't know about you but this sure as shit sounds like their homes were illegally invaded. To back up my assessment: Israel has never stopped doing this, and it has been found to be explicitly illegal every single time it has gone to court.
> Arab Israelis make up 20% of Israel
Right, except 100% of Israel is Palestine, and the overwhelming proportion of the Palestinian population has been forced into ghettos that are not considered part of Israel and have no voting rights in Israel, despite Israel having near total control of all food, water, medical care, ...
You're playing BS semantic games, and by your logic SA could have claimed to not be apartheid by just saying that the black South Africans were part of a "different" country that just happened to significantly overlap .. South Africa.
I want to be absolutely clear, these BS arguments about Israel not be a colonial invader are no different from claiming that there was nothing illegal when the US government sold the land of native Americans to colonists, and allowed them to eradicate those inhabitants.
I get it, you're pro-Israel, and believe the Palestinians don't have any rights to their own homeland, but pretending that Israel is not an invading colony, and pretending Palestinians have equal rights to Israelis (or lets be honest, Israeli jews - the discrimination against muslims and even arabic jews in Israel is well documented - is objectively false. Just say you don't believe Palestinians are people so didn't have any right to their homeland.
Prior to British Mandatory Palestine, everyone living in the territory you're talking about was a subject of the Ottoman empire; the British --- certainly not the heroes of this story --- didn't steal any self-determination from the people there, because none existed.
I don't see the commenter you're replying to saying that Palestinians don't have any rights to their own homeland, for what it's worth.
Always useful to keep in mind that this is an immensely complicated struggle, not well captured by any slogan or argument that fits in an HN comment, and that it is extraordinarily unlikely that we're going to resolve it on HN at all.
You're both great commenters on this site. If you're at an impasse over this, maybe agreeing to disagree is a strong move here?
> Just say you don't believe Palestinians are people so didn't have any right to their homeland.
This kind of comment is not warranted. It is beneath the standards of Hacker News. It's putting words in my mouth which I vehemently disagree with. I will attempt to answer the rest of your comment civilly, but if you think that anyone who disagrees with you is evil, may I suggest your worldview is... incorrect.
> Moreover, there were not two people living there, there were the people who had been living there for thousands of years, who had been claimed by Britain (though not colonized). Claiming there were "two people" is revisionist BS.
Not sure why you think so. There had always been a minority of Jews in Palestine. By 1890, that was a 10% minority. By 1947, that was a 30% minority. What exactly is bullshit about saying this?
> That is, the government [the UN] sold half your home to a stranger, they agreed to this, you however unreasonably did not. What an asshole you are.
Or how about: the UN, the representative of all countries, which was given custody of the land by Britain, who had owned that land, recognized that there was an issue, both because two different peoples had legitimate aspirations for that land, and because many Jews who had managed to survive the Holocaust had nowhere to go. Given that Jews were by this point a 30% minority on that land, and given the many Jewish refugees, the UN decided to suggest a compromise.
And like I said, you can think this was a bad decision by the UN, it's certainly debatable, though I'm not sure what you think should've happened instead (either to the Jewish refugees of the Holocaust, or to the Jews living in Palestine). Was starting a war probably aimed at wiping out Jews really the correct alternative?
Either way, I don't think calling it "an invasion by Israel" makes any sense, since Israel didn't even exist.
Btw, serious question - what would you have suggested if you were the UN? What would you think should've been done in Palestine, and with the Jewish refugees?
> The jews, who just moved into a country, and seized a pile of land and property from the occupants of that country without the occupants consent "declare independence", starting a war.
It wasn't a "country" into which the Jews moved, it was part of the Ottoman empire in the early 20th century, then later British territory. Also, which land did Jews "steal" from the occupants of that country before 1947?
> When the fighting ends, the refugees returned to their homes to find that the Israeli government had now given their homes to yet more settlers. Opposing that is a criminal offense.
> Right, except 100% of Israel is Palestine, and the overwhelming proportion of the Palestinian population has been forced into ghettos
After the war, the Palestinian refugees were actually taken in by Jordan and Egypt. They didn't "return to their homes" and "get put in Ghettos". I'm honestly not sure what you're referring to. The Palestinians that stayed in Israel were kept under some kind of military rule, but eventually made equal citizens.
As for 100% of Israel is Palestine... ok. What do you think should happen to the 9 million Israeli citizens on that land currently (or 7 million Jews if you prefer to split it by ethnicity)?
> You're playing BS semantic games,
I'm really not, I honestly think you're just wrong on many actual facts, as I pointed to above. These are not at all semantic distinctions.
> I want to be absolutely clear, these BS arguments about Israel not be a colonial invader are no different from claiming that there was nothing illegal when the US government sold the land of native Americans to colonists, and allowed them to eradicate those inhabitants.
"Israel" being a colonial invader makes little sense, since Israel didn't exist before that. You may mean "Jews" were colonial invaders, which is more understandable, though still not really in line with a lot of facts, like that they moved in mostly legally, and that most Jews in Israel were actually refugees themselves. Not exactly scheming colonial invaders. Most Israeli Jews had and have nowhere else to go.
As for the legal status of what Americans did in the colonies - firstly, Israel never "eradicated" the Palestinians. Secondly, even assuming your history is 100% spot on - what now? Because of the past, should the Americans living in American now be.. what? Removed? And sent where? Similar questions to what you think should happen to Israelis now.
> pretending Palestinians have equal rights to Israelis (or lets be honest, Israeli jews - the discrimination against muslims and even arabic jews in Israel is well documented - is objectively false.
Let's leave aside "arabic Jews", which is not how most of that group chooses to identify for various historical reasons (and which make up the majority of Israelis, btw).
Yes, there is a lot of discrimination and racism against Israeli-Palestinians. Yes, things are not perfect, not by a long shot. But legally, Isareli-Palestinians have the same rights as any other Israeli citizen, including voting rights. (And including there being many Arab members of the Israeli parliament.)
The efficacy of economic sanctions is complicated and debated, but one can absolutely say there is little compelling evidence that they result in positive outcomes for anybody.