Very unlikely that it’s presented this way. People working in NSO feel they are doing a public service by helping catch bad guys. Given the Israeli sensitivity around terrorism, it’s an easy sell, and I’m sure NSO has success stories around such use.
Given that Israel regularly employs deadly force against civilians, this does not absolve NSO's software engineers from moral culpability. That is like saying the backroom boys at Dow who developed napalm thought it was just being used against "bad guys".
Moral culpability depends on perspective. It’s not absolute. In some societies it’s immoral to consume alcohol, in others it’s immoral to get a divorce or use electricity on Saturdays.
From the perspective of NSO developers, they are helping prevent the next attack against civilians somewhere. I can’t fault them for that.
Now, NSO developers can have a frank and honest dialog with their leadership about how they made it possible to carry out an attack against a civilian somewhere similar to the dialog between Google employees and their leadership concerning Operation Dragonfly.
Google has 100 times as many employs as NSO group. The equivalent for a group of 100 Google employees signing a petition is one person signing it. They can just be fired & replaced.
Only the recognition of relative morality is modern. Moral always differed between region and cultures, but our crusading ancestors said it’s only their moral that’s correct and tried to fix other societies to conform.
Murdering people is immoral in any society, but whether a given slaying constitutes murder or not varies widely. There's justifiable self-defense, capital punishment etc.
Went over your head didnt it? Nobody is talking about banning software. Here we are talking about developing software that is specifically designed for governments for hacking phones and spying on citizens.
Who would know it is deployed on another countries' citizens? If anything it is the Saudi who chose to use it, why shift the blame to the original developer? Hope you understand the point now.
> From the perspective of NSO developers, they are helping prevent the next attack against civilians somewhere. I can’t fault them for that.
They are selling spy software to regimes that are known to kill civilians. Ergo they are not preventing attacks against civilians; they are enabling attacks against civilians. No moral relativism necessary.
Even with respect to Israel’s “counter” terrorism efforts, if the NSO development team’s motivation is to prevent attacks on civilians, then enabling Israel to attack and kill civilians is something for which they are morally culpable.
Ah come on when has Israel last employed force offensively, not defensively? As in first strike (not a retaliatory counter-strike) motivated mainly by economics/politics, not safety (e.g. like US war in Iraq or UK attacks on Syria or Russian occupation of Crimea although even then you could argue they were just defending their base but Israel's are milder than even that, such as destroying rocket/nuclear facilities in Syria and Iran).
Israel is operating its warplanes in Syria today. I would dare say that combat air missions in a country that is not trying to invade you, and that did not invite you, constitutes "employed force offensively".
We used to have War departments. Now we have defense departments. It's a giant white-wash. If it really was defense then nobody would ever cross their borders in a uniform.
However, even the lebensraum concept has undertones of defense against a threat rather than pure conquest: the term itself refers to space as a necessity for life rather than the object of simple greed. The lebensraum was considered by Nazi ideology "necessary for the survival" of the German race, against the threat of "inferior and decaying races". As far as I can understand it, the whole Nazi ideology is informed by a vision of history as a zero sum game and by a "triumph or perish" attitude- so that every aggression can be justified as a necessary and ultimately defensive move.
Israel uses deadly force against civilians engaged in acts of force against Israel.
You can argue that it’s not a proportional response, but there’s a clear editorial bias to refer to one side of a force exchange as “civilian” and the other as “deadly”.
They use deadly force against people protesting in the Gaza Strip, an area of land the residents are unable to leave and is under an Israeli blockade. One side is considered "deadly" as they've killed over 150 people, many of them children, while the other side has killed 1.
Ridiculous claim. A few months ago Gaza militants fired 460 rockets in one day, injuring 80 people (mostly civilians) and killing one, and the IDF has barely done anything besides bomb empty buildings.
When's the last time your country restrained itself after being hit by 460 rockets in one day?
Not a ridiculous claim, the protestors that the Israeli army shot were not launching rockets. They were protesting, largely nonviolently. Thousands of civilians have been injured at these protests, and it is difficult to get the proper medical care when you're under a blockade.
