This is totally irrelevant to HN and is one of the issues on the Internet most likely to start a flame war. Flagged. georgecmu you appear to have been around HN a good while, which surprises me as it's more than long enough to know this is totally inappropriate. Go to reddit.com/r/worldnews or one of the other relevant subreddits if you want to discuss this issue.
It surprises me that people are complaining this is irrelevant to HN. It fits well with the PG/HN narrative of technology decentralizing political power -- Israel is suppressing this technology because it doesn't want to give up its control of the electricity supply.
"Israel is suppressing this technology..."
that statement exactly shows the problem with this post. this is a complex political problem that has nothing to do with the technology. in fact Israel has made huge investments in solar technology. you don't have to agree with Israeli politics. as an Israeli,I rarely do either, but this post is one in a long list of demonizing and biased posts that just make the situation worse for us left wing Israelis who genuinely want a solution
"Please don't submit comments complaining that a submission is inappropriate for the site. If you think something is spam or offtopic, flag it by going to its page and clicking on the "flag" link. (Not all users will see this; there is a karma threshold.) If you flag something, please don't also comment that you did."
Without standing up and saying "no", there is no communication to new users of the do's and don'ts of the site, which including overtly political articles like this.
Put another way, the number of people interested in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and its importance in world events, far exceeds the number of people, and import, of "hacker news", so were the site to open its gates completely, articles like this would completely overwhelm what we came here for.
It deals with renewable energy ( solar panels ) and a technology that can potentially revolutionize life in areas that are still stuck with primitive farming technologies.
There is even a start-up opportunity there or a non-for-profit start-up opportunity.
So I don't think the adjective totally completely applies.
If you want to take an entrepreneurial lesson from this:
1) Get your permits. Dot your Is, cross your Ts if you can. If you can't and you think you are in the right, you should probably do it anyway.
2) If someone infinitely more powerful than you wants you to fail, things will not be easy for you.
3) Politics, business and technology mix whether you want them to or not.
4) If you are a powerful entity bullying your competition, there will be bad PR. There may be consequences in the future. You've been warned and it may be in your long-term interests to behave yourself.
Interestingly enough as I read the above I see a strong pro-Palestinian bent. But the 3 Jews sitting next to me right now would see me as a more middle-of-the-road-why-can't-we-all-get-along sort.
After years on HN, I am going to post my first negative response to someone's comment, yours!
The Israeli government's actions in this and many other acts are completely immoral. Your 1) point may have some logical validity in general, but for the good of the Israeli and Palestinian people, the whole world needs to get behind slamming down on the actions of the Israeli government, which also I believe also will hurt their own people in the long run.
Please re-read what I wrote and clarify that you read what you think you read.
The nature of the opinions I voiced here are pretty much Chomskian in nature. If you're picking a fight with that spectrum of opinion with respect to Israel and Palestine as being to pro-Israeli, then I'm going to give you the benefit of the doubt and assume that you actually just misinterpreted what I said. Easy enough to do as it is an emotionally volatile subject.
I have some pretty strong emotional reactions to the existence of an apartheid state. But for real peace to happen everyone will have to set aside personal and historical feelings (or rabid crazy born again send me your money so that Armageddon may come craziness) and come up with a compromise where no one is happy, everybody is still breathing, and with a full belly from supper to boot. A moving apartheid wall of course has to go, the 1967 borders form a (sans US) international consensus, and efforts to create a mutually beneficial economic interdependency have to occur. I really believe that Israel has been moving in the wrong direction. I also believe that Israel's utility to American interests will also slowly begin to wane over time and Israel should have a long term dove-not-hawk plan to survive past their usefulness.
You might not agree with how I presented it. But I think it's important to talk about Palestine and Israel whenever possible and the way the conversation was going wasn't productive for what this forum is from a technological, business or political view. I tried to shift it to a direction where it could be honest & productive and not get down-voted out of existence from rabidness.
I'm upvoting your comment because it does look like you have both parties best interests in mind as well.
And I'm going to try to put this into a positive note:
This is also might be completely naive on my part. But the thought of one city, Jerusalem, being the capital of two different countries sounds like it should be the basis for peace and not the shitstorm that people make it out to be.
Both sides have to meet and both say, "This is fucked up. Let's fix it. Real prosperity and security is mutual prosperity and security."
I frankly would love to be able to fly to Israel, do a contract, fly to Iran, do a contract, fly to Palestine, do a contract, fly to Sweden, so on and so forth. Free mobility of labour AND free mobility of capital would require new labels. It wouldn't be your standard messed up crony big-C Capitalism of today and it wouldn't be socialism either.
> I really believe that Israel has been moving in the wrong direction.
I agree with everything you wrote but this. Twenty years ago, the great peacemaker Yitzhak Rabin (Z"L) wouldn't have been willing to think, let alone say, that the Palestinians actually deserved a real-life independent state, rather than some little dependency/colony of Israel. Now even people on the right have to pay lip service to the idea of an independent Palestinian state.
There have been a lot of quite dangerous panic reactions to this in certain segments of the right wing, but I think long-term Israeli politics is inching ever so slowly towards more reasonable positions.
I think that I did mis-understand your position, thanks for clarifying it for me. I would bet that a lot of people share our basic wish for the well being of the people on both sides, and criticism for the governments.
Really? The world must unite to fight the possibly unethical enforcement of a sensible law in a country which has (for the most part, but with some exceptions outside of its jurisdiction) an excellent court system that has overturned similar decisions in the past?
This is a controversial issue, which doesn't belong on HN, partly because people's strong opinions on Israel are often disproportionate to their overall interest in human rights in the middle east. People in this thread have a special self-righteous stick up their ass for Israel, but can't name the neighboring countries which executed or imprisoned gays, woman rights activists, and journalists or even tweeters last year.
> This is a controversial issue, which doesn't belong on HN, partly because people's strong opinions on Israel are often disproportionate to their overall interest in human rights in the middle east.
I don't see how that could make it off-topic. Everyone one HN -- indeed, everyone -- knows more about some things than others, and has more interest in some things than others, so by your standards everythin g ought ot be off-topic for HN.
> People in this thread have a special self-righteous stick up their ass for Israel, but can't name the neighboring countries which executed or imprisoned gays, woman rights activists, and journalists or even tweeters last year.
That may be true of some sections of the general public. I suspect it is less true of HNers.
Why are most of the top comments up in arms about this article and not the magic secrets of Teller one? If you're going to shout "irrelevant", at least be consistent. I think this speaks volumes of the biases inherent in some of the commenters here. You may not believe it, but there are some individuals here who would like to discuss the technological, entrepreneurial, and maybe even human right implications of the events in this article. If you don't like it, ignore it. The fact that the top comments suggest we shouldn't even begin discussing the content of this article is very reflective of the entire Israeli-Palestinian conflict itself...no one wants to empathize with the "other side". On the contrary, we should encourage discussion and just down vote whichever comments we deem unproductive and upvote the ones, such as orbitingpluto's, which provide great insight.
"no one wants to empathize with the "other side"."
not true. Israel has active left wing and various peace movements. they just don't get much attention outside of Israel. I realize people don't like to hear this but Israel is a democracy with a wide range of opinions and representation of all society including Arabs in the government. please read up
> "Why are most of the top comments up in arms about this article and not the magic secrets of Teller one?"
From the guidelines[0]: "Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. Videos of pratfalls or disasters, or cute animal pictures. If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic."
I flagged this post. It's not a problem to discuss politics, but it should have a value. Do the HN community want to discuss the Palestinian-Israeli conflict? Fine, submit an article about that.
But submitting such an article will only trigger a flame-war. The content of the article is of the kind that triggers 'oh, ass-hole Israeli', and 'oh, Palestinians uses this to kill innocents'.
These are details. Not the actual problem. I'd be happy to see a good discussion about this conflict (although I'm not sure I'd contribute as I have little knowledge about it) certainly, if the community up-voted a related article.
