Everyone in the comments just assume al jazera is right even tough we have well documented cases when they spread claims who are totally wrong with no journalism due process
They're a modern news site so I agree with you that fake or sloppy news is a problem,
however this example is that they interviewed someone who made an inflammatory claim, and then the next day removed the claims when it came out that they were false. That hardly seems that bad for our modern news landscape.
And then you have a meme of some AJ reporters saying "Terrorists in press dresses." captioned "You can't put lipstick on a pig, you can't put a press vest on a terrorist."
People working in the Israeli Al-Jazeera office don't have any direct access to report from Gaza. There is also a large foreign press presence in Israel (vs. zero in Gaza e.g.) anyways so you'll still get plenty of direct reporting from Israel and the West Bank that's unfiltered (vs. zero in Gaza e.g.).
Al Jazeera isn't free media. It's the propaganda arm of Qatar.
"Several journalists have been arrested and jailed, or even deported – in most cases for taking too close an interest in the working conditions of immigrant workers. The authorities do not hesitate, if necessary, to convict bloggers who are local residents of “disseminating false information”. This is how the blogger Malcolm Bidali was detained for a month before being deported to his country of origin, Kenya, after paying a fine." - https://rsf.org/en/country/qatar
> Al Jazeera isn't free media. It's the propaganda arm of Qatar.
Conflating Qatar's other issues with Al Jazeera is misdirection.
Media watch groups consistently rate Al Jazeera as "neutral/balanced", with their perspective "skewing slightly left", which doesn't seem particularly consistent with Qatar.
> Ad Fontes Media rates Al Jazeera in the Skews Left category of bias and as Reliable, Analysis/Fact Reporting in terms of reliability.
> All Sides rates Al Jazeera as "Leans Left"
> Al Jazeera equal in reliability to CNN
They are certainly not without issue, to be sure. But still.
It is not a misdirection. It is headquartered in Qatar and is funded by the government. There is no conflation there. Qatar is not free, journalists operating in Qatar are not free, end of story. You can't operate free press based and funded by a country that is not free and suppressed/intimidates/controls the press.
> In review, Al Jazeera reports news with minimally loaded wording in their headlines and articles ... properly sourced from credible news agencies. When reporting USA news, there is minimal bias in reporting ... In general, straight news reporting has a minimal bias; however, as a state-funded news agency, Al Jazeera is typically not critical of Qatar.
The failed fact checks were regarding two articles that weren't corrected.
> In 2017, Al Jazeera aired an investigative report of Britain’s Israel lobby. Following the airing, Ofcom (the UK government-approved regulatory and competition authority) received complaints from many pro-Israeli British activists, including one former Israeli embassy employee. They were accused of anti-Semitism, bias, unfair editing, and infringement of privacy, which was later cleared by Ofcom, who said the piece was not anti-semitic and was, in fact, investigative journalism.
Huh.
> Further, Saudi Arabia and three other Arab nations demanded Qatar to shut down Al-Jazeera. Al Jazeera rebuts the accusations here.
So pro-Arab that SA (and UAE, Bahrain, and Egypt) demanded Qatar shut them down...
I never said Al Jazeera is perfect, and as noted, there is a reluctance to criticize the Qatari government.
I take less issue with "some of their opinion pieces are vocally anti-Israel", unless the contention is that nothing Israel can do can be criticized for ... reasons?
> some of their opinion pieces are vocally anti-Israel
All, not some. I've been reading them regularly for a few months and have never seen anything that isn't Anti Zionist, let alone pro Israel, and this was way before the current war - I'm sure its much worse now.
Every press operates within the confines of the government it’s based in.
Major US news agencies regularly ask DoD if certain topics are okay for them to cover. Beyond that, most relevant news in the US is owned by billionaires that regularly repress news that would paint them in a bad light.
The BBC is also headquartered in the UK, and is funded by the government. Thad doesn’t automatically make the BBC “The propaganda arm” of the UK.
This submission is about Al Jazeeras operations in Israel—which is supposed to have press freedom. Israel raided and closed the Israel operations, and banned Al Jazeera’s journalists from operating in Israel.
All that said, I’m not sure you last point goes without saying. There is nothing which fundamentally prevents receiving funding from a country which suppresses press freedom, which prevents you from doing free journalism. Will receiving funding cause editorial bias? Sure, but if receiving funding automatically made you a propaganda arm for the entity funding you, then you should really question whether western media is a propaganda arm for free market capitalism, or if Hacker News was a propaganda arm for venture capitalist Y Combinator.
There was plenty of coverage of the closure including photos. Not sure what you're insinuating here. Israel has free press and no it's not like Egypt.
In your bastions of democracy (pick one?) Journalists can't go anywhere they want to. If the police is operating in an area they might restrict access to it. That has nothing to do with freedom of the press. E.g. in the USA the first amendment does not guarantee journalists access to non-public spaces (like a hotel is).
