
Why is congress trying to pass an obviously unconstitutional law? - wallace_f
https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20181217/07265541244/why-is-congress-trying-to-pass-obviously-unconstitutional-bill-that-would-criminalize-boycotts-israel.shtml
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metacritic12
Why did this post get flagged? I though free speech issues were very pertinent
to Hacker News.

A post below by kyrieeschaton critiquing the Israel lobby was also flagged.
Her/his post just suggested the Israel lobby was involved in the process, and
had nothing I'd consider offensive.

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s9w
Without being inflammatory: HN is one of the most anti-free speech place on
the net. Comments and articles pro free speech are regularly downvoted,
flagged, deleted or shadowbanned.

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metacritic12
Wow I didn't know that -- that's ridiculous.

Imagine if it were any other country, friend or foe. A _law_ against a person
making his own financial decision against Canada, or China, or England, or
Germany, or Turkey.

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wallace_f
2 courts have ruled against this already: [https://www.aclu.org/blog/free-
speech/rights-protesters/laws...](https://www.aclu.org/blog/free-
speech/rights-protesters/laws-targeting-israel-boycotts-fail-again-court)

~~~
wallace_f
Why would so many people downvote this comment?

Akso HN just dropped the hammer and removed this submission from the front
page (cant be found on 2nd, 3rd, 4th pages either)

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yodon
The "hammer" is probably algorithmic, not a human conspiracy. The few comments
already on this submisson strongly suggest there is large amounts of upvoting
and downvoting going on without a similar amount of good commenting. HN's
algorithms are designed to promote good conversation, not pile on the voting
wars around contentious topics. It happens that politically charged topics
frequently drive large amounts of knee-jerk angry voting responses not
associated with equally rich conversations, so they tend to get
algorithmically pushed down the ranking.

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kyrieeschaton
Disappointingly, the article never even attempts to answer the question, which
really has a concise answer - the Jewish lobby in the US has an incredible
amount of influence, and they are attempting to avoid their ethnostate being
South Africa'd. Astonishingly, the word "Jewish" never even _appears in the
article_.

~~~
Armisael16
The majority of American Jews are pro-two state
([https://www.ajc.org/news/ajc-comparative-surveys-of-
israeli-...](https://www.ajc.org/news/ajc-comparative-surveys-of-israeli-us-
jews-show-some-serious-divisions)). The pro-Israel lobby is mostly christians.

~~~
kyrieeschaton
The first claim has nothing to do with anything I said.

The second is false; organizations like AIPAC and the ADL have by far the
greatest influence on US Israeli policy and fighting BDS in particular, and
are overwhelmingly Jewish dominated.

This was thoroughly documented by Mearsheimer and Walt more than a decade ago,
and it's not like their influence has waned.

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Armisael16
Mearsheimer and Walt disagree with you:
[https://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/14/books/review/Letters-t-1....](https://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/14/books/review/Letters-t-1.html?ref=review)

~~~
kyrieeschaton
No, Mearsheimer and Walt are very careful to not use particular words. They
choose to not use "Jewish lobby", with the fig leaf that at least some
Christian Zionists are on the same page and not literally every Jew is,
despite the objective content of their book supporting the contention that
Jewish organizations are both the most prominent and have the core agenda-
setting function.

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wtfrmyinitials
Congress hasn’t cared about the constitutionality of new laws for a long time