Alright, let's do this thought experiment. Replace words like Israel and Palestine in the article with countries in Africa. Something like "Water pumps running off of solar power in Kenya, provided by a German start up are being removed by the local government". Would that be acceptable for HN? I am 80% confident, we wouldn't see all this discussion about how the story should have been flagged and or how it is totally unacceptable for HN.
So now ask yourselves, why is it different all of the sudden if we put "Palestine" and "Israel" back in the article.
Could it be that some here have an irrational and knee-jerk responses to that particular region of the world? If so, maybe that is an interesting discussion. How come a group that fancies itself more rational and straight thinking than others, has such strong biases one way or the other? Why is there so much discussion about this topic.
Are people driving an article down and flagging it as "inappropriate politically" not because they are trying to keep HN pure but because their own disguised biases are telling them to act that way.
> why is it different all of the sudden if we put "Palestine" and "Israel" back in the article.
Because it's a traditional flame-bait subject and will never produce useful discussion. Sure, some of the things you mention would be interesting, but this article does not discuss those, and even if it did discuss those the comments would still have very dull repetitive flame-baiting; and they would be the same comments seen for many many years.
> but because their own disguised biases are telling them to act that way.
No, it's just a really un-interesting topic for HN. As other people have mentioned there are much better places for this article. 4chan, or reddit, for example.
A big problem with this kind of topic is that, as you say, people have strong, irrational responses. In other words, it is toxic. It brings out awfully unpleasant people and brings out the worst in otherwise decent people. This is why we are especially unwilling to indulge this particular diversion from topic. It is harmful to HN. I don't fault you for your interest in discussing it, but feel very strongly that it should be elsewhere.
Then maybe another level of discussion is how come so many HN readers (and I've said this in my other posts, so apologies for sounding like a broken record) who fancy themselves rational and unbiased all of the sudden exhibit such a strong irrational response. Where does that come from? Is it brainwashing? What is going on? In other words I agree with you that topic might be toxic and that it bring out bad people, but I am interested in why does it bring out "the bad" in good people? Why not just say "meh, don't want to participate" and/or "don't know enough to form an opinion" and move on...
It may not actually be bias but fear, that this may get flamey if discussed in the HN-wrong context(israel v palestine).
Coincident: A leading human rights figure got a lot of flak for writing a newspaper article saying that our (kenya's) next president will not be from the same ethnicity as the current. Not a wrong fact just a speculative opinion but because people are touchy when it comes to talking(in public only) about ethnicity since the last bloody elections, people were calling that an incitement and (this is now a media buzzword) 'hate speech'. Question is: can we hn-ly discuss a related topic without getting into the touchy and flamey parts? Far shot but if someone noticed something hn-worthy(like a data pattern or a behaviour pattern) in something as off-HN as say lolcats, will it be impossible to talk about it?
I was banned for an critical comment on Apple. So I can tell you that their biases is not disguised anymore.
And now I have just been banned for this comment despite 4 upvotes...
And I can see that user "babbling" has been banned for this comment :
"Except that the Israeli Palestinian conflict is interesting to a lot of people and Hacker News tends to have more civilized discussions than some other places"
Israel is not the West-Bank government. Well, we can argue on that. But that makes your comparison inadequate, at least in my opinion.
But I'm here questioning the value of the discussion. If the Kenyan gov. removed the solar plants then there should be some reason, and that's worth discussing. I don't think that any (sane) gov. would remove solar plants providing free energy?
The value/(probability to start a war) of the article is close to 0. That's why I flagged the article. It's still my opinion, and I gave my argument. Certainly, I'd respect the HN community choice of what to discuss and how to discuss it.
Yes, let's just bury anything YOU disagree with. You're complaining about someone posting something and then say that they should post the very thing you accuse them of.
Do you think we should just ignore the human rights abuses that Israel is committing against the Arabs?
Since when did hacker news became a source for politics? That is what the NY Times, Fox News,and CNN are for. Please don't let HN become one of those sites that entices hatred towards another country or a certain group of people. This post should be deleted as it has nothing to do with HN.
In the guidelines [0], immediately after the aforementioned vague comment, pg gives some specific restrictions:
"Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. Videos of pratfalls or disasters, or cute animal pictures. If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic."
> Since when did hacker news became a source for politics?
Since politicians started messing with technology? Btw, the article presents a case thereof, although maybe not to a degree justifying it being on HN. Anyway the implication "if it's politics, it doesn't belong on HN" is obviously false.
basically people installed solar panels, which require proper authorization, which they didn't have, so authorities are going to dismantle it. how this is news? just because it is in israel? so what? couldn't care less, this would happen in any part of the world, whatever. then article goes on talking about politics.
Because Israel limits the amount of power going into Gaza purposely.
Not only are they refusing to provide them with power (they're obviously paying for it, not "taking" it from Israel), but they're also preventing them from generating their own electricity as well. Depending on where you are in Gaza, you have anywhere from four to eighteen hours of power a day under normal circumstances. When the tensions rise, you'll be lucky to have two hours of power a day.
(1) Why do you think Israel should be obliged to supply electricity to a hostile territory, ruled by a government that explicitly states it's desire to destroy it [1], backed up with routine rocket fire into Israeli population centers?
(2) How exactly is Israel preventing the generation of electricity in Gaza?
Sorry, but I can't see any actual response to my questions here, just further hate mongering.
Israel does not claim Gaza. It withdrew completely from Gaza in 2005, and gave full control over to the Palestinian Authority. Israeli NGOs even invested tens of millions of dollars in boosting the Palestinian economy after the withdrawal.
Either way, it's probably going to be very hard to have a reasoned discussion, so I'll just stop here.
> when does reasonable criticism become hate mongering?
From the point somebody starts to criticize Israel.
Criticizing Israel, at least in the West, has become the modern day equivalent of religious blasphemy. All the usual tactics for protecting religion come into play: whining, playing offended, asserting persecution, while at the same time trying to totally and utterly destroy the critic by false accusations.
Israel has a harsh dilemma. They want to keep their state (which is reasonable at this point), but on the other hand they don't want to share the power with Palestinians (which is not). They are also afraid that the Palestinian birth rate would have them outnumbered, and then what?. They use lots of tactics to ensure that the Palestinian population is confined --from import/export restrictions, to destroying their land for cultivation, to steadily expanding into other areas, etc. It's not genocide on the Hitler scale, but it's sure as hell, Ethnocide: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural_genocide
(That they "invested" into the area is laughable. What they did was they build companies to exploit cheap labour under very strict conditions. It's not like they enpowered any palestinians to become entrepreneurs. So it's investing in the same way Nike invested in building factories in Africa, etc.)
>>do you think a newly found state (~65 years) has any right to claim the territory it occupies (except of the might makes right variety)?
Please explain to me, what makes Israel worse than all the other area changes after the world wars?
Let's look at Karelia. Do you think the Finns should start bombarding St Petersburg with rocket artillery? (And would you expect such a mild response from Russia as Israeli has shown...?)
The main difference I can see is that Israel makes for a good external enemy for a bunch of really disgusting dictators.
>>Backed up with routine genocide tactics...
Last time I checked the population growth in Gaza was one of the fastest on the planet. So you use the worst accusations possible to make as "arguments". Seems like hate propaganda to me.
First, welcome to HN, since you created your first user account yesterday?
>>It may not make it "worse" (sic) but it still doesn't make it right.
The point was not right or wrong, I argued that there are totally different standards -- especially if you compare with the neighbouring countries which destroy many Palestinian refugees' lives to keep the question alive.
But if you really want to discuss the "worse" part, why should the Israeli question be treated differently than all other land areas?
Edit: You don't want to "bite" on one of the fastest population increases on the planet called "genocide tactics"? If that is not hate propaganda, what is?!
But if you really want to discuss the "worse" part, why should the Israeli question be treated differently than all other land areas?
This is a wrong framing of the question. I don't think anyone wants to treat it differently than all other land areas in similar circumstances. ALL of those are wrong. Now, mention any other specific "land area" similar, and we can talk.