A video posted by the minister on X shows police officers and inspectors from the ministry entering a hotel room.
A BBC team visited the scene, but was prevented from filming or going into the hotel by police.
The Association for Civil Rights in Israel (ACRI) said they had filed a request to the country's Supreme Court to issue an interim order to overturn the ban.
The Foreign Press Association (FPA) urged the Israeli government to reconsider its decision, saying the shut down of Al Jazeera in the country should be "a cause for concern for all supporters of a free press".
The FPA said in a statement that Israel now joins "a dubious club of authoritarian governments to ban the station", and warned that Mr Netanyahu has the authority to target other foreign outlets that he considers to be "acting against the state".
The Committee to Protect Journalists' (CPJ) Program Director Carlos Martinez de la Serna echoed the same concerns, saying: "The Israeli cabinet must allow Al Jazeera and all international media outlets to operate freely in Israel, especially during wartime."
The UN's Human Rights office also called the Israeli government to reverse the ban, posting on X: "A free & independent media is essential to ensuring transparency & accountability. Now, even more so given tight restrictions on reporting from Gaza."
But yes all those terrorist groups like the UN, Foreign Press Association, ACRI, are all irrelevant, all we need is the IDF mouthpiece and Baghdad Bob.
Isn't the same as when RT was not allowed to broadcast in Europe after the war? I wonder why the news about Al Jazeera and Israel makes more splash than the RT and Russia news
No doubt both sides have propoganda, but for anyone who watches AJ, literally every news piece every 15 minute covers Gaza so much so its mind numbing. I'm also yet to see any balance on it.
It seems hardly fair to denounce one side of the scale as unbalanced as people lean on its other side.
The fact is that on this topic the propaganda with all its disinformation and misinformation is persistent, pervasive in media, and potent. You can start to see it for yourself — simply take a shallow dive into the history of this subject and you will immediately notice the degree of the active distortion of all discourses on this topic in the modern media.
It won’t take you a weekend to read any one of the below books on this topic. After which you will start to notice how the journalists and the op-ed authors leave out highly relevant details regarding the origins of the problems in order to — time and time again - blame the Palestinians for their plight and ultimately frame them as responsible for their suffering.
It’s not the Zionists that steal Palestinian land and demolish/steal existing houses to build new settlements it’s the Palestinians that didn’t accept a supposedly “fair peace deal” while nobody mentions that said deal requires giving up the right of return of millions of refugees displaced in 1948. It’s not the F16 pilot that bombed the residential compound filled with civilians it’s the civilians that voted a decade ago for Hamas. And on and on.
Read a short book and start to see for yourself.
1. The Hundred Years War on Palestine - Khalidi (Palestinian Arab author)
2. The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine - Pappe (Israeli Jewish author)
Before we talk of Israelis taking "Palestinian" land remember that Jewish population numbers have literally been wiped from every Arab country. They just want a land where Arabs won't obliterate them, and yes, Gazans came from Arab countries.
Infact Arabs have gone to war with Israel many times, so when you see the 10,000 foot view, its very different to just to 1000 foot view focusing on "Palestine"
Finally, there won't be direct propaganda. Freedom should be available to those, who value it, not those who actively promote terrorism and cover it up with lies.
This submission is about an attack on press freedom in Israel and has nothing to do with American interest rates, or American government spending.
It has even less to do with Jewish people.
Your post comes across as racist, and sounds as someone blaming a whole ethno-religeous group for the Zionist ideology or fascistic tendencies of an unpopular government. Zionism is also a harmful ideology for the Jewish people, and “the Jews” have not become anything except victims of this ideology, and governments which support it.
True, It is the Zionists. I can see the vast majority of the faith are against this inhuman occupation and genocide. Especially those who have first hand experience of the holocaust. At any point opposing the genocidal regime should not equate to hating on the people. The regime wants it and thrives on it.
"The Zionists" is a dog whistle. Nobody would care about "The Zionists" if they weren't Jews. We know this because Israel's neighbors kill and displace Muslims at a far greater rate than Israel would even dream, and no one is out there protesting, building encampments and roughing up passersby. Rational arguments for Israel are dismissed out of hand by "anti-Zionists" such as yourself because "The Zionists always lie". Mitigating history is simply elided. Rockets fired indiscriminately into civilian population centers by Palestinians are "resistance". Intifada after Israeli peace offers are "resistance". Murdering civilians is "resistance". Military campaigns to end this behavior is "genocide". Dog whistle, through and through.
The pro-Palestinian movement has a literal, direct, documented connection to Nazis, and its behavior is entirely dedicated to the elimination of the only Jewish state in existence without compromise or negotiation, yet it's "The Zionists" who are accused of genocide.
