>To learn who rules over you, simply find out who you are not allowed to criticize
Literally protected categories! No, criticism won’t get the cops after you in America. But also, no, criticizing Israel in America is commonplace and not really prosecuted. (The courts ruled the student stuff was illegal.)
Those crazy libertarians and weird urbanists that criticized disabled parking spots, have not been shoved in the back of an unmarked van for writing about it in small magazines.
Yet when students write against zionist genocide in small college magazines they get threatened, and shoved in unmarked vans. No need for dishonesty.
Most people criticizing Israel are not being prosecuted.
> when students write against zionist genocide in small college magazines they get threatened, and shoved in unmarked vans. No need for dishonesty
Dishonesty is ignoring that those actions were halted by the courts.
Same kind of drivel as "there's nothing wrong with defending your own people", until you realize that "your own people" = "the racial majority" and "defending" = "defending against other races". Take a moment to think about what you're saying and why people say it. These aren't universal truths; it only takes a moment to find a counterexample that should prove to you that these aren't worthy of being guiding beliefs.
Anyone living by these kinds of figures of speech isn't a critical thinker, which is pretty much why they exist. Authoritarians benefit when you don't think too hard about how things work.
And yet criticizing Israel is in the political mainstream in multiple cities…
I’d honestly say it’s more risky to criticize Hamas in some New York circles than it is Israel.
Non-citizen students were also deported from the US for criticizing Israel. Courts later ruled this unconstitutional since the 1A still applies to them, but it was too late for those students.
> Courts later ruled this unconstitutional
Those students faced practical consequences. There are plenty of places in America where expressing any doubts about the moral superiority of Palestinians over Israelis (note: I’m intentionally referring to the people) could get you isolated to the point of facing real consequences. Pretending this isn’t a polarizing debate across the political spectrum is a bit strange.
And it's still not even that polarizing. Both major parties are still pro-Israel. This is only barely starting to change. And in the few cities where Israel is unpopular, there are plenty of openly Zionist businesses.
Until recently, American voters were broadly pro-Israel.
> in the few cities where Israel is unpopular, there are plenty of openly Zionist businesses
Same for pro-Palestinian ones. That’s healthy.
Conflating every illegal thing Trump has tried to do with the status quo is internally inconsistent.
For lots of stuff including Islamophobia.
This forced victimhood mentality among activists does real damage to the pro-Palestinian cause. If you’re advocating for something, the advocacy should not dwarf the cause.
Also, I don't particularly care about Palestine as a country. Frankly it's insulting and also unwise how those protestors will wave any flag except our own.
The city of Reykjavík, Iceland, tried to boycott Israel back in 2015 but had to abandon the attempt because of the political backlash. In the 10 years since we can clearly see how justified those attempts were.
Americans were broadly pro-Israel after October 7. We probably would have remained so if Netanyahu hadn’t showed his hand so clearly.
HAMAS uses child soldiers, then when they inevitable get killed claim that X number of children were killed in the war. HAMAS doesn't use uniforms so they can claim when their fighters die that a civilian was killed. These things are warcrimes exactly because it creates such confusion and because it increases the chance that actual civilians will get killed.
The people who make such charges are absolutely doing it to create the environment where they can commit atrocities. HAMAS publicly admits such things. Additionally, most of the images and videos from Gaza that got people upset in 2024 were generated by LLMs. It was pretty obvious too. Plenty of images with the wrong number of fingers or limbs were posted around that time. That's why such speech gets treated the way it does, not because of some sort of grand conspiracy.
PS Nobody debates the finer points of fascist public policy. The things people don't like are about vilifying a group of people and then creating a "final solution". Being part of a propaganda effort to do it again isn't a great look. That's why such speech is treated how it is.
The thing I care about more is the US and other western countries fund this to our own detriment. We're now all-in on the Iran war, even threw Ukraine under the bus for it. Yes there's a conspiracy in plain sight like Trump's transaction with the Adelsons, or everyone at least knows about AIPAC.
Also, your parent is engaging in some serious genocide denial, and is generally being a racist against Palestinians. I hope they will soon be banned from HN. A tech forum should not be used to spread hate speech like your parent is.
For practical reasons, however, we call attempted extermination genocide, which I think confuses people. (It also brings up all the mens rea problems that plague any prosecution of attempted and ongoing crimes.)
I wouldn’t conclude someone is a denialist or racist or hate speaker just because they hesitate to call something a genocide. (I genuinely don’t know what that word means anymore apart from throwing up my hands and saying it’s whatever a clique of humanitarian organizations say it means.)
Being a genocide denier means that you deny the atrocities behind said genocide and that is what hunterpayne and nailer (your sibling thread) are doing. They are genocide deniers. They are spreading conspiracy theories and propaganda denying the atrocities (e.g. by claiming that pictures of atrocities were generated by AI or the the population of Gaza has not suffered as a result of the genocide). This is genocide denial, and it is hate speech, and it is anti-Palestinian racism.