But if you insist, I can think of some reasons this is to be treated differently: because Israel, despite being as abusive as other countries, is a favorite child of the West powers, and receives much more military, diplomatic and media support.
Just an example: we hear for the persecution of gays, or twitter users, or women's right in Arab countries repeteadly. How many times do you hear about things such as this:
>>Now, mention any other specific "land area" similar, and we can talk.
I did. See Karelia above. Or choose a few others of the dozen (more?) of land area changes after the WWs.
So a country should be hated and double standards are ok, if some west countries accept it more than brutal dictatorships!? Sigh...
And sure, the othodox jews have extreme subgroups that are as crazy as e.g. the Saudi government. But what the Hell does that prove? You know full well that you can find similar in any democracy.
Karelia? You think this bears any resemblance to the Palestinian situation?!!! I'm not at all for countries annexing other countries territory and moving their borders. But the situation here is worse than most other cases -- and sure as hell not at all similar to Karelia.
Here's a better example: consider Mexico demanding California back, establishing a state there, treating Californian's as second class citizens, and confining them in small areas north of Sacramento.
(Well, the difference would be that Mexico had California a couple of centuries ago, not a couple of millennia. And immigrants from there already consist of 30% of the population of the state. So, in that case, they'd have a slight right to want it back).
>And sure, the othodox jews have extreme subgroups that are as crazy as e.g. the Saudi government. But what the Hell does that prove? You know full well that you can find similar in any democracy.
Segregated women/men bus lines? No, you cannot find this kind of crazy sh*t in any normal democracy, especially in Western Europe. You might find religious nuts being able to impose such rules inside their churches, monasteries or homes or clubs. Which is kinda OK. But on a bus line??? In public roads?
At least you dropped the "point" that it is OK to hate countries which are tolerated more by the Western world than disgusting dictatorships...
>>Karelia? You think this bears any resemblance to the Palestinian situation
You ignored my point again, but I think you know that.
Both cases were area losses where part of the population left. If anything Karelia was much more unfair.
That it looks very different now, compared to all the other land losses from the same time period, depends probably mostly on the Palestinian suffering made permant -- by the Arab states.
>>Segregated women/men bus lines? No, you cannot find this kind of crazy sh*t in any normal democracy
You mean it is different in your home and in your bus?
Amish do more extreme things, imho.
Also, how is it in France in those immigrant areas where the police are very careful to thread?
My point is that voting determines what's relevant. Voting has put this on the front page. It's not about what you think, or whether you would argue that cognitive bias "is arguably more germane to HN", it has to do with what HN readers think is valuable and vote for.
the HN guidelines determine what should be submitted. The flag option exists in part because some HN readers submit or upvote stories that the guidelines say don't belong here.
Cognitive bias when discussion certain political articles on HN but not others and how some political topics are acceptable but others are not, even in forums frequented by supposedly rather rational individuals, is also interesting.
At this point, this discussion is more interesting to me at the meta-level more than its original topic.
Might not necessarily be relevant to Hacker News under pg's charter but I would suggest reading why these people can't get permits for their solar panels.
"basically people installed solar panels, which require proper authorization, which they didn't have"
True. On the other hand, we aren't talking about a thoroughly developed community here. This sort of exacting law enforcement has its costs, and the balance of those costs should be evaluated in context. Given the limited industrial resources of this particular community I would be inclined to promote the retention of local infrastructure regardless of legal niceties.
It's also true that Israel has a history of limiting Palestinian development, of course. Sometimes for good reasons, sometimes not.
All in all I disagree that it's not relevant here. Maybe inflammatory, though.
BTW, Did the Jews have "authorization" to barge into someone else's country, commit genocide, ethnic cleansing and a 50 year war against the original inhabitants? (aside from that old rag called "The Old TEstament") ... Jus sayin'
That is the kind of ignorant idea I used to have. It is time you got beyond the media failing to provide a true historical context for what is probably the most over-reported region of the planet.
Already in 1929 in Hebron "Palestinian" Arabs were massacring jews in Hebron. Jews who had live in Hebron for some thousands of years. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1929_Hebron_massacre The way the media presents this story, the jews arrived in Palestine after WW2. There's never any mention of the Muslim Brotherhood joining forces with the principle muslim leader of the area and with the Nazis in the 1930s. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haj_Amin_al-Husseini#In_Nazi-oc...
The media bear a terrible responsibility for their failure to provide any kind of historical context to the problems in Israel/Palestine.
Yuck. Wikipedia on the Middle East. I tried helping out with editing that area once and gave up in frustration. Lots of crazies on both sides, but I got the distinct impression that the pro-Israeli side was better organized, perhaps even funded. In any case, it looked to me like they were gaming WP for propaganda purposes (yes the other side was doing it too, but not in the same disciplined way) I'd never cite Wikipedia on anything controversial.
Benny Morris's book Righteous Victims seems to be a reliable source of information about the conflict. He's a an Israeli history professor, not exactly a virulent antisemite. It's worth noting that he describes the trigger for unrest leading up to the 1929 massacre as the growing understanding among Arabs that "...the disproportionate growth of the [Jewish community in Palestine], nurtured and sustained by [British colonial] measures, promised to turn them into a minority in their own land."[1]
Anyway, bringing up the 1929 massacre in this context seems like a non sequitur. You might as well justify the second Arab-Israeli war in terms of the massacre innocent Palestinians by Israeli militants at Deir Yassin[2], a considerably more cold-blooded, treacherous, strategically terrifying, blatant war crime that played a critical role in driving Palestinians off their own lands. (But I'm not making this justification.)
Great point. I also think Israelis are a lot more disciplined in this regard. You should check out Mepi, a website that takes the craziest and most fanatical of muslims and translates what they say to the Americans. Its a principal source of "information" to a lot of news outlets in the US. Engaging, constructive Arabic debate never makes it the US.
Jews had lived in the region for thousands of years, but there was a Zionist mass migration to Palestine (the Jewish population in Palestine doubled from 1922-1931) that likely increased tensions.
There has been violence from both sides of the conflict. On the Zionist side, there's another incident I've never heard mentioned in the media: the 1946 David Hotel bombing in which a Zionist terorist organization bombed a hotel in a strike at the British, killing 91 in one of the first historic examples of terrorism targeting civilians. This bombing was commemorated in 2006 by Benjamin Netanyahu and former members of the terrorist organization and a plaque was put up that effectively blamed the British, rather than the terrorist operation, for the deaths.
>it was supposed to be empty at the time of the bombing.
Not quite. According to Wikipedia "Warnings were sent by telephone, including one to the hotel's own switchboard, which the hotel staff decided to ignore, but none directly to the British authorities." There's a difference between phoning in a bomb threat in an occupied building and bombing an unoccupied building.
Yes the part of the hotel that was bombed was the part of the hotel that was used by the British military thereby invalidating your value judgement that the attack was meant to kill civilians.
The bombing killed many more civilians than they did British: "41 Palestinian Arabs, 15-28 British citizens, 17 Palestinian Jews, 2 Armenians, 1 Russian, 1 Greek and 1 Egyptian" according to WikiPedia. Not a surprising result when setting off a huge bomb in a hotel, even if in a specific area of a hotel. The list of the organization's previous attacks includes many directed against civilians (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Irgun_attacks). If the killing of civilians was indeed not part of their aim, you would think the organization would treat the operation as a tragic mistake and distance themselves from it rather than coming together to commemorate it in 2006.
We have justification and apologies for violence right here! This is part of the problem, because similar arguments from the other side will probably be grounds for well, you know what.
He's not ignorant or lying - you just need to look at Irgun's activities in the '30s and '40s to know that. Those guys were bombing a bus practically every day at some points (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Irgun_attacks_during_th...), which makes the hand-wringing from Israel doubly pointless.
Perhaps the problem is that the Palestinians are slacking? They should blow up more things, not less...
I'm not going to defend Irgun because it's indefensible. It is simply a matter of fact that the attack was on the headquarters of the British military.