There are so many untrue statements in this post, I don’t even know where to begin:
> Israel's neighbors kill and displace Muslims at a far greater rate than Israel would even dream
What are you talking about? Are you saying that Israel wants to kill Muslims?
Israel has so far killed over 34000 Palestinians in the ongoing genocide. This level of killing is nowhere to be found in the neighboring region. You’ll have to go all the way to Sudan to find a similar number, where there is a civil war, and (yes) a plausible genocide. Even before Oct 7. in 2023 alone Israel killed at least 278 Palestinians in the West Bank (including 70 children). You don’t see these kind of number in the neighboring countries.
> The pro-Palestinian movement has a literal, direct, documented connection to Nazis
Where? Can you provide me with a source. I don’t recall this in the news. And even if they did, this does not negate the Palestinian cause. If a particular member of a particular movement has documented connection to Nazis, and said movement does not kick that person out and denounce them, then that single movement should be denounced, and this would not affect other movements.
> and its behavior is entirely dedicated to the elimination of the only Jewish state in existence without compromise or negotiation
I’ll leave aside for a moment the fact that you take it as a given that a particular groups should have an ethno-state deticated to them, but who wants to eliminate Israel without compromise or negotiations? Most of everybody wants negotiations, even staunch proponents of a 1-state solution usually want guaranteed civil rights to Jews and Arabs alike (albeit, sometimes omitting recent settlers in occupied West Bank from this). Even Hamas is currently advocating for a 2 state solution with a right to return for displaced Palestinians. Who is this group that doesn’t want any compromise or negotiations. Honestly Israel is much more uncompromising than any pro-Palestinian actor.
That said, being against an ethno-state is not an unreasonable, nor a racist position to take. A lot of people wanted Rhodesia to stop existing, they were not racists, they simply didn’t think it was reasonable that a segregationist settler colonial state should exist on indigenous lands.
> "The Zionists" is a dog whistle
It is not. Zionism is an ideology distinct from Judasim. There are plenty of non-zionist Jews, and even more non-Jewish Zionists. Zionism is neither a necessary, nor a sufficient condition of Judaism. Most pro-Palistinian demonstrators do in fact call out non-Jewish zionists, such as Joe Biden, all the time.
> You’ll have to go all the way to Sudan to find a similar number,
Syria was a civil war with who knows how many dead, its over half a million easily. Iraq I'm not an expert on but parts of what's happened and still is happening there seems like a civil war to me, number of dead is huge.
How is the Israeli-Gaza war a civil war btw?
If you don't look at the artificial definition of civil wars, the region is even more violent with millions more dead in conflicts - Yemen / Saudi Arabia, Iran-Iraq etc.
I assumed my parent was talking about ongoing conflicts and current mortality rates. Of which you’ll have to go all the way to Sudan to find similar numbers.
I don't get if the conflict was finished a year ago it doesn't count anymore? We're comparing only to on-going conflicts? Right. Makes total sense. Well I assume the current Gaza war will be over soon - in that case we can all just forget about it (?).
I assume the current Gaza war will be over soon - in that case we can all just forget about it (?).
Not a chance. What's happening in Gaza now will be no more forgotten than all the other trenches filled with civilian bodies (adult and infant) thanks to the various atrocities of WW II.
Palestinians were being killed by Israelis in record numbers before Oct 7. Like I said above: Between Jan 1st 2023 and Oct 7th 2023, 278 Palestinians in the West Bank (including 70 children) were killed by either the Israeli army or Israeli settler terrorists. So even if the Gaza genocide ends today and Israel signs the peace treaty offered and accepted by Hamas, we are still looking at number of victims which are nowhere to be found in the region.
If we include wars from over 20 years ago, we should also include the numbers of atrocities committed by Israel against Palestinians in the same time period. Including the Great March of Return massacres in 2018-2019 where Israel murdered 223 Palestinians, most of whom were unarmed civilians.
Now the total number of Palestinian victims probably won’t come anywhere near the total number of victims of the Iraq war, but a major difference is that Palestine is a lot smaller nations, and has had to suffer repeated atrocities, continuously throughout whichever time period we decide to start counting.
But my point here is that Israel’s neighbors are not “kill and displace Muslims at a far greater rate than Israel”.
Even if you take "neighbor" literally as adjacent and so do not care to include Yemen or Sudan, then consider the death rate of Syria. 300 thousand civilians dead and counting. 3,000 Palestinians massacred in the Yarmouk Camp Siege. Ugly, that.
You will no doubt be relieved to know that Israel is not the #1 killer of Muslims by any measure, neither now nor in the past. Armed with this new information, you will no doubt become a prominent anti-Assad and -ISIL activist, organizing marches through the streets, calling for a ceasefire?
You will no doubt be relieved to know that Israel is not the #1 killer of Muslims by any measure, neither now nor in the past.