No, it doesn't; it's a Latin suffix meaning "to kill". While we may have codified the word "homicide" into law, this doesn't redefine the word to mean anything other than "one person killing another".
Genocide means killing focused on an ethnic group. Israel has plainly stated that this is their goal with Palestinians. This is a genocide in every way that matters.
Israel's stated goal is to push all the Palestinians out of Gaza and West Bank. Several orgs consider this genocide because it's a way to destroy the culture. I don't agree because of the confusion we've already seen it create. Genocide before meant killing off an ethnic group. We already had a term for what Israel is doing, ethnic cleansing. It's inexcusable either way.
Here is what Wikipedia has to say about it:
Genocide is the partial or total destruction of a human group,[a] committed intentionally. The popular view conceives of genocide as the large-scale killing of individuals, but in scholarly and legal fields, genocide occurs when the group itself is targeted. Acts of genocide include killing as well as non-lethal acts such as preventing reproduction among the group, the forcible transfer of children to another group, and cultural genocide.
If you don't like Wikipedia for your definitions, you could try any dictionary you are particularly fond of. The Wikipedia article also has a section about the person who first coined the term and what he meant by it, and a section about the Genocide Convention passed by the United Nations, if that would help.
Hamas is a resistance group. Their aim is the liberation of Palestine. IDF is a genocidal army, their aim is the eradication of Palestinians from the land of Palestine. One of these is doing anti-colonial resistance, the other is doing a genocide. Israel has stripped Palestinians of any political means of resistance, so the group naturally resorts to violence to achieve their goals (as horrible as that is). There is a big difference here. Israel is doing a genocide, Hamas is not.
And before you start accusing me of anti-semitism I am gonna be ahead of your game and remind you that your anti-academia stance rhymes a helluva lot with the cultural Marxism conspiracy theory, which is an actual anti-Semitic conspiracy theory, unlike credible accusations of genocide.
No, not accordinging to Wikipedia.
> Hamas is a resistance group.
No. Their aim is to slaughter Jewish people worldwide, which is in Hamas' founding charter.
> One of these is doing anti-colonial resistance
How? Arabs colonised the area in 650. Hamas openly chants that "from the river to the sea (ie, all of Israel), Palestine will be arab"
> Israel has stripped Palestinians of any political means of resistance,
Arabs can vote in Israel. Arabs cannot vote in Palestine.
> Israel is doing a genocide, Hamas is not.
Yes but why? Hamas deliberately eliminated, in part, Jewish people. That meets the definition you gave. Why is Hamas not committng genocide then?
> your anti-academia stance
I'm not anti academia. I'm just open about the biases of academia. It seems you are not.
Its dishonest.
Its disgusting.
Its a stain on judaism, killing more than 20 000 children intentionally, and having snipers killing babies on their mothers arms.
That is the "racist conspiracy theory", and is enacted by a bunch of people that do not deserve to call themselves jewish because they truly do not understand the sacred scriptures.
> having snipers killing babies on their mothers arms.
This is laughable, particularly when the war in Gaza comes as a response to Hamas actually killing babies and openly celebrating it in the case of the Bibas twins. Maybe it was a mistake to engage. Sorry Dan.
"the escalating abuse of Palestinian children in Israeli military detention, highlighting widespread violations of international humanitarian and human rights law. "
Drawing on research involving detained children, caregivers, social workers, and lawyers, the brief documents severe physical, psychological, and sexual abuse, including torture, solitary confinement, deprivation of food and medical care, and denial of legal protections.
No one is vilifying a group of people more than you are.
You prefer to say "HAMAS uses child soldiers" instead of telling the truth which is, if a bunch of khazars from Eastern Europe, if a bunch of guys from Poland, if a bunch of guys from Pennsylvania, came to your home, burned it, raped your little sister, and killed your parents how would you act ? Wouldn't you enlist in a cause against it ? Were the 16 year old guys fighting for George Washington child soldiers or do you offer some more nuance to them ? Were the child saboteurs that acted against nazis also "child soldiers" ?
The truth is that Israelis are mostly a stain on judaism and make me ashamed of being jewish. They do not know my laws, they do not respect my scripture and they are simply evil.
"The people who make such charges are absolutely doing it to create the environment where they can commit atrocities." The ones commiting atrocities are Zionists, lmao you can use google maps and check by yourself dude.
"HAMAS publicly admits such things.", in the past at least you could have been a coward and shield on the fact Zionists did not admit it publicly. However you can fucking go to Ben Gavir's twitter and see he admits to even worse crimes.
"That's why such speech is treated how it is." No it is treated that way because zionists are cowards that were never taught to face the consequences of their actions, and want to blame antisemitism on everyone, except themselves, when they have skinned judaism and want to use its corpse as costume.
Certainly much worse than the IDF did when it happened to Israel.