Edit: Your subsequent edits are quite sick and disturbing. You should consider reverting your text to the original comment.
The attack was on a hotel - that's also a matter of fact, and similarly indefensible.
And I edited about 30 seconds to a minute after my initial post, to make my points clearer. I don't think that's unreasonable, much less "sick or disturbing".
You should look up the Balfour Declaration and the Treaty of Sevres. The answer to your question, disregarding your hyperbole and nonsense (what is this pre-existing country you speak of), is yes.
What utter nonsense. The Balfour Declaration was something between BRITAIN and a Zionist organisation (during WW1). How does BRITAIN have the right to give land to European Jews, when said land was the home of Palestinian Arabs, under the then sovereignty of the Ottoman Empire?
Simple answer, they didn't have that right. And the ONLY reason they were able to actually exercise it, was because the Arabs (whom they had double-crossed) were instrumental in defeating the Ottomans.
The Treaty of Sevres, which adopted the Balfour Declaration, was signed between the Allies and the Ottoman Empire, which, as you so pointed out, had sovereignty over the territory at the time.
Sevres was, like Versailles, the final treaty imposed on the losers by the victors. The INHABITANTS OF PALESTINE were not party to it.
The Balfour Declaration was one of the most blatent acts of perfidy and outright dishonest double-crossing in modern history. At the SAME TIME that the British promised that they would uphold the rights of Arabs to self-determination - in return for the Arabs fighting (and defeating) the Ottomans - they also effectively bartered away land that WASN'T THEIRS to a 3rd party - the Zionists.
This was all in response to someone trying to pass off the above act of basic dishonesty as legitimate authorisation for Israel, and every bit of nonsense that has followed.
The only authorisation that "Occupied Palestine" (aka Israel) ever had, from a moral perspective, was the old story of white European has guns, white European wants your land, white European will come and take it.
Whatever the reason for why the Europeans wanted it (resources, more space, or "our holy book says it belongs to US") really doesn't matter. The whole thing is a sham, which is why 60 years after the fact and after countless beatings, you still haven't "convinced" the natives that you're right.
And while we're all lecturing each other about the finer points of history, might I point out that this isn't the first time that Europeans came and took that strip of territory from the locals. And eventually, the locals took it back, lock stock and barrel ....
Where did the "Palestinian arabs" come from? Arabia. What is their language? Arabic. What were they doing outside Arabia? Like the muslim conquest of north Africa, Spain, Persia, India, etc., the area of Palestine was taken by violent conquest. If Arabs had a right to be in Palestine by virtue of conquest, then Britain had the right (again by virtue of conquest) to do what it liked with the land. Why is it there is one standard for Arabs and a different standard for non-Arabs?
You try to use the narrative of colonialism, imperialism and racism, to obscure the fact that the islamic empire used weaponry and war to take control of almost every part of the world that is islamic (certainly all areas of africa, the middle east, europe and the indian subcontinent). And then it imposed its own forms of racism and colonialism on the subjugated people. Let's not even talk about the jews. Here's two books documenting the history of islamic slave-trading in Africa:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Legacy-Arab-Islam-Africa-Inter-relig...http://www.amazon.co.uk/Islams-Black-Slaves-History-Diaspora...
It seems it was every bit as bad as the racism and colonialism of the atlantic slave-trade. Even the UN expert panel on slavery in 1951 said that 1:20 people in Arabia was a slave. That was 1951. Three years after the establishment of the state of Israel.
Let's have some consistency here. At least the jews did not go into Palestine with weaponry and enslave the Arabs living there.
You really don't have a clue, do you? You're spreading complete nonsense out of total ignorance (akin to bigots trying to argue that "Palestinians" don't even exist).
For the benefit of others who might have had the misfortune of reading the above (you're too far gone to matter):
The Middle East has had civilisation for millenia (spelling?) before Europe had. Consequently, there have been a multitude of different ethnic groups/tribes/peoples who have held sway over one part or another. Hundreds upon hundreds of states & kingdoms, which were themselves swallowed up by one empire after another.
Today, you look upon the Middle East and see just one thing, Arabic speaking Muslims - and you blithely assume that they all came from Arabia.
Completely ignorant and false.
The final "civilisation" or movement (not sure what the right term would be here) which held dominated the Middle East was Islam. And it stayed, unlike all the others.
Most Middle Easterner's today are Muslim, and speak Arabic. But they are still descended from Phoenicians, Libyans, Egyptians, countless migrant tribes (many of whom are collectively labeled under "Bedouin"), Hebrews (yes - the Romans didn't ethnically cleanse the entire population!), Nestorian Christians, etc, etc.
The people never disappeared. They just now speak one tongue, and practice (mostly) one faith. Thats why we know mostly refer to them as "the Arabs".
Trying to pretend that they don't exist, or somehow became extinct, is ridiculous.
Where did the "Palestinian Arabs" come from? PALESTINE. Thats where.
What you'r saying is akin to fast-forwarding past centuries of continued European integration, and then saying that the people living in what used to be called France no longer have any right to that land, because they are part of a wider European state and they all speak Esperanto.
Anyone who would like to read a somewhat more balanced account of the origins of the "Arabs" would be well advised to read "History of the Arabs" by Philip Hitti.
And as for this gem:
"At least the Jews did not go into Palestine with weaponry and enslave ..."
(shaking my head) Is it possible for anyone who has not lived under a rock for half a century to write that claptrap?
This is definitely on point and relevant to HN visitors. This, for at least two reasons:
1. You never innovate in a vacuum:
Whether it's genetically modified crops, cancer treatment, AI, encryption or energy solutions, all innovation is subsumed under the greater agenda of existing power and political structures. If you innovate for people to use your innovation, you are forced to deal with the attendant moral implications. This story clearly demonstrates this scenario. Whether it's Israel as the morally shadowy character is not relevant.
2. Innovation in the the energy space will throw you into the political field so violently you will regret not sticking to developing your new "To-Do List" software like every other coward out there :) :
I feel strongly about the second point: energy related innovations and their implementations to better the lives of people should be protected much like water & food resources are (or ought to be).
I was born in Amsterdam and didnt understand this conflict, after seeing numerous documentaries i have an understanding what is going on. Basically zionists believe they are the chosen ones and that all other are inferiour. They believe the land is destined to them. Whatever the UN says.
If you think about it this is a similar ideology than the naxis. And in fact the same methods are used. I recommend everybody to watch the documentaryovie '5 broken cameras'
You are wrong on so many levels (and I'm not a jew). When zionism was created in the late 19th century, most jews in the world had NO interest in moving to Palestine or being zionists. Ask yourself the question: why if they believe that the land that is now Israel was theirs on the basis of religion, why were so many jews uninterested in pursuing this? Zionism was a reaction to the hundreds of years of anti-semitism jews had endure. Most jews rejected zionism (which was a nationalist movement not a religious movement). Most jews wanted to stay where they were and wanted to be part of the country in which they lived.
The state of Israel arose from two factors. 1. The zionist movement which provided a narrative framework (historical, geographical, political, religious). 2. 70 years later, the attempt by the Nazis (and muslims like the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem) to wipe out jews. The Nazis wasnted the jews out of europe; fanatical muslims like the Mufti wanted them out of the middle east. (Some fanatical Nazis and some fanatical muslims wanted the jews wiped out. Some fanatical muslims still want the jews wiped out in toto). If you haven't read the Life of Mohammed (the first and most orthodox interpretation of Mohammed's life) you can read a condensed version here. http://www.scribd.com/doc/27156626/The-Earliest-Biography-of... You will see that already in the 7th century, Mohammed was exterminating jews.
The markings that the Nazis used for jews, originated in muslim countries in the middle ages, where jews (and christians) were made to wear special symbols to make them aware of their sub-human status in the eyes of muslims (dhimmitude). Later, christians in Spain (having pushed out the invading armies of islam after several hundred years of violent domination) also made jews wear stars, and that was adopted again by the Nazis. But the idea originated with the muslim concept of dhimmitude.