> the IDF has barely done anything besides bomb empty buildings.
The immediate retaliation for those rocket strikes killed three people. How is that "barely anything?"
They use deadly force against people firing missiles in the Gaza Strip, an area of land the residents are unable to leave and is under an Egyptian and Israeli blockade because it is controlled by Hamas, a terrorist organization. One side is considered "deadly" as they've killed over 150 people, many of them children because they are used as human shields by the terrorists, while the other side has killed 1, because they're incompetent.
"Israel uses deadly force against civilians [they think might be] engaged in acts of force against Israel" would be closer to the truth. Missiles doesn't check if everyone near are bad guys before exploding.
Many of then joined the project convinced it was the only way to stop the Axis from developing a nuclear bomb, and at least some of them were opposed to it's use by 1945, particularly against civilians. Not really comparable to an apartheid state currently at peace.
Israel is pretty much constantly shelled by rockets. And there are capable state, and quasi-state actors behind that who officially claim they want it to be eliminated.
The fact, that majority of its population can enjoy relatively peaceful life is thanks to organizational, and technological superiority of Israeli military. Which depends on work of Israeli engineers whose motivation is therefore exactly the same: do military tech to stop anti-Israeli "Axis".
Would have been great if the yanks had this mentality towards the troubles in Ireland instead of supplying the IRA with weapons and explosives. Moral relativism is always fun.
And we've got some quite famous statements from quite a few of them that they knew quite well, and felt the full weight of what they were doing.
I would presume because they weren't sold the idea that what they were doing had any other express intent-purpose or plausible outcome for use even used by the people they worked for, which alone I think warrants a different group to compare this situation to.
I think your article just confirms that Israel does indeed regularly employ deadly force against civilians. Most other countries manage just fine without doing so.
I'm sure you are not implying they do so on purpose. Israel does better than anyone else in the world at minimizing civilian causalities, but accidents are a fact of war.
So, what other options does Israel have? Let the combatants do whatever they want?
Are you seriously implying someone should not work for the Israeli military because of civilian accidents?
What's your endgame here? Israel should give up and let millions of people be murdered?
abalone has a severely skewed moral filter to say "this does not absolve NSO's software engineers from moral culpability" - he would rather millions of Israeli citizens get murdered?
I really hope you are not in any way agreeing with him because it is a truly loathsome thing to say, and I was absolutely shocked to see someone just causally speak like that.
The only moral thing to do here is do an even better job at this type of software to make the civilian casualty ratio even better.
This is an excellent plan. Convince all the Arab countries around Israel not to try to exterminate it, and thereby Israel will become like Sweden and not need to fight.
That first step is a bit hard, but I assume you have some plan for that, considering it was your idea?
Actually, the plan would be - make Israel more like Sweden.
That way its neighbours actually enjoy their presence in the region.
But, as long as Israelis continue to justify the wanton murder of civilians as their 'right as Israelis', then there will be calls for the destruction of their state. Whether this is moral or not, is as yet undecided...
How come nobody seems to want to exterminate Sweden? What's so special about Israel that they need to kill vast amounts of civilians to not get exterminated?
> that they need to kill vast amounts of civilians
Neither Israel nor Sweden kill vast amount of civilians. The fact that you write that is very concerning.
And the fact that you think it's Israel's fault that Arabs want to exterminate it is just ......... I don't even know what to write to someone like you.
Usually when someone says something you don't like or disagree with, you counter with an argument of your own.
If you can't think of anything to say in response, might I suggest that you either don't know the subject as well as you think, or you know the person you are arguing with is right and you have no retort.
This "story" that they were a bunch of unarmed civilians near a fence is completely fictional. It was actually a bunch of combatants mixed in with civilians, and Israel worked very hard to be selective. The accidents are terrible, no doubt about it, but no other army in the history of war has done better.
This story saddens me and reminds me of the well documented stories of Israeli defense industry selling to the apartheid government in South Africa. Ok to feed oppressors so long as it isn't affecting the chosen people. Criminal.
