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by lolinder
521 days ago
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> 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. |
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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.