After what the Nazis did to jews in Europe, no wonder many jews embraced the idea of Israel as a safe(r) place for them to live (although millions of jews who went to Israel were actually kicked out of muslim north africa and Iraq, and all their wealth confiscated). If jews were going to face potential extermination in the future, then it made sense to defend themselves in their historical homeland (go on the Tunnel Tour in Jerusalem, and see the historical evidence for their great civilisation before the time of Herod).
Since you are Dutch, what do you make of the best film ever made by Dutch director Paul Verhoeven? I'm talking about Black Book, the film most Dutch people will not watch, because it shows the extent of the collaboration between Dutch people and the Nazis in the persecution of Dutch jews. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0389557/
And since the media goes on and on about "the Palestinian refugees", I suggest you read this, and see how the UN manages to manufacture a refugee crisis unlike no other in history: http://www.danielpipes.org/10695/unrwa-palestine-refugees
It seems to me that jews have suffered so much prejudice and hostility over the centuries, they have adopted far thicker skins than the rest of us. And I think that many of us non-jews are too ready to channel the history of jew-hatred from our the past of our cultures. And sadly, I think I was one of those people.
(Being Dutch) I've never heard of Dutch people not wanting to watch Black Book because it depicts the collaboration between Dutch people and the Nazi's.
Claims like that don't do much for the credibility of the rest of your comment.
I cannot verify/ negate the comment about the movie. However neither can the fact that you're unfamiliar with it.
I do however see a problem with your eagerness to find an excuse to discredit the posts contents... If you've never heard of any of it and you consider yourself well educated on the subject, you've been clearly fed some of the abundant propaganda...
Okay i was mixing up religion with zionist, that is true. I also agree with all your points. I basically knew most of the stuff already. And jews have had a hard time yeah.
However: you're not commenting on the main point i'm making:
In the current times, zionists in isreal are behaving exactly like the nazi's where in WWII.
1) They are building walls
2) They deprive palestines from food and electricity
Could you please tell me what of this is incorrect. It is totally right. And when watching the movie you could see the isreal army burning olives tree in order to scare the people, they shoot tear gas at childer and they are building very big walls.
You are just telling me what happened to the jews. I know that! I also know that the dutch where not the best and helped the germans a lot. But that is HISTORY. I wasnt alive then. I couldnt help people. Currently the same thing is happening.
But ironically enough it is the zionists in isreal that are doign the same. And goverment is helping them.
I don't understand Israel politics at all. Why not act straight and just deport all Arabs from inside their current borders? There are so many Muslim states around that should (willingly or not) give the refugees a shelter. It's not like that will make people with anti-Israel feelings hate them more than destroying perfectly good solar panels when a global energy crisis is quite likely.
The territories under question are not occupied, but disputed. Each side has legitimate claims to them, and their status can only be resolved through negotiations, which is what the sides themselves agreed to in the Oslo Accords [1].
Furthermore, by what is the claim that Israel smashes every attempt of Palestinian economic development supported? Over a decade, Israel ceded territory and control to the Palestinian government, aided in tax collection, and continues to supply electricity to the Gaza strip, a hostile territory from which missiles are routinely fired into Israeli population centers.
The term 'Occupied' is often used loosely, even in Israel itself.
The version of 'Occupied' that I'd like to address means: Israel has no claim to any part of the West Bank, is hence illegally present in all parts of it, and should, by international law, withdraw.
This version of 'Occupied' is not supported, as far as I know, by either the US, the EU or the UN security council. If you think it is, I'd be interested in seeing some supporting data.
Even if it were supported by these bodies though, I don't see how that would be enough to make the territories occupied in the sense quoted above. The position of international bodies is, regrettably, often driven more by interests than principle. Ninety years ago, for example, major international organisations (The League of Nations, European powers, the Ottoman Empire) supported Israel's (to be) claim to all British Mandate territories, which includes the West Bank. Agreements were signed [1], and ratified by the UN at its founding.
What I am saying is, that each side in this conflict has legitimate claims to the territory, and that both sides' claims are supported by past international resolutions and treaties, by a historical presence in the land, and perhaps most importantly, by an agreement between the sides themselves - the Oslo Accords.
No reasonable Israeli, including myself, is interested in prolonging Israeli rule over the Palestinian population. I even believe, as I think do most Israelis, that within a comprehensive solution to this conflict, it is in Israel's strategic interest to treat the West Bank as largely Palestinian territory, regardless of any claims and rights Israel might have to it.
Israel has, several times in the past, agreed to withdraw from most of the West Bank, most notably during the Camp David accords of 2000, and the succeeding peace plan put forward by Clinton ("The Clinton Parameters"), which were rejected by the Palestinians at the time. A comprehensive account of events is given by Dennis Ross in his book "The Missing Peace", which I can warmly recommend to any student of the conflict.
Israel's current military presence in most of the West Bank, is, as I see it, largely a security issue. After Israel's 2005 withdrawal from Gaza, a Palestinian civil war ensued that resulted in Hamas rule over Gaza. Hamas openly calls for Israel's destruction, and backs it up with routine rocket fire into Israeli population centers.
Israel is a liberal democracy, largely driven by western values of equality and prosperity. Our neighbors are, sadly, not. Along with most Israelis, I hope that a peaceful resolution to this conflict can be found, and take no issue to with eventual Palestinian control over nearly the entire West Bank and East Jerusalem.
PS. If anyone would like to continue this discussion by email, I'd be happy to do that - david [at] skillsapp [dot] com
United Nations Security Council Resolution 446, adopted on March 22, 1979: ... Affirming once more that the Fourth Geneva Convention relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War of 12 August 1949 is applicable to the Arab territories occupied by Israel since 1967, including Jerusalem. ... Calls once more upon Israel, as the occupying Power, to abide scrupulously by the 1949 Fourth Geneva Convention, to rescind its previous measures and to desist from taking any action which would result in changing the legal status and geographical nature and materially affecting the demographic composition of the Arab territories occupied since 1967, including Jerusalem, and, in particular, not to transfer parts of its own civilian population into the occupied Arab territories; (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UN_Security_Council_Resolution_...)
I don't see how any other conclusion can be drawn from the use of "occupy" in referring to the 4th Geneva Convention than that Israel is illegally present.
As a practical matter, you may be right that no one today realistically expects Israel to withdraw from the entire West Bank, but 40 years ago people pretty clearly felt differently.
I'd probably disagree, and I'll try give you two points to support my position:
POINT ONE
45 years ago, right at the end of the six day war, when Israel took control over the West Bank, the UN security council passed resolution 242, which required:
(i) Withdrawal of Israel armed forces from territories occupied in the recent conflict;
(ii) Termination of all claims or states of belligerency and respect for and acknowledgment of the sovereignty, territorial integrity and political independence of every State in the area and their right to live in peace within secure and recognized boundaries free from threats or acts of force."
At the time, as far as I know, Arab states lobbied heavily to include the world 'all' before 'territories' in point (i), and the wording was not accepted by the Security Council. Furthermore, point (ii) can be (and often has been) read to mean that Israel has serious and legitimate concerns which need to be addressed, and that any withdrawal should only happen within a peace agreement which deals with these legitimate concerns. After all, 20 years earlier, Israel's neighbors tried to destroy it, although Israel claimed sovereignty over solely those territories deemed acceptable by the UN partition plan of 1947.
I think another important point is, that the ambiguity in language of the resolution is by design. You could imagine a much clearer resolution, a resolution with unequivocally deems the occupation illegal and calls for immediate withdrawal. Something which would read like a judge's ideas on what needs to be done, for example, with money a thief robbed from a bank ("give it back right now, no ifs buts and whens").
POINT TWO
Even the resolution you quote, 446, as far as I can tell, does not deal with the illegality of an Israeli military presence in the territories, but with the illegality of the treatment of civillian populations. Check out this part of 446:
2. [The resolution] Strongly deplores the failure of Israel to abide by Security Council resolutions 237, 252 and 298...
