A Start-up Guru Has Enraged Israeli Techies | Hacker News Reader

A Start-up Guru Has Enraged Israeli Techies

nymag.com

14 pointsdrumdance13 comments

The article has a tweet from someone who says:

> what about the fact that 170 people died in Homs on July 19th? any mention about those "Atrocious Actions"? no. antisemite.

One reason to mention what is going on in Gaza and not in Syria is that US voters/taxpayers are financing, directly or indirectly, what is going on in Gaza. The Ron Reiter's of the world want me as a worker and taxpayer to bankroll his country. Then if I have a critical word for what his country does with the money, say I do something outrageous in his mind like quote what the head of the UN says about it, then I'm an anti-semite.

Shut down AIPAC and stop having them tax my money to send to Israel, and my criticism of Israel will subside. These people bite the hand that feeds them.

By this standard, whoever criticizes some policies - eg the wars in Afghanistan or in Iraq - of the USA (and this includes tens of millions of US citizens) should be ostracized by the US tech community?

Edit: added reference to controversial and important policies

Based on the comment from Carthy at the end of the article, it's the compulsory service that makes them sensitive. Even though they're carrying out orders they could and should object to, they're still just carrying out orders, and apparently that should make them immune to criticism.

Isn’t there an irony at the use of the Nuremburg defense here?

Could also be that hundreds of rockets are landing in their cities, causing citizens to routinely seek out bomb shelters with about 10 seconds notice. That tends to make people report for military service enthusiastically and take great personal offense at people who they see as cheerleading for the other side.

There's a lot to be said for both sides of this conflict, but portraying it as Israel just up and decided to bomb a bunch of innocent people for no reason sounds more like propaganda for the Palestinians' side than a fair look at the issues.

Who is 'portraying it as if...'?

The USA is usually comfortable with its actions to one degree or another. Israel constantly lashes out on the defensive as though they have no justification.

He didn't even criticize, all he did was reference articles without comment.

only reference articles with one side of story does not seem problematic to you?

Well, he's not a reporter. Perhaps this is just the side of the story that touched his heart. Or perhaps his intention was to highlight biased reporting. We just don't know, all we can do is jump to a conclusion. Whatever the case, it doesn't rise to the level of antisemitism.

I don't think Israels consider this military conflict as just "some policies". You don't see the seriousness of this conflict, do you? You think Israels just want to kill, so they go out to kill?

I added a reference to the policies I was thinking about - eg the wars in Iraq and in Afghanistan. And regarding the seriousness of this conflict, yes, I see hundreds of deaths. I see it as very serious.

This post was killed by user flags.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com