The IDF is unequivocally the agent behind of the largest number of non-combatant Muslim deaths in a single country since Oct 7 (and most likely including all of 2023). More than Darfur, Myanmar, Yemen and Syria presently. The same outfit which holds itself up as "the most moral army in the world".
Yes there are some metrics where you can find a bigger killer of Muslims then Israel. There are other metrics where Israel is larger. But even still, Israel is killing a lot of people. Being top 5 in killing Muslim is not something you can be proud of by saying, “look at the top 4 muslim killers here”.
I'll answer, but I ask again: do you know what it is about the Palestinian cause that has you so exercised? Above, say, the Syrian or Sudanese or Yemen or Saudi or Iraqi or Lebanese causes, which are all far more deadly, even if you take Hamas' word for it. I mean, maybe you have an excellent reason...?
My answer is that there is a lack of perspective when it comes to Israel. It's better that everyone understands the scale of the death and destruction in the region. What the people of Israel risk should the state fall.
If we start at 1936 (when the conflict in Palestine began in earnest), bucket by country (consistent with the fact that Israel's myriad wars up until the current one have been lumped together in a single "conflict"); and divide by net population -- then Israel's per-capita ranking does seem to take place 5 or so out of the 17 countries involved, in terms of the Arab/Muslim killing business.
In terms of immediate neighbors - just behind (and much closer to) Lebanon and Syria, but much greater numerically than Jordan / Egypt / Saudi.
The conflict in Palestine started way earlier than that. At least since the end of the Ottoman Empire in 1917. Might have really gotten going with the Hebron Massacre of 1929 but even that was preceded by Arab riots beginning even in 1920. Jews were already well sick of Arabs' shit by the time 1948 rolled around.
Funny you should mention. At least some of the new arrivals from Europe were apparently "already well sick of the Arabs' shit" from the minute they landed in their new homeland. As Ahad Ha'am (Asher Zvi Ginsburg) wrote in 1891, regarding the early Zionist settlers:
They were slaves in their land of exile, and they suddenly find themselves with unlimited freedom, the kind of wild freedom to be found only in a country like Turkey. This sudden change has engendered in them an impulse to despotism, as always happens when "a slave becomes a king," and behold they walk with the Arabs in hostility and cruelty, unjustly encroaching on them, shamefully beating them for no good reason, and even bragging about what they do, and there is no one to stand in the breach and call a halt to this dangerous and despicable impulse. To be sure our people are correct in saying that the Arab respects only those who demonstrate strength and courage, but this is relevant only when he feels that his rival is acting justly; it is not the case if there is reason to think his rival's actions are oppressive and unjust.
Of course by 1917 everyone knew what was up. As presaged by Herzl in his diary (1895):
We must expropriate gently the private property on the estates assigned to us. We shall try to spirit the penniless population across the border by procuring employment for it in the transit countries, while denying it employment in our own country. Both the process of expropriation and the removal of the poor must be carried out discreetly and circumspectly.
Several things to note: That particular list starts in 1920, not because that's when Arabs began their nonsense but because it's a list of massacres in Mandatory Palestine and that started in 1918. The Muslim Arab massacre of Jews began literally at the beginning of Islam. But perhaps directly relevant, Arabs massacred Jews throughout the 1800s in spasms of violence in Jerusalem, Hebron, Safed, Aleppo, Cairo, Damascus and surrounds. The war against Jews in 1948 and all the accusations against Jews for "stealing land" was just a continuation of centuries of SOP.
Despite all of this violence, directed by Arabs towards Jews, thousands of Jewish deaths at the hands of Arabs in the preceding decades and centuries and millenia, you have to scroll down to 1939 before finding the first instance of Jewish retaliation.
As for "Zionists stole muh lands", here is a concise video that makes the case in under a minute that Jews stole no Arab land.
This isn't a question of 1937 versus 1939 (or whether these atrocities were in any meaningful sense "retaliatory"). But if you're going to somehow not mention -- whether by choice, or simple carelessness -- one of the most important chapters of the lead-up to the so-called "defensive war" of 1947-1949 then I don't see us heading towards a productive analysis of the larger historical context.
Wikipedia is pretty good, overall. But uneven also, in terms of edit quality. So when assembling data on such large scale tragedies (as the matter of targeted violence against civilians by both sides in this conflict), it's best to check against other sources.
Like moldy old books in the library. And listening to people whose families have lived through these events.
Against a guy's essay ...
The point is the unequivocally colonial intent of the Zionist project from its earliest beginnings. Not the guy or his essay.
You have decided this 2 years difference allows you to entirely dismiss the significance of this being the first retaliation after centuries of Arab attacks. I don't blame you. I wouldn't address it either if I were you. That it was in 1937 vs 1939 still entirely undermines your central thesis that Israelis are pure, unadulterated evil and Palestinians are their innocent victims. Why are you like this?
> The point is the unequivocally colonial intent of the Zionist project from its earliest beginnings.