Now think about this. Twelve years had passed since the 1967 war, and Israel had still not withdrawn from the territories. The above part of the resolution, very conspicuously, is missing a reference to resolution 242, which I discussed above. The UN security council then, twelve years after the 1967 war, with Israel still present in the West Bank, could not agree that 242 was violated, and, as far as I know, has not deemed 242 violated since. If I'm right on this point, it would seem to strongly support the view that 242 (and the UN security council since then) did not, and does not deem Israeli military presence in the entire West Bank illegal, and does not support the view that Israel needs to unilaterally withdraw to 1967 lines, but rather, that Israel still has legitimate concerns which need to be addressed, and rights to at least part of the territory.
The are occupied from the point of view of the people living there. If your family lives there for hundreds of years then a new government comes in and takes over your house and evicts you, or demolishes your house under some "license" or "permit clause" and then evicts you, it is not unreasonable to call that an occupation.
Well, there is strong evidence that "The Exodus" (forming the basis of the claim to Canaan) in fact did not happen. So if you take this into consideration, it is in fact an illegal occupation. So I would take the "legitimate claims" statement with a grain of salt (or more).
Really? Invoking the U.N is "intellectual hipsterism"? So what is considered a valid political argument in your parts of the world? FOX News?
Also, regarding the "go back to reddit" insult. Funny that it comes from an account created just 10 hours ago just to reply to my comment --and that was downvoted to gray-death at that.
Good point, but you can also probably get the permits far more easily than a Palestinian living in the West Bank who doesn't speak the language of the government that he does not recognize.
In my understanding it is in fact both acceptable under the guidelines and especially relevant to hackers and I will explain my reasoning on each point in order.
The post is acceptable under the guidelines because it is factual reporting about Palestine and Israel, which is important information that I do not believe would normally get reported in the US media. I have seen airplay of criticism (demonization even), mostly of the Palestinians but occasionally of the Israeli settlers, but not the facts.
I believe that the reason the facts about Palestine are suppressed is because of organized "Hasbara" (public relations) efforts by Israel's supporters in the USA. (Example link: http://www.hasbara.com/)
(I believe the factual record is one sidedly unflattering to Israel, so I believe that to be the Israeli motive.)
This is important information because people who knew the facts might choose to act differently, for example in terms of career choice or investment choice.
For example, given the facts that I know about how Israel treats innocent Palestinian civilians, I have an ethical problem with Israel and do not intend to work for Israel, to buy Israeli products, to do business with Israel, to buy stock in companies that make investments in Israel, or otherwise enrich Israel in any way that I can avoid, directly or indirectly. I am not a customer of Starbucks or of Marks and Spencer for this reason.
This issue is particularly pertinent to hackers because startup funding, research and development and technology transfer depend greatly on the military industrial complex - which is particularly developed in Israel and very strongly connected to the US military industrial complex. For example, if one does graduate research in networking or communications systems at Cornell, one's algorithms and work just might end up being used inside Israeli weapons used against civilians.
Links:
http://mondoweiss.net/2011/12/israeli-university-bids-w-corn...http://www.redress.cc/americas/ldavidson20120102
It would be a shame if Hacker News guidelines become warped and misapplied as censorship tools for Hasbara and I am alarmed to see standard Hasbara talking points - such as 'The territories are "Disputed" not "Occupied"' - used to justify such censorship even on this page.
I don't mean to hijack the thread, but being a big fan of Starbucks who would like to be a moral/ethical person, can you explain why you are not a customer of Starbucks or provide a link or two? Would be much appreciated thanks.
Unfortunately I can't refer you to a comprehensive information source on companies supporting Israel, but you might find more information by googling for "jews for boycotting israeli goods" or "boycott divestment sanctions"
Sigh... I flagged the article. Please keep stories like this off HN, it is bad enough with the language wars people.
(I follow the Middle East conflict a bit, because it is informative to compare my Swedish media with BBC/NY Times. News items such as Pallywood or torture between Palestinian groups are literally censored.)
The basic reason I started to care a bit is because I find it depressing when people hate and demonize a whole democracy with very heterogeneous political life.
Especially if said people never criticise neither rocket artillery against cities nor the glorifying of bombing/shooting children at close range. (No, it is not the Israeli side that do that.)
I have also never seen any criticism from these people of the Arab world's way of destroying the Palestinian refugees' lives, by refusing to integrate them. This is arguably worse than anything Israel has done, even in your description of Israel.
And to start talking about organised Jewish propaganda controlling a country's media is straight up disgusting. It smacks of the muslim world's copying of traditional anti semitic hate propaganda.
Then we have the muslim world's support of the mass murders in south Sudan, which in number of dead etc must be a thousand times worse than even your description of Israel. Talk about astronomical double standards for different groups...
I could continue for a while, but this won't change your opinions. You "know" that it is OK to ignore racist hate propaganda etc etc, since it is done against the evil ones.
>>How did we get from Palestine to the Muslim world?
I answered what uce0054 wrote about in the comment tree above, mainly demonizing and double standards.
Edit: If you don't really think it is relevant that the main critics of Israel mistreat the Palestinians much more than Israel, it is funny... but not surprising. I've never seen that from an Israel-critic.
Based on your posts in this thread I'm really getting the feeling that you're an apologist for the human rights abuses Israel has perpetrated against their Arab citizens. Oh, maybe they aren't actually citizens because they aren't people.
Add a "," if you fail to parse. "... from these people, of the Arab world's way of destroying the Palestinian refugees' lives, by refusing to integrate them."
Which you certainly realized, fredster_s (in your 4th comment.)
You insinuated that my discussion of Hasbara means that I am some kind of "disgusting" Nazi referencing "traditional anti semitic hate propaganda", when I was linking to the Israeli Citizens Information Council's own website.
You may find it "depressing when people hate", well I find it depressing when people can't answer my points and so have to resort to declaring the subject to be off limits, then smearing me, and finally changing the subject to Sudan. You owe me an apology.
Oh, and by the way, the Israelis did shoot children, bomb and rocket cities in Gaza in 2009, so how on earth do you say "(No, it is not the Israeli side that do that.)"?
You have nothing to say about that the Arab countries destroy Palestinians' lives more than Israel ever did? Or my other points re double standards?
>>You insinuated that my discussion of Hasbara means that I am some kind of "disgusting" Nazi referencing "traditional anti semitic hate propaganda", when I was linking to the Israeli Citizens Information Council's own website.
You wrote that you thought the Jews controlled the information in the US media. That is less than one step from the Zion protocols, quoted in the Hamas charter etc.
That is traditional antisemitic conspiracy arguments.
>>the Israelis did shoot children, bomb and rocket cities in Gaza in 2009
If an army fight people that hide among civilians, there will be civilian victims. Even if the army follows the war laws. That is very different from targeting and glorifying murdering children, which I wrote about.
(And civilians are generally not a direct target for the Israeli army -- Yes, you know the Israelis are evil and want to murder children, but please realise it is bad PR and against their direct interests.)
> You wrote that you thought the Jews controlled the information in the US media... That is less than one step from the Zion protocols, quoted in the Hamas charter etc.
This is not quite what I wrote, but whatever. Even if it were, it's not just the Okhrana, the Nazis and Hamas who say stuff like this either, it is also Zionist lobbyist Haim Saban
(Link: http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2010/05/10/100510fa_fact_...)
The fact that he said the same thing doesn't make me a pro-Israel billionaire either, anymore than the Protocols make me the Tzarist secret police. The point is that you can dismiss something if it is untrue, not by calling names. You still owe me an apology.
> Even if the army follows the war laws. That is very different from targeting and glorifying murdering children, which I wrote about.
But let's say you are right for the sake of argument that "Arab countries hurt Palestinians more than Israel ever did"
How is that justification for suppressing the factual reportage
"Israeli authorities are threatening to demolish the installations in six of the 16 remote West Bank communities being illuminated by alternative energy, arguing the panels and turbines were installed without permits."
