[SimbaOnSteroids]

The wild part about this, at least to me, is the wholesale incompetence demonstrated by Israel in this regard. If I couldn't google the talking points the bots make and see Israeli officials saying the same things, one would think these bots were Iranians acting with the intent to make Israel look bad.

[gruez]

What's the incompetence? Having talking points? If you have a group of people trying to advocate for something, isn't "talking points" something you expect would arise organically? I'm sure YIMBYs have "talking points" as well (eg. how it'll reduce housing costs or whatever), but nobody would say that's "wholesale incompetence" for having them. Or maybe it's having it easily searchable? I'm sure if you search around you can find YIMBY bloggers on substack or whatever saying how good YIMBYism is. Aren't those basically "talking points"?

[CommanderData]

At this point they have a wiki or discord somewhere where they share talking points between each other.

Someone from their group is clearly thinking ahead and automating all of them out of a job :)

[a_dabbler]

They basically have that, it's called Act.IL where they give the users the content and talking points to distribute.

[miguelazo]

James Bamford has written extensively on this. Pathetic that the FBI doesn’t arrest any of them as acting as unregistered foreign agents, but not surprising given the cowardice of DC officials in the face of AIPAC.

[refulgentis]

It's a very interesting thing, it demonstrates something uncomfortable & scary to me as a goy Zionist, who hangs out in a private, predominantly Jewish, space.

Note the biggest word in the cloud: UNRWA. All my confirmation bias was in one direction in October. The oddly dissonant and desperate messaging you'd see made things extremely difficult to maintain that, like, you have to be of a very specific mindset to see message after message about the evil UN and not say, "uh, did we go off the rails somewhere?"

(n.b. this was in a lefty Jewish space, broadly denigrating governmental institutions isn't a usual virtue signal)

Going back to the beginning, there's an uncomfortable willingness/ignorance of Overton window widening, in a way that reduces sympathy rather than engenders it, and all of a sudden, otherwise kind people are engaging in rank racism*, glorification of destruction, and extreme conspiracies**.

* lots of "no such thing as innocent Palestineans", "Palestineans love redacted", when questioned, turns into "it's not racist if they're not a race, and they aren't because bla bla bla"

** Day after day after day of the bailey, "World Central Kitchen was trying to smuggle terrorists", coupled to the motte "Jose Andres held a barbecue buffet! Lol!"

[StockHuman]

Out of idle curiosity, how did you arrive at Zionism from a non-jewish and leftist background? That has to be one of the rarest identities to simultaneously associate with.

[anoncareer0212]

Thank you for asking, it's sublime to see that you're unique in others eyes, very hard to see yourself

Let me really blow your mind: also, raised very conservative Catholic, didn't do Confirmation, then was Muslim for about 6 years

It's all a long story. Catholic, LGBTQ stuff rubbed me the wrong way and in some of the deepest grace I've seen, my religious educator encourage it.

Muslim, I was essentially on my own once I turned 15 (abusive and absentee parents) and transferred from Catholic school to public school (save $$), and the most welcoming people were foreign, the rest had been in the same classes for a decade. They didn't prostelyize, it was fun going there on Friday nights to play dodge ball, it was little incremental work to show up earlier and it felt good.

Zionist...I swear to God there wasn't a single negative word about Jews or Israel or other religions at either of the 2 mosques I went to. There was a quiet understanding that Palestinians were hurt and that it was a bit melodramatic at times, given they had structural issues on their own side.

In general, I'm an inveterate both sides er, and I'm guessing knowing a lot of avowed older Zionist as well as Muslims makes me feel secure in "ugh there's some extremists / ignorant people in group X" rather than "wow group X is inherently evil"

And now you're making me think maybe the parents have more to do with it than I realize. It took a lot to finally say...wait, no...what they're doing is wrong and I don't owe them anything. As long as I'm thinking things out and rational, I'm doing my best. Adds to the comfort with tendatiousness/both sides and confidence in holding to it.