The guy had an opinion, for which he was bitterly criticised by other Zionists. What is with you?
I mean, really, if you do not believe that the State of Israel should exist, then outline a realistic plan of what will happen to the Israelis after its end?
> As for the Nazi origins of the pro-Palestinian movement, it starts in the 1920s with al-Husseini, the mufti of Jerusalem, who hated Jews so much he met with Hitler to discuss solutions to his own "Jewish Problem". This is why "pro Palestine" is today not about peace and sovereignty for the Palestinian people. It is about the elimination of the state - and people - of Israel. Really listen to the protesters.
You went further in this comment than the previous one, claiming that the pro-Palestinian movement has Nazi origins (meaning it originate via Nazism). This is pretty false.
And for many people, "Pro Palestine" is about peace and sovereignity for the Palestinian people. For others it isn't. I don't think you should paint the whole movement with the same brush so easily.
We Westerners want peace, prosperity and sovereignty for Palestinians. For us, a 2 state solution seems so reasonable. But we're not the ones who matter. Among Palestinians and Arabs in general, advocates for a 2-state peaceful coexistence is such a miniscule minority that yes, you can effectively paint the entire pro-Palestinian movement as genocidal. This is hard for Westerners to swallow, but that is the reality.
1) The official position of most Arab countries is aiming for a 2 state solution, iirc. The Palestinian Authority - which is the effective government of the West Bank Palestinians, and the official representative of Palestinians - officially recognize the State of Israel and endorse a two state solution.
Yes, support among the populace right now is weak - both Israelis and Palestinians - but that's probably because of the breakdown of the peace talks and living for the last 15 years in a situation in which Israel itself isn't really pursuing any kind of peace.
2) You write: "you can effectively paint the entire pro-Palestinian movement as genocidal."
Even if they don't support a two-state solution, calling them genocidal is going way too far.
3) When you talk about the "entire pro-Palestinian movement", it sounds like you're including the Western pro-Palestinian movement as well.
They are definitely not genocidal, and very relevant in the current context.
4) Most importantly - the best way to get to peace isn't to ignore the peaceful voices on either side as fringe, it's to amplify them.
There are genuinely pro-peace people on all sides of these issues, and pretending they don't exist is exactly the kind of rhetorical message that leads to more hate and violence. "No one on the other side is reasonable" is both wrong, and very harmful.
> There are genuinely pro-peace people on all sides of these issues, and pretending they don't exist is exactly the kind of rhetorical message that leads to more hate and violence.
No one pretends they don't exist. I genuinely love them. They are considered traitors and get a lot of hate, but all the more power and support to them. But it's foolish to pretend they are not rare.
Not supporting a two-state solution is genocidal, because it would require putting people who have explicitly stated that they want to kill Jews, in power. By their statements and behavior, Hamas, with overwhelming Gazan support, want a 1-state solution with Muslims in charge.
I don't think we're disagreeing about any facts here, only framing.
I wrote:
>> > They are definitely not genocidal...
You responded:
> I'll just direct you to the Hamas Charter (pdf)
But I was specifically talking in that line about the Western pro-Palestinian movement, not Hamas. In other parts of my comment, I specifically called out the position of the PA as the official representative of the Palestinians.
You really don't need to remind me of the actions of Hamas. I agree with you about them. They are clearly genocidal and, more importantly, anti-peace. (I say more importantly because they can't actually commit genocide, but they can and have blocked peace from happening.)
> But I was specifically talking in that line about the Western pro-Palestinian movement, not Hamas.
Oh I see. I did misunderstand. But, honestly, I'm not so sure. Maybe you and I consume different news sources, but organizations and movements I once considered to be bastions of Western morality continue to distort the reality of the conflict so egregiously that I have a hard time understanding how it could be accidental. Continuing to report Hamas statistics without qualification and then using them to accuse Israel of "genocide" is unconscionable, for instance.
In 2021, the UN Human Rights Council published a resolution titled "Human rights in the occupied Palestinian territory, including East Jerusalem, and in Israel," which accused Israel of widespread abuses without substantial mention of the barrage of rocket attacks from Hamas that provoked some of these responses. This selective reporting led readers to believe that Israel was the primary aggressor in the conflict.
In May 2021, during a conflict between Israel and Hamas, the BBC headlined, "Israel intensifies attacks in Gaza as conflict escalates," without equally highlighting the hundreds of rockets fired into civilian areas of Israel by Hamas. This portrayal skewed public perception, framing Israel as the initiator rather than acting in retaliation.
In April 2021, HRW released a report titled "A Threshold Crossed: Israeli Authorities and the Crimes of Apartheid and Persecution." This report categorically labeled Israel as an apartheid state, a term deeply contentious and debated, suggesting an institutionalized regime of systematic oppression and domination by Jewish Israelis over Palestinians.