?
It is not. You are using untruths and smears to try to suppress the facts.
There are lobby groups in the media for every interest group. You argue that the jews control the media with very little support and ignore that it is a carbon copy of racist hate propaganda.
You guys also wear white capes?
>>The Israeli ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians caused the refugee problem in the first place
You handpick facts and twist them. Some points:
1. There were lots of refugee problems in both world wars, many worse than Palestine. This is the only case were the suffering was made permanent for generations, just to be able to keep up the hate. It is just disgusting that you blame others for what the Arab states did differently than the rest of the world.
2. There were more people thrown out from the muslim world just for being jews than Palestinians that fled in the middle of a civil war. Then there were jews from the West Bank that fled 1948-1949. Why do you guys never mention them?
3. Argh, enough.
You don't argue, you write one eyed hateful propaganda. I stopped reading.
This is the result of letting this subject onto HN. The language wars trolls are bad as it is.
> This is the result of letting this subject onto HN.
Yes, exactly. This subject will always, without fail, produce vitriolic hate-filled comments, without possibility of changing opinions.
Ann will say "Look at how $GROUP does this"; Bob will accuse Ann of blatant anti-semitic racism while Charles will accuse Ann of ignoring the blatant human-rights abuses against some other group.
This is entirely predictable, and is why subjects like this do not belong on HN.
Why? The alternative to censoring the topic is to let all the facts emerge.
berntb can mention Hamas bombing civilians and Jewish expulsions, and I can mention the ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians and Israeli actions against the Occupy movement. I don't need to negate his points or convince him of anything.
Once all the facts are on the table we can then trust the Hacker News readership to be intelligent enough to decide for themselves.
...the fact that you misuse the term "ethnic cleansing" is annoying enough for me to respond, but this is my last reply to this thread.
County X has two populations, the zarbs and the tiwks. The zarbs kill all the tiwks. The zarbs have been ethnically cleansed.
You may think this is a trivial point. But you're talking to an international audience, and you're talking about a subject where language is analysed in minute detail for perceived insult or support or whatnot.
>>The alternative to censoring the topic is to let all the facts emerge.
That would be a normal discussion. This isn't.
When I noted the official acceptance and idolising of terror, even murdering sleeping children with a knife, you "countered" by judging a very heterogeneous country by a T-shirt...
Just to not let the Israeli side be less than evil -- or better than "your" side in anything.
I commented on the insanity of the "argument" three times -- you just wrote that your T-shirt claim proved something!
1) Can you give an example of worse argumentation, ever?
2) Do you really think anyone wants to read that kind of garbage?
Edit: So it is clear. My point is that the facts won't emerge when the people debating lie and use obfuscation (i.e. lots of text) when they are plain wrong.
Also, your claim that it is possible to debate this subjects with fanatics is proven wrong. QED.
Edit: Since you don't seem to know it, you can find groups having most any opinion in a democracy. So activist web sites is not exactly the best support.
You said "the glorifying of bombing/shooting children at close range. (No, it is not the Israeli side that do that.)"
Thereby condemning the whole Palestinian "side" on the basis of unspecified "people".
I pointed out that the Israeli side do do that too. You then claimed it was only "some"
Israelis. I pointed out that in fact it was the people pulling the trigger. And I provided references.
And I never claimed that every Israeli glorified that; in fact I have referenced Israelis who do not.
So in fact I have nothing to answer you for.
However, you have to answer for smearing the entire Palestinian side without providing a single reference.
Apart from unsubstantiated assertions, the information content of your posts has been nil.
I will charitably presume that you meant to condemn Hamas.
In that case, let the facts against Hamas stand. And let the facts stand about the Israeli destruction of Palestinian infrastructure - which was the original topic. Readers are smart enough to make up their own minds.
I don't need to "debate" you point by point, especially since you go off topic and into ad-hominems.
And Hacker News doesn't need your permission to cover topics you are uncomfortable about.
Since you don't seem to understand -- I argue that this is an impossible subject on HN, since the fanatics are just insane.
You support my position when you e.g. quote an 86 year old individual and political activists to "show" your position -- i.e. that the Israeli side is evil and guilty of everything bad that happened.
>>Are you trying to claim that all Palestinians are terrorists
You assumed I wouldn't check back a few days later, so you could safely add another dishonest strawman attack?
Already in the brother comment to yours, I gave a link to one of my comments which answer this latest strawman. The relevant quote from it:
You do realize that there is a difference between an official policy (mural paintings and celebrations when children are murdered with a knife in their sleep, etc) -- and the attitudes of individuals.
I have made it repeatedly clear that I am talking about the innocent Palestinian civilians and not "official policy".
If you want to change the subject to "official policy", then state whose official policy. Specifically who. Hamas? Fatah? Who?
Unless it is somehow the "official policy" of the individual villagers being deprived of electricity in the original solar cells story, I will not be impressed.
Oh, and provide references. Your word isn't good enough.
I have been sprinkling references throughout my posts and, last time I checked, you had not not provided even one, yet you accuse me of dishonesty?
This time you came back 9 days later to ger the last word...
In my previous comment I showed that you knowingly lied about my opinions, then argued against your straw man.
Then, you claim I have nerve?!
And after you lie to make an argument, it is a bit late to start muttering about references.
(Besides, the latest discussion was your claim that the Mideast is a good subject for HN, which obviously is not the case -- because of the lying hate propagandists. Again, thanks for proving my point.)
If you think the facts that I or the original poster (or anyone else) have presented about the Israeli
treatment of innocent Palestinian civilians, or about Israeli public relations, are selective, then let's see all the facts.
That doesn't mean "let's change the subject to Sudan". It doesn't mean "let's call him an antisemite".
It also doesn't mean "let's make stuff up".
For example, you claimed that Israel doesn't glorify infanticide and I provided the link showing that snipers from the IDF Givati Brigade glorify the shooting dead of fetuses enough to wear Tshirts about it. Or you said that I provided "very little support" for my contentions about Israeli public relations, when in fact I provided the term in Hebrew hasbara that any reader can google and wikipedia for and decide for themselves.
It looks pretty silly when you make up stuff that a reader can falsify by looking on the same web page.
Worst of all, you keep trying to allege that I said that Jews - control the media, when what I talked about was Israel supporters
- organize public relations.
This is called ad-hominem. You are trying to label me as Hitler because you are on the wrong side of the facts about Israel's treatment of innocent Palestinian civilians, and so you can't stand seeing these facts on Hacker News and wish to censor them.
It is intellectually dishonest and I read it as a violation of the Hacker News Guideline:
"When disagreeing, please reply to the argument instead of calling names."
I realise that conspiracy theories, intolerance and similar breed like flies in dictatorships. Afaik, it was the same in e.g. Eastern Germany.
But even if you grew up in a non-democracy, you should be smarter than condemning a whole country for what some individuals do. Especially in this case, with all the very different political movements inside Israel.
I realise you were taught that kind of "reasoning" in school and by media, but start thinking for yourself. For your own sake.
For instance, consider the anti semitic-inspired conspiracy theories about media control -- if you see your other garbage (T-shirts, etc) you ought to realise that you've been fed with some outrageous lies. Sooo... there might be things in those US media which you don't know, right?
All the above assumes you are just brainwashed by your social environment and not consciously doing propaganda.
(That you are unable to acknowledge a point and either ignores it or start with judging countries for a T-shirt(!) do speak for you being a hate mongering propagandist. But I am not certain.)
You didn't like that I wrote that you argued non seriously.
But you have nothing to say about the facts I argued that you handpicked, re expulsions for racist reasons (wrong religion) as compared to in the middle of a burning civil war, which both sides did?
So you have totally different standards for different sides.
I wrote that "Israel doesn't glorify infanticide"
>>snipers from the IDF Givati Brigade
I don't believe you are honest here, either.
You do realize that there is a difference between an official policy (mural paintings and celebrations when children are murdered with a knife in their sleep, etc) -- and the attitudes of individuals.