(Ran out of posts on main, so this is from my old backup when I was gainfully employed at FAANG)

[StockHuman]

Ah! You’re your own Jerusalem; ever in the middle. :)

That does make more sense: unless I read you wrong, leftism wasn’t a real sway here - and that’s easier to square away. Leftist Zionism is (as far as I can tell), almost only advanced by Jews.

Neat, though I’m perhaps confused as to how you might even arrive at Zionism (a rather polar position to take).

[bawolff]

> like, you have to be of a very specific mindset to see message after message about the evil UN and not say, "uh, did we go off the rails somewhere?"

I think saying "evil" anything is wrong. But the UN is still a body made up of people, and like everything has its flaws. Its done some things that have turned out great and truly made the world a better place. Its done other things that haven't worked out so well. I certainly don't think it is above criticism.

[refulgentis]

For the record, I agree wholeheartedly. It's hard to word these things. I hope it's clear the meaning is short of "The UN/UNWRA is above all criticism", happy to explicate at length if it isn't (I wouldn't be surprised, at all, anything I write on this looks like an unnecessarily mousey person's verbal diarrhea to me :) )

[bawolff]

That's fair, i maybe overinterpreted.

I can understand why Israelis might be suspicious of the UN. The relationship between UN and Israel seems kind of fraught in a way that isn't true of pretty much any other country. The not allowing israel to fully vote until 2010 (edit: 2014), the (arguably) unequal focus only Israel's human rights record relative to other countries, and the whole UNRWA being totally different with different rules than any other refugee group, all make israel a bit unique in its relationship to the UN. I could easily understand how someone from Israel might feel that the UN treats them differently from other countries and is perhaps biased against them.

[ToucanLoucan]

> the (arguably) unequal focus only Israel's human rights record relative to other countries

Two thoughts on this:

Firstly, every time a country is getting criticized for it's human rights abuses it, like clockwork, raises the spectre of being "unjustly singled out" about it's human rights abuses. To be clear, I would very much like every country on earth that engages in human rights abuses prosecuted for it, including mine, and specifically every U.S. President that's still currently alive since they are ALL guilty of them in varying degrees. And that way, we can't be accused of biases.

Secondly, I believe it's fair, even if we are biased against Israel in this way, to be biased since it has the rather unique position of being a state that exists solely because of and by the authority of the West. It is a colonialist project and has been from it's inception and I don't think you can take this situation on fully without acknowledging that fact.

Debating whether it should or shouldn't exist is rather moot at this point because it does, and tons of people live there who have committed no crime and done no wrong. That said, it is at the end all, an ethno-nationalist state built on a foundation of war crimes too numerous to count, that is currently incrementing as they barrage an utterly impotent neighbor to death, and it is doing so with the enthusiastic encouragement of FAR, FAR too many colonial powers. Maybe that's enough to say, ethically, that all of it's citizens should be displaced, maybe not. I do not know the solution. My point is that Israel's existence, in entirety, is violence perpetrated against every country it borders with, it wars with, and who's land it sits upon. That cannot be ignored.

[pessimizer]

> Firstly, every time a country is getting criticized for it's human rights abuses it, like clockwork, raises the spectre of being "unjustly singled out" about it's human rights abuses.

My favorite one of these is when South Africa would say that the only reason people were angry about Apartheid was their obvious "anti-Boer prejudice." Which sounds stupid, until you remember that the British rounded up Boers and put them into concentration camps. It's still stupid, but if you accept the premise that being abused gives you the right to abuse, it's a claim as legitimate as any other of that type.

> My point is that Israel's existence, in entirety, is violence perpetrated against every country it borders with, it wars with, and who's land it sits upon.

They could have just torn down the walls, and still can. Israelis can call the resulting country Israel, and Palestinians can call it Palestine. It only requires both groups to give up any dreams of theocracy. What made the PLO and Arafat so distasteful to Israeli power players was the fact that they were secular, reasonable, and making moral arguments, not theological ones. People whose goal was to wipe out the Palestinians vastly preferred Hamas.

[FireBeyond]

> The not allowing israel to fully vote until 2010

You're not going to throw that out without reference to how the US and Israel have consistently been the only countries to oppose Palestinian UN membership and voting.

