Hacker News Reader

Comment by solumunus | Hacker News Reader

I’m in the UK. There are a lot of people who are voting purely on the issue of Israel. For all this time I’ve found that to be quite ridiculous, we have enough problems here so why would a conflict we have little involvement in be your primary issue?

I’m starting to see a justification for this view that’s less about support for Palestine. It’s absolutely unacceptable that our governments are being infiltrated and manipulated by foreign powers (Israel). The grip they have over almost the entire political spectrum has become so clear, and it’s genuinely terrifying. It’s also very obvious, more obvious in the UK, that the support is not ideological - it’s corruption, coercion, manipulation.

I think I’m potentially there now, I simply cannot vote for you if you’ve been corrupted by Israel.

View on HN

What’s so mind blowing about it is that this would make a ton of sense if it was a big superpower like China or even a greatly declined one like Russia.

But, no, it’s “some random country” with a population smaller than Ohio that’s 5x smaller in land mass than Ohio.

Basically if you removed the entire greater Cleveland area from Ohio you’d get the population of Israel.

The global influence per capita is astounding.

If the experience of some relatives of mine who left during the '90s is still valid, much of the defence, tech and real estate economy in Israel is basically UK and US based, with much of the actual leadership holding dual passports.

It's influential the same way Monaco, The Cayman Islands or Bahrain are.

Turns out that it’s easier to be manipulated by a nefarious ally rather than the expected enemy.

its not a random country. its a country given to some people by the UK after second world war. Its very specifically placed too -_-. Dont think country borders dictate whos in charge of politics....

Not wanting to say they are snakes but you better get it out of your head that Israel is some random small country, to the west atleast.

They created it with very specific intent.

I don’t think it’s simple, but feel free to elaborate.

> country given to some people by the UK after second world war.

Very begrudgingly.. They didn’t even allow Jewish refugees fleeing the Holocaust to enter Palestine during the war since Britain didn’t want to agitate the local Arab population. There was no grand design Britain had no clear policy or real idea what they were trying to accomplish there so they were just happy to get rid of the territory asap and make it someone else’s problem.

> There are a lot of people who are voting purely on the issue of Israel

In the most recent elections many Green party members ran specifically on the pro-Palestine side of the issue.

And while Israel is a small country, the world population of pro-Palestinians, and its influx and influence on the UK is not small. So these are, at least in part, proxy votes on other issues.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com