In February 2022, Amnesty International issued a report stating that Israel's policies towards Palestinians amount to apartheid. The report asserts, "Israel’s cruel policies of segregation, dispossession, and exclusion across all territories under its control clearly amount to apartheid." This statement casts Israel's actions and policies in strictly negative terms, intensifying global anti-Israel sentiment without a balanced discussion of the complex security and political challenges that inform these policies.
Labeling Israel's policies as "apartheid" is both inappropriate and harmful because it inaccurately applies a term specifically defined under international law to the unique and complex Arab-Israeli conflict. Apartheid, as legally defined, refers to an institutionalized regime of systematic oppression and domination by one racial group over another. The situation in Israel and the Palestinian territories involves a national and territorial conflict, marked by security concerns and political disputes that differ fundamentally from the racial segregation and legal discrimination that characterized apartheid in South Africa.
Using the term "apartheid" to describe the Israeli-Palestinian context distorts understanding by simplifying a multifaceted conflict into a one-dimensional moral failing, which undermines the nuanced approach needed to resolve such disputes. It prevents meaningful dialogue, polarizes opinions, and can incite further tension by misrepresenting the nature of the conflict. This characterization shifts focus from seeking viable solutions to assigning blame, which is counterproductive for peace efforts and does a disservice to both Israelis and Palestinians who are impacted by these complex issues.
While I'm sure that many leftists think "Free Palestine" means freedom, self-rule, sovereignty, I know that the movement depends on that ambiguity to dog whistle to racists who, unfortunately, infect some of our human rights watch dogs. So, no, I'm not convinced that Western pro-Palestinians are not on some level intentionally genocidal. I cannot otherwise explain the level of hate and vitriol directed at Israel way out of proportion to any other conflict or situation on the planet.
Well, I can nitpick some of what you said but I largely agree. I think it's not crazy to call Israel's policies in the WB apartheid, effectively, or at least there's a real case to be made there, though I think you're right about the actual effects of using it as a political flattening, and applying it to all of Israel doesn't make sense.
> So, no, I'm not convinced that Western pro-Palestinians are not on some level intentionally genocidal. I cannot otherwise explain the level of hate and vitriol directed at Israel way out of proportion to any other conflict or situation on the planet.
Well I think the fact that many focus on Israel specifically is anti-semitic, at least at the top. I think 90% of people are followers, and are jumping on this cause just because it's popular, without necessarily understanding it in the context of the rest of what's happening around the world.
I wouldn't call any of that genocidal though, that's a pretty high bar.
I'd balk too except for the Western left's response to October 7th. Immediate celebration. One American professor at Cornell described himself as exhilerated! [1] "This is what resistance looks like" say others. Tearing down missing posters. Exhileration followed by mass protests. Against Israel. On October 8th! Even before Israel could collect its dead. Using the inevitably incorrect rumors that develop in the panic that follows any disaster ("I heard there were 40 beheaded babies!" "A woman was raped while her baby was burned alive in the oven!") to discredit any actual atrocity ("This is a disinformation campaign by Israel! 40 beheaded babies is absurd. Hamas targeted only soldiers."[2][3]) Women's rights organizations who have yet to condemn the rape of Israeli women as a tool of terror [4]. Denial that there was any rape. Denial that children were murdered. Claims that the hostages were volunteers. Claims that the attack was by Israel, akshually. Claims that Israel staged the whole thing in order to justify genocide. UNWRA materials for children glorifying martyrdom. Even here on YN the only political articles of any kind that make it through the filter are those critical of Israel. It goes on. And on. If you don't find that convincing I unfortunately can drop loads more genocide- and rape-apologia - as long as it's perpetrated against "Zionists" (wink).
You might begin to see why I honestly think anti-Zionism is at best genocidal-adjacent.
[3] https://youtu.be/VL5ACBwO9cg I find this asshole mortifying. Within hours of his hearing about the attack, you can see him in real time struggling to convert the atrocity into something anti-Israel.
You don't need to convince me that there's been a lot of awful reactions to October 7th.
I'm only pushing back that saying something like this:
> You might begin to see why I honestly think anti-Zionism is at best genocidal-adjacent.
Is painting too many people with too broad a brush. Yes, some protesters are genocidal. But it's a tiny minority of protesters, and all of these frankly disgusting anecdotes are a tiny percentage of the people engaged on this topic.
Except... Here is an open letter from the Jewish students at Columbia. Their experience there sounds pretty terrifying. Imagine yourself going through these experiences:
Do leftists who call for Israelis to "return to Europe" not know the A) centuries of stark, genocidal oppression against Jews in Europe nor B) that many Israeli Jews are in Israel because they have been expelled from Arab and Middle-East countries where their ancestors have lived for centuries? There is no "back home" to go to for these people.
One could argue these Western leftists earnestly care for Palestinians, but why? Why do they care about these particular Arabs and not the 1M+ other deaths of Muslims in current conflicts? What is the difference?
