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Comment by newjersey | Hacker News Reader

I was going to say bullshit but you're right. Even Israel does this https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_for_Prevention_of_Damage_t...

FTA:

> Law for Prevention of Damage to State of Israel through Boycott (Hebrew: חוק למניעת פגיעה במדינת ישראל באמצעות חרם, התשע"א-2011), also commonly known as the Boycott law, is an Israeli Anti-boycott law that was approved in the Knesset on 11 July 2011. The law has been widely criticised.

I strongly believe that Israel has a right to exist but laws like these do not give me hope for the Israeli people if they are complacent or (worse) supportive of these repressive laws.

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> I strongly believe that Israel has a right to exist but

I don't get how questioning fascism becomes a question over a state's legitimacy. Could you imagine if someone said that the USAPATRIOT Act brought into question the USA's right to exist?

Wow, I didn't even think about it as I wrote it. I think I wrote it because I needed to remind myself. I guess somehow I have put it in my head that people who oppose anything that the government of Israel does is likely an enemy of Israel. You're right. Reality is not so black and white. I know I criticized George W Bush right here in the US about the "either you're with us or you're against us" dichotomy. Kind of makes me a hypocrite when I don't see my own bias on the same topic when it comes to Israel.

It is absolutely possible to (and indeed we should encourage people to) speak up against the bad actions and policies of the government of Israel. Doing so does not make us enemies of Israel. This is so very simple and logical in any other context but I have to stop and think when it comes to this issue. I think I was trying to convince myself that I am not doing or saying anything that could hurt.

Perhaps by reaffirming my support for the right to exist hurts rather than helps the situation. I didn't think of that. I feel pretty stupid.

The fact that you feel the need to do this is evidence of how powerful their propaganda machine is: even criticizing an objectively awful law we feel the need to go out of our way to assure our audience that we are not hate-filled antisemites as a precaution, because of how often any criticism no matter how valid is instantly written off as hateful antisemitism.

It's the language that Israel's leaders use all the time, so it's not surprising that it slips into more intelligent conversation.

Because Israel's right to exist is constantly attacked by many people, to the point that any criticism of them may be interpreted by some as a criticism of their legitimacy, whether that's a logical assumption or not. Unfortunately, to effectively communicate you often have to write for other people's (sometimes mistaken) assumptions about what you may mean.

> Could you imagine if someone said that the USAPATRIOT Act brought into question the USA's right to exist?

If there was a large and vocal group of disenfranchised Native Americans which an active, extremist and violent military faction, then yes, I could imagine it. I wouldn't agree with it, but I could imagine it happening.

if Native Americans are only now begining to complain about their rights being taken away, because a law was passed stripping the rights of their settler/conquerors, they're probably a few hundred years too late, and badly misdirected.

A more apt comparison would be the natives taking the Great Treaty of 1722 (or its violations) to be the reason why the United States is illegitimate as a country. That might actually be an interesting argument.

> if Native Americans are only now begining to complain about their rights being taken away

That wasn't really the point of my argument, which was hypothetical, and to match the situation in Israel would mean that Native Americans would have always had a somewhat similar stance as the theoretical one presented. I'm not trying to mix current Native American sentiment into the discussion.

> A more apt comparison...

That depends on your goal. Mine was to provide a hypothetical but somewhat equivalent situation to possibly put your statement in a new perspective.

> That might actually be an interesting argument.

It probably is, but I'm inadequately educated on the topic currently to make any useful arguments in any direction on that. :/

Interesting. Since the difference between not buying something and a boycott is communicating your intentions to the public, I think this is really a restriction on speech.

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