[bawolff]

I mean, i was trying to talk about why Israelis might feel the UN is against them. That doesn't preclude Palestinians feeling the same way.

It is possible to talk about why X might feel Y without talking about why other groups might feel the same way or even whether or not that feeling is justified.

Talking about motivations is different than determining what is "fair"

[nsguy]

Palestinians are not a country. What other members of the UN are not countries? I believe other countries have opposed to the Palestinians becoming UN members. The last time around 9 countries voted against and 25 abstained. So I guess 34 did not support that purely symbolic vote (since the UN general assembly can't give the Palestinians membership, only the UN security council can).

[refulgentis]

+1, the thing that jumps to mind is how "U N Schmu En" dates back to the...50s? I was disappointed people were 'shocked' by Gvir tweeting it because it sounded new. I am no fan of Gvir, but again, goes back to what a complex mess there is.

(source https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Um-Shmum)

[nsguy]

It's a body made out of countries. Many of which are not free, not democratic, do not support basic human rights. What has the UN done that's turned great and made the world a better place? Top 3 examples?

[bawolff]

UN has been pretty succesful in areas that are not super politicized.

E.g. they have done a lot of good work reducing hunger & famine throughout the world. UNESCO has done a lot to preserve unique cultural & envirnomental sites around the world. UN has done a lot to put pressure on countries to ban female genital mutilation.

[nsguy]

I think you're a reasonable person so I'm not going to argue much ;) I don't see the UN as a successful organization. It's just a mirror though to what this world looks like.

https://www.europarl.europa.eu/doceo/document/E-9-2023-00193...

"The appointment of Ali Bahreini, Ambassador of the Islamic Republic of Iran and Permanent Representative to the United Nations, to chair the 2023 United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) Social Forum (2 and 3 November 2023), is nothing more than a slap in the face given the human rights situation of most Iranians, particularly women, and the repeated executions in the wake of the ongoing protests in the country and, more generally, the Islamic Republic's gross human rights violations and its catastrophic and politicised handling of the COVID-19 pandemic, when its refusal to import Western vaccines cost hundreds of thousands of lives."

[mrcartmeneses]

Waste of time point scoring?

[616c]

It's amusing you can self identify this way without much hesitation. My personal experience with colleagues and family on both sides of the regional, religious, lijguistic, and cultural debate is that if you talked about being a non-Muslim supporter of political Islamists or up to including Hamas or similar groups, so anywhere in that continuum inclusive, few in Western or Israeli media will hesistate in labelling you in a way common with these talking points: a terrorist.

So good luck to you, but I'm not surprised you'd stay private But my anecdata (or some may call life experience) tell me you'd be fine and fare well where a similarly extreme position on the opposite end of the spectrum would cost you a lot personally and professionally. I wish we all reflected in the West or in tje region or conflict area, well, why is that?

For the record since I inevitably get routinely called an anti-Semite anyway: I think Hamas and groups like them are vile, but many in the region opposing them don't take the high road by comparison either. Im nkt sure if its recent or monitoring that become easier and more economical, but that means their opponents with this crap and other tactics have really screwed up. This HN post further supports my cynicism and disappointment.

[sixQuarks]

This is an enlightening comment. Thanks for sharing

[myth_drannon]

* Assuming the comments came from Israelis/Jews. All the left and right-wing channels are infiltrated with Iranian agents(plenty of news on that topic in Haaretz/Walla). They are causing rift and radicalization in society.

That's a solvable tech problem to shut it down. Unfortunately, it's not a priority on a state level because everyone is doing it.

[raxxorraxor]

The cure for that is worse than the disease. And I think foreign agents manipulating public opinion abroad are vastly overestimated.

Propaganda is still very prevalent and the target group is rarely someone other than the domestic population, even in democracies.

[cess11]

Really?

Closest I've seen would be campaigns like this, https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/security-aviation/2024-0... .

Then there's the stuff by IDF soldiers on TikTok, and the stuff settlers put out.

I have the impression that the iranians don't need to do stuff like that.

[xkcd-sucks]

Even the spooky spy and torture people choose the crappy low bidding implementation partner

[HL33tibCe7]

This is presumably just the tip of the iceberg