[lolinder]

The FSB is no comparison because it's more equivalent to the NSA—it was a career path, not a place to serve out mandatory military service.

FSB agents worked there for decades and chose that instead of any number of other things they could have done. Unit 8200 conscripts worked there for at most 2 years 8 months and chose it instead of a different, more gun-blazing branch of the military.

Mandatory military service completely changes the profile of the vets in a way that makes all these comparisons totally irrational. They're founded in fear and hatred for Israelis, not any reasonable similarity.

[mardifoufs]

Fear of Israelis, sure. But hatred? Come on. Israel has done a lot in the past year, and is being accused of genocide. The fact that is used a conscript army makes it worse, not better.

Also, okay then let's switch it up to the Russian army. Would you use a product with known ties to some electronic warfare russian army unit. Or rather, would you consider any doubts or hesitations over using said product to be "russophobic"?

[lolinder]

> The fact that is used a conscript army makes it worse, not better.

I'm not defending the state, I'm defending the individuals who were conscripted.

The entire point of this subthread is that it's heinous to confuse the two.

> Would you use a product with known ties to some electronic warfare russian army unit. Or rather, would you consider any doubts or hesitations over using said product to be "russophobic"?

If I suddenly learned that some founding members of the JetBrains team had previously been conscripted into the Russian army and had served in a cyberwarfare unit, that would change absolutely nothing for me. And yes, I do consider the backlash against JetBrains in the aftermath of the invasion of Ukraine to have been highly rusophobic.

[mardifoufs]

To be honest, I don't disagree but I see why people do care about it.

In the sense that this is just a direct result of Israel's actions. They staged an incredibly powerful intelligence coup with the blown up pagers. Now I agree that if you aren't involved in middle Eastern politics, there's no reason to be scared of Israeli products (even if made by ex-israeli soldiers). But I completely understand where the reputational damage comes from, it was such a well executed operation that it does cast more doubts on anything related to Israel.

My point about conscription was that it is worse in the sense that most Israeli citizens can be de-facto coerced into becoming an agent of the state, making Israeli products inherently more suspicious (and more tied to state policy, regardless of the individuals involved). As you say, most Israelis don't necessarily chose to be in the army. A lot of Hamas fighters are also basically conscripts, but that nuance wouldn't matter for most either.

There's also just the purely ideological angle, which is also what happened to anything touching Russia back in 2022. That's the angle that I agree is mostly unjustifiable.