(You will find individuals with most any opinion in any country and in democracies they can express most of those opinions, too.)
I already made this point re T-shirts, you had nothing to say then either.
And so on. Keep this subject and the fanatics off HN.
>>Worst of all, you keep trying to allege that I said that Jews - control the media, when what I talked about was Israel supporters - organize public relations.
You ignored the 1st sentence in what you comment:
"There are lobby groups in the media for every interest group. You argue that the jews control the media with very little support and ignore that it is a carbon copy of racist hate propaganda."
But you know that. You can only argue against straw men.
As my last words:
Repeatedly condemning a heterogeneous democracy based on T-shirts of a small subgroup.... That must be the most pathetic and dishonest garbage I've seen in my life.
Then you claim I am dishonest... I got vertigo. If you're a troll, congratulations on blood pressure raised by sheer dishonesty.
It is liberal jewish website that criticizes the Sudanese genocide and the treatment of Palestinian refugees by the arab world, seeing as you don't get enough of that from the Swedish media.
So now it's propaganda to tell the truth about human rights abuses? I can't believe this, the outrage that people would have about a statement like that were we talking about Syria or South Africa would be insane. When it's Israel everyone has to give them a free pass? Stop trying to bury the truth of what Israel is doing to their own people just because they are Arabs.
hasbara bla bla bla.
you read thrice as many anti Israel pieces then pro ones.
very few intelligent people comprehend the situation and knee jerk reactions are almost unanimously anti Israel
> I do not believe would normally get reported in the US media.
Why? Because you believe in a conspiracy of US news companies? This is laughable. If you cannot read these stories then go to Huffington Post or similar circle jerk sites. THIS DOES NOT BELONG ON HN NEWS
> I believe that the reason the facts about Palestine are suppressed is because of organized "Hasbara" (public relations) efforts by Israel's supporters in the USA. (Example link: http://www.hasbara.com/)
Those anti-Israeli people often accuses those who support Israel or at least mention that Israel is a secular democracy with freedom of religion (compared to its neighbours) as being "Hasbara boys". I've been accused of this various times - it is a way to silence anyone who defends Israel.
> Otherwise I can't explain why there hasn't been more uproar about Israel's killing of US servicemen
USS liberty was an accident that happened 40 years ago. Every anti-Israeli likes to bring this up...
> For example, given the facts that I know about how Israel treats innocent Palestinian civilians, I have an ethical problem with Israel and do not intend to work for Israel, to buy Israeli products, to do business with Israel,
I dislike how non-Muslims and women are treated in almost all the countries around Israel (Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Jordan, etc...). Israel is a shining example of democracy and technological development. They produced more nobel prize winners than all of the other countries combined. They have technological industry and development and a modern society. Whilst women are not allowed to even go outside of the house in most neighbouring countries.
But any case your tripe does not belong on Hacker News! Go back to reddit!
> The sale of the Phalcon radar to China is recent.
You mentioned the USS Liberty and then I mentioned that it happened long ago. Then you mention something completely different and unrelated. Don’t change the topic and just answer me this:
1. Did the USS Liberty event happen more than 40 years ago?
2. Was it an accident?
> The sale of the Phalcon radar to China is recent.
Israel did not sell the Radar to China, you are lying to me.
Israel wanted to sell the systems to China and asked for permission from the USA. The USA denied it and they didn't sell it.
So what? The biggest trading partner of China is the USA. Do you see China as an enemy of the USA? Should the USA stop trading with China?
I would say that that is pretty nice from the sovereign state of Israel to ask for US permission first.
Again you accuse me of being either Jewish or a Jewish puppet. This is pathetic of you and I am quite sad of what has become of Hacker News.
I know it is quite fashionable for people with too much time on their hands to jump on some PC bandwagon such as Israel bashing. I just don’t think that you are ill informed, extremely naive and a hypocrite.
Hacker News was one of the last social sites where this tripe has been kept at bay. It is just sad that the likes of you will now also ruin HN.
>1. Did the USS Liberty event happen more than 40 years ago?
>2. Was it an accident?
In the links in my original post
'Lt. Gen. Marshall Carter, the director of the NSA, told Congress that the attack "couldn't be anything else but deliberate."'
> Israel did not sell the Radar to China, you are lying to me.
You owe me a retraction. In the links in my original post
"Cohen demanded Israel cancel the US $1-2 billion sale of 3-5 AWACS airborne radar aircraft to China."
I never claimed the sale went through. It is pointless for me to cite the facts if you don't read the links.
More from the original links:
"
Former CIA Director James Woolsey testified Israel has covertly sold 'several billions' of dollars worth of top-secret US technology to Israel since 1983. The Inspector General of the US State Department found, in a 1992 report, a 'systematic and growing pattern' of Israel selling American military technology in direct violation of US law.
...
Pentagon sources charge Israel 'backdoored' US technology to China for the Patriot AA missile, other surface-to-air missiles; the PL-8 air-to-air missiles; C-802 anti-ship missiles; advanced composite tank armor and tank guns; aircraft avionics and ground radar systems; and the J-10 fighter, which is based on secret US technology used in Israel's cancelled 'Lavi' fighter.
"
I believe a lot of hackers would think twice about supplying advanced technology to Israel if they knew the facts about Israelis trying to sell it to China (or in the old days Apartheid South Africa)
> Again you accuse me of being either Jewish or a Jewish puppet.
I accused you of supporting Israel. It is even more pointless for me to reply to you at all if you don't read what I write, just what you make up.
In fact I think I'll stop replying to you henceforth.
> It is just sad that the likes of you will now also ruin HN.
> In the links in my original post 'Lt. Gen. Marshall Carter, the director of the NSA,
Blah blah blah. An investigation of the US government concluded that the attack was an accident. Israel also had no motive to attack the USA and it happened in the middle of a war.
> I never claimed the sale went through.
I do not read your links to fringe sites. You talked of a "sale" (past tense).
To make vague comments about the arms industry is quite dubious. You know that the USA itself sells arms to countries which may not be so nice? (e.g. Saudi Arabia).
> I believe a lot of hackers would think twice about supplying advanced technology to Israel if they knew the facts about Israelis trying to sell it to China (or in the old days Apartheid South Africa)
Trying to flog a dead horse. You know that a lot of the technology that was passed on to South Africa by Israel was at the behest of the USA? You know that the USA encouraged SA to enter a war in Angola to support anti-communist groups and prevent the spread of communism in Africa? That the USA could not directly support UNITA because congress was being unco-operative?
You know that the Soviet Union directly (and through its proxies such as Cuba) supported communist insurgents, but the west did not do the same? Even China supported the same side as South Africa during the war – because they had a problem with the spread of Soviet influence.
But you like to dumb down everything into neat little sentences, bring up obscure facts and hypocritically judge countries such as Israel by different standards than its neighbours.
I never really understood anti-Israel zealots such as you. It seems often that it is some radically left ideology mixed with a healthy dose of anti-semitism.
> In fact I think I'll stop replying to you henceforth.
I would appreciate that! Also, take your tripe anti-Semitic tripe back to reddit.
off topic and annoying.
anti-Israel agendas on hnews.
the article is 2% about renewable energy and 98% Israel bashing, typically ignoring the Israeli point of view. shame
If somebody would write an article in nazi germany about how the jews dont get the food and the electricity they wanted than that would be an anti-nazi article. however that doesnt mean is annoying or factual wrong.
it also wouldn't belong on a tech site.
what's annoying is that non tech articles get posted just for furthering Israel hatred and only a few call it out. then Israelis feel besieged and everybody wonders why. your reference to ww2 is fitting though not for the reason you think, but because like then, Jews were picked out for special treatment, except today we're called Zionists, so as to be politically correct
Zionists think they are the chosen ones right? Isnt that similar to some other idealogies?
Actually I am not pro palestina or anti isreal.
I just think that religion in its generality does not promote peac and understanding. A world without religionbwould be a better place.