When I look back at the literally genocidal pograms by Levantine Arabs against Levantine Jews in an unbroken timeline of violence from 1850s, continuing through the 1920s and al-Husseini's agreements with Hitler in WW2, and the continuing violence right now, the repeated rejections of compromise and peace, the insistence on "all the land or death", is super clear to me that the "pro-Palestine" movement is and has always been genocidal. It is not and has never been about sovereignty or self-determination. Do Western leftists not know this? Do they not care? They certainly don't want to hear about it.
I don't know about "terrifying". "Uncomfortable", or, probably more accurately, "supremely irritating", sure. Zeynep Tufekci has been writing for a couple weeks --- I don't agree with everything she's saying, but I take anything she says seriously --- about how physically small and limited the protests have been.
If there were white power protests happening on campus at the University of Chicago, we'd all be up in arms; we are not when SJP, an organization that formally endorses the Al-Qassam Brigades, protests instead. There's for sure a blind spot. I see why people are pissed. It is not at all clear to me that anyone's safety was threatened at Columbia, though.
The comment you are replying to is ridiculous. Frankly by engaging I perpetuate ridiculousness and I should know better.
That said, to some reasonable approximation even the most militant pro Palestinian campus protests didn’t threaten any ones safety. In nearly every case the danger came from reactionary protests. Which is completely predictable if you are a campus safety officer!
We only have a problem if we agree with the contention that kids protesting genocide are some sort of chaos agent. They aren’t! They’re just college kids. Sleeping rough. Temporarily.
> The comment you are replying to is ridiculous. Frankly by engaging I perpetuate ridiculousness and I should know better.
This is against the community guidelines. With over 13k karma points, you know better.
I hesitate to ask, but pretend for a moment that I am an earnest rationalist who respects logical arguments and lets truth lead to conclusions even if I am not happy with those conclusions.
Can you, striving to minimize emotionalism or logical fallacy, walk through in concise points what specifically is "ridiculous"?
I took zero offense from his comment; its spirit was clear. I agree with him: it is ridiculous that were are frolicking in this rotted carcass of a thread.
There have been numerous disturbing / idiotic / arguably antisemitic episodes originating from certain elements of the protestors' side, to be sure.
Unfortunately the letter presents certain regrettable factual distortions. For example:
We felt helpless when we watched students and faculty physically block Jewish students from entering parts of the campus we share, or even when they turned their faces away in silence.
The protest movement, especially at Columbia, has a highly visible Jewish contingent (especially within its leadership). If people were blocked from the protest encampments, it was plainly not because they were Jewish. And it is intellectually dishonest to claim that this is the reason they were excluded.
There have also been numerous disturbing / idiotic episodes on the part of the counter-protest movement, as I'm sure you know. Except unfortunately these have been notably more violent than most of what's been happening from the protestors' side. Just the other day for example:
Imagine being 55 years old and getting hit by a car that just so happens to have been driven by a cousin of one of one of Israel's most famous convicted terrorists (celebrated by none other than the country's current Finance Minister). Or being attacked with military-grade crowd control chemicals:
This isn't whataboutism. In order to understand this situation, it necessary the consider the whole playing field. And the simple fact that there's many profoundly disturbing episodes originating in both camps.
I'll just close with one more particularly revealing snippet from the letter:
If the last six months on campus have taught us anything, it is that a large and vocal population of the Columbia community does not understand the meaning of Zionism, and subsequently does not understand the essence of the Jewish People.
Again, no one buys the "Zionism = Judaism" equivalence. Outside the ideological bubble world that the signatories of the letter (and the driver of that car which nearly killed a 55 year-old woman for expressing her political beliefs the other day) choose to live in.
Why is it plain to you that people weren't blocked because they were Jewish? The contention of Jewish people who see antisemitism in these protests is that Jewish participation is allowed only for Jewish people who disavow substantial parts of their identity. This gets into the whole JVP thing; activists have held JVP up as a demonstration of Jewish support --- to the point where College Democrats of America claimed that JVP was more representative of Jewish Democrats than the CDA Jewish Caucus (a risible claim) --- and we just saw the JVP Peace Seder, where the labels on the plate were written front-to-back; JVP has also (very recently!) posted a Houthi endorsement on their Insta (it's since been deleted).
Don't get me started on counter-protesters. No matter who's protesting, the counter-protest will always be worse. At least some subset of protesters have an intrinsic motivation aligned with the cause. Virtually all the counter-protesters will be there to stir the pot.
I know I'm a wet blanket here but I'm going to keep mentioning that we're all necroposting on a long-dead threat, bloated with corpse-gases, that just 3-4 people are reading. HN is bigger and better than this.
Why is it plain to you that people weren't blocked because they were Jewish?
