The reason behind the TikTok ban

Are you joking? China and Russia want "a new world order", which is a reference that would be extremely clear to (older) politicians but not to most people. The US (even under Trump) supports the UN world view, which is a lot of independent small countries that serve their own interests, protected by a group of nuclear-armed "superpowers" that can annihilate each other, but only at the cost of their own lives.

The "new world order", Putin said it most explicitly. It is to not necessarily end countries as a concept, but to create 2 kinds of countries: the "superpowers", with in his case a focus on Russia, but essentially the US, Russia, China and maybe India. Every other country would have to choose one of the superpowers ... or face military action and invasion. And, like Belarus, Moldova and Hungary, but equally Mongolia, Tibet, ... would have to do what their allied super power wants, whatever it wants.

This usually means giving up their natural resources without getting the best price on international markets. But it can mean other things, like sabotaging other would-be superpowers (like Hungary's "EU membership" that is working overtime to prevent EU "interference" in Ukraine)

Now rule number 1 of the "old" US-centric post-WW2 world order is, of course, no moving country borders, under any circumstances. There is a tiny escape hatch, which is that if you absolutely utterly for some reason have to move country borders, you need agreement of EVERY nuclear power (this is the UN security council), and a majority of all members. Now Palestinians want to conquer Israel ... and ... well. Sorry. Not allowed. If that's allowed then this might spiral into 500 conflicts worldwide with a lot of countries trying to conquer ... something (like natural resources, harbors, eradicate and/or replace some ethnic group (for example Rwanda/Congo) ...), and because of the total military dominance of a few countries, lead to the "superpowers-get-anything-they-want-for-free" world order vision of Putin and Xi.

Hence how the cards lie: US - wants the "two state solution" (meaning Israel and Palestinians DO NOT MOVE). This solution has the problem that Palestinians (and most of the world's muslims) hate it, and after 7 or so wars, Israel is no longer much of a fan of it, either. But if there's one thing that neither the US, nor China, nor Russia, nor the UN cares about, it's what anybody other than they themselves want.

Russia and China - want the situation destabilized. Just so we're clear: they don't want Palestinians to win, they want war. They want the whole middle east fighting, which seems achievable, they want borders to move because that will be one more argument for their new world order. You should not misunderstand this as wanting to help the Palestinians. They DO NOT want Palestinians to win. Just to not lose quite a rapidly. Get enough people to die on a constant basis to get the middle east boiling, nothing more. They want chaos, and they probably perceive Israel's attitude as being 20% removed from finally giving the Palestinians the chaos they so desperately seem to want (I would argue Palestinians don't really want war, they just have corrupt leadership that keeps getting bribed by Russia and now China to cause war. For Palestinians, it's about money for the rich, not land, not religion or racism. Even though they are racist pseudo-religious fanatics, but beyond a good sounding excuse, that's not important at all. The world is full of racist pseudo-religious groups of fanatics).

What China and Russia see in the Palestinians is a way to create war, create chaos. To be able to say to African nations "you know, if Chinese companies get to mine those lithium deposits in your country, we could protect you from your neighbor that wants to eradicate your people with Russian weapons ... deal?"

I would argue that absolutely nobody other than Putin and the CCP want that (and therefore, yes, rational people want the Palestinians to lose any conflict as badly and as quickly as possible, to minimize the chance of the conflict blowing up, while simultaneously pressuring Israel to leave the status quo alone)

Isn't what you're saying fitting to the narrative presented by Gallagher? Also why are you focusing on what the article is portraying and not what the politician who pushed for the bill is literally stating exactly what happened?

> the article is reaching by asserting that pro Israeli lobbyists have outsized sway

Given that 38 US states have laws against boycotting Israel, Texas required hurricane aid recipients to promise not to boycott Israel as a condition of receiving aid, and Texas will fire teachers for not pledging not to boycott Israel, I wouldn't say it's reaching at all.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-BDS_laws#Anti-BDS_laws_in...

[2] Did a City in Texas Require Harvey Aid Recipients to Promise Not to Boycott Israel? [yes] - https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/texas-harvey-israel/

[3] Teacher Sues Texas After Being Fired For Refusing to Sign Pro-Israel Contract - https://www.newsweek.com/teacher-fired-refusing-sign-pro-isr...

this also explains why some people intentionally choose not to see the bodies

I found a sense of deja vu related to the scence 'Doesn't look like anything to me' from Westworld when I saw people continuing to ignore the bodies

swipe up, vote down

we tend to ignore those hard truth which may break the running program in our heads

Lots of users flag things because it’s a guaranteed flame war, I almost flagged it after reading because it’s kind of one persons opinion with a few references to politicians’ statements and it asserts that this is the whole story when it’s not, ie, just someone’s crappy substack without any substantial new info. But I’ll refrain hoping that there’s some discussion on the merits of banning Tik-Tok, but really anything Israel adjacent is not going to last long on hacker news. Arguing about it does not do much to build community.