Because the encampments contained many Jewish organizers / participants (likely equal to or greater than their proportion across the student body as a whole).
The contention [is that] Jewish participation is allowed only for Jewish people who disavow substantial parts of their identity.
I see what you're driving at, but overall it seems to be a weak and ancillary argument. It basically gets into the whole "if you reject / insult Zionism (or even the military campaign in Gaza itself) then you're insulting my religious/ethnic identity" line, which I just don't buy (neither do many Jews in fact, and in fact they find it rather insulting that one should presume that all Jews should automatically feel that way).
I don't speak for JVP, so you'll have to take up issues about their dining plates / ephemeral Houthi endorsements with them.
Yeah, I don't know. If you're protesting the broad concept of Zionism, of the legitimacy of a Jewish homeland, then not allowing the participation of the majority of Jewish people who are (in that broad sense) Zionist makes sense. On the other hand, you can't be blocking their entrance to buildings, or singling them out for verbal harassment due solely to religious signifiers coupled with the fact that they're not echoing your chants, right? This doesn't seem all that complicated. Everybody is a little bit right, everybody is a little bit wrong, and a few people on both sides (SJP, Shai Davidai) are luridly wrong.
Your statement doesn’t make a ton of sense. Qatar is attempting to mediate this conflict. I suppose if one saw mediation as detrimental to wiping gaza off the map, and one had no issues with a supposedly democratic government making illegal press sources it doesn’t like, then your statement makes more sense.
Oh absolutely! It is absolutely not the fact that Al-jazeera coverage has made it hard for America and Israel to deny the ongoing genocide and the abundant war crimes happening constantly.
> the people (hamas) operating the fight against that genocide
FYI, voicing support for terrorists undermines sympathy for a cause. (Legitimacy of violence is an old, controversial and unresolvable question. The politics of coalition building are less obscure.)
I don’t think this is true at all. History is full of terrorist causes which materialized with full public support.
Plenty of people supported the ANC, while the ANC was considered a terrorist organization, still Apartheid South Africa ended and the ANC is now in government.
Plenty of people supported the IRA, but still Northern Irish Catholics got civil rights and a political avenue for Irish reunification. Shin Féin even holds a plurality in Northern Ireland’s assembly and is increasing in popularity in the Republic of Ireland.
Plenty of people supported violent resistance of the Civil Rights movement (including Martin Luther King). Though the Civil Rights movement never ventured into terrorism, other black liberation groups certainly did, this did not undermine the cause of black liberation. And if we go even further back in history, support for John Brown—a terrorist and a full blown insurrectionist—did not undermine any sympathy for the abolitionist movement.
Each of those cases are solid examples of support despite terrorism—the IRA’s bombings in particular isolated its cause from international support for years.
Sure. But citing comments like yours is how you get an Israel aid package passed by the Congress. (I didn’t lobby on it, but I did on Ukraine, and showing that there are people who support horrible means for their end is a good way to deplete marginal support for that end.)
…why would I want aid for Israel to pass? I don’t want zionism to run a nation state, and for people of all faiths to be .. not under the yoke of apartheid or genocide.
I guess I just don’t understand - why it’s ok to criticize “one side’s” tactic and not the other when one of the sides is killing by the thousands, while claiming to be “mowing the lawn.”
One of the best assets for people trying to bring down a hammer on Israel are its right-wing politicians explicitly calling for bombing civilians and annexing Gaza. You generally want extremists on the other side to voice support for unpopular things.
Their brethren? I believe you are uneducated if you are referring to the group I assume you are. Especially given the politics of the region and the differences/animosity between those groups
The fact that individual groups in the Islamist pond engage in constant hate and strife doesn't make them non-brethren. Ideological movements often engage in constant conflict over relatively minor differences. Obsession with purity is common in bigots.
Their important common denominator is "we believe in bringing about submission to Allah at the point of the gun". I would advise any "unbeliever" to stay the hell away from any such group.
That's the thing, that's not a common denominator if you really know what each group stands for and promotes. There are christians in Gaza under Hamas. There are different Muslim denominations in Gaza under Hamas. The other groups you are mentioning wouldn't allow this, they kill other Muslims for being different, and they attack christians. There is a huge contrast. What you call a common denominator is false. There are many "unbelievers" living fine in Gaza and in Palestine in general (ignoring that they are also being victims of Israeli attacks)
Islam, even in its fundamentalist form (Salafism, Wahhabism) doesn't call for outright extermination of "People of the Book", only their subjugation under the dhimmi status.
When Hamas lets Christians live, they are doing what Islam considers right. Outright pagans (polytheists) would be a different story.
Still, they enforce Islamic law where they rule. You cannot be openly gay, you cannot openly proclaim that you no longer believe in Allah (apostasy), a Christian man cannot marry a Muslim woman.
The fact that some other fundamentalists go further than Hamas doesn't make Hamas non-fundamentalists.
