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Comment by hyper_reality | Hacker News Reader

It's been known since at least 2014 that this company has been selling software to regimes that violate human rights, squash freedom of information, and monitor pro-democracy activists.

They were hacked and their client list was leaked, to which they responded "we have some integrity. We don't sell to Israel". (https://www.zdnet.com/article/top-govt-spyware-company-hacke...)

It's taken a long time but it's good to see that the wheels of justice have finally caught up with this scummy mercenary company. It is dirtying the name of the information security field, and engineers who have worked for them or similar surveillance software should be ashamed.

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They don't sell to Israel not because they are ethical, but because Israel is by itself #1 producer of spyware and sells to all kinds of dictatorships too.

Like the rest of Germany, then? When is Nord Stream 2 finishing?

> They were hacked and their client list was leaked, to which they responded "we have some integrity. We don't sell to Israel". (https://www.zdnet.com/article/top-govt-spyware-company-hacke...)

The quote is from a fake account run by the hackers. There is (at least to my knowledge) no indication that they're antisemites. Doesn't make the situation better, though.

Thanks for the fact check, I didn't read that article closely enough.

Bring critical of Israel (a nation) does NOT equate antisemitism (a religion).

It does if that's the only standard you apply in choosing to whom you deliver a product. If you sell to despotic regimes and not to Israel, you're criticism of Israel is anti-semitic.

This argument seems very similar to the argument that not all Trump supporters are racists but (practically) all racists are Trump supporters.

There is a very difficult line to tread here, to me it feels like any inference between the state of Israel and the Jewish faith is itself somewhat anti-semitic, or at least it should be. However, the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance definition itself does it so I am probably wide of the mark.

I think such generalizations are almost always false. Plenty of people oppose Israel for purely political reasons, not because they dislike Jews. Many American racists don't support Trump either - I doubt that for example black supremacists, who are just as racist as their white counterparts, like him very much.

How is antisemitism a religion? Judaism is. Anti-judaism... is, logically, against the judaism, but not all religions, so even anti-judaism won't qualify.

What does being against unlawful colonization of territories have to do with antisemitism? Being against Israel as a nation has NOTHING to do with being against Jews (which is only part of the Israeli population) and it's called antizionism.

How else would you explain antizionist Jewish orthodox communities?

> What does being against unlawful colonization of territories have to do with antisemitism?

If you'd sell to Turkey, Saudi-Arabia & co and then say "we have some standards, we won't sell to Israel", yeah, you'd not be against colonization, occupation etc, you'd be against Israel specifically for other reasons.

Israel enjoys a special status through it's relationship (partnership) with Western powers. It also enjoys power. I agree that Turkey's genocide against Armenians is evil. It's taken too long to acknowledge that. I'm not too clear on the Saudi Arabia accusation, but I think you're referencing Yemen.

Still, imagine you're German and you've received an education, growing up, completely condemning the evil that the WWII Nazis committed against the Jewish people. Imagine that to refute the history of that evil is, in fact, a crime — a crime of speech and ideology. Then imagine learning that the Jewish state made available by partitioning land has grown, considerably, since its initial allocation post-WWII. Imagine learning that the growth exactly resembles of actions of WWII Nazis against Jews, only now by Zionist Jews against Palestinians.

Israel has all the makings of a great country. In my mind, it has succeeded thoroughly. Despite my above criticism, I wish it success. I hope it makes humanitarian strides to acknowledge its wrongdoing and make reparations. I'd only point out that its specific actions against Palestinians did happen and continue to happen today and it is an evil. If you're German, you might feel especially emotional about it, given the shared history.

I don’t have to “imagine” what you’re describing, as I’m in the same situation.

But, unlike you, I don’t despair at the (mild) cognitive dissonance you’re describing. The Holocaust, and its uniqueness, are fact. Israel’s behavior towards Palestinians today is reprehensible. These are neither incompatible, nor does the latter diminish the former.

We can expect more from Israel than, say, Sudan, because it is a democracy, relatively rich, and part of “the west”. To instead use the Holocaust to place additional burdens on them is cynical. So stop whining about your youth. It was probably terrible, but the Jews weren’t involved in that. And, unlike many of them, you got to survive to adulthood.

You're challenging a perspective that I don't hold. I want to avoid talking past each other.

I think one can appreciate that the FinFisher group has done terrible things and is working against a free, democratic society. I do not really want to defend them, so I think it's important to say that up front. I took aim at the idea that "they must also be anti-semites because they specifically criticized Israel." I do not want the criticism of Israel to be the bar we set for the anti-semitism accusation.

> Imagine learning that the growth exactly resembles of actions of WWII Nazis against Jews, only now by Zionist Jews against Palestinians.

If you learn that anywhere, I think you're talking to antisemites. It's really not the same, it's not similar beyond "a state does stuff, Nazi Germany was a state, Israel is a state, so it's the same", but that's not a useful comparison.

> If you're German, you might feel especially emotional about it, given the shared history.

I'm German, I don't feel especially emotional about it, and I often do feel like that the obsession with Israel is more about "see, the Jews are doing it too, we're not so bad" and less about "what a terrible thing". Exactly because most people are very upset about Israel doing stuff and completely ignore far worse things being done by others.

As for Turkey: you don't need to go back to the Armenian Genocide. Turkey still occupies parts of Cyprus, is de-facto annexing parts of Syria and is working closely with what has been formerly known as ISIS, currently sending them to Azerbaijan to fight against Armenia.

The point is: if a vendor would say "we don't sell to Israel because of ethics" but sells to countries that are ethically far worse, their problem obviously isn't ethical in nature. Their problem would be Israel. Nevertheless, FinFisher didn't, so it's hypothetical. They probably didn't sell to Israel either, because Israel has no need to buy, having a strong security industry with lots of vendors for offensive tools.

> If you learn that anywhere, I think you're talking to antisemites

I'm sure I've spoken to anti-semites in my life, but your accusation is merely begging the question. I learned the history largely from a book titled "The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine."

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Ethnic_Cleansing_of_Pale...

You need not support the actions political party of the Zionists to support Israel or the Jewish people the same that you need not support the actions of any other political party, say the far-right of the United States, in order to support the country or its people. And you needn't publicly enumerate your disgust for all atrocities by all peoples in order to denounce the single action of a single people.

Anyway, I think you're right about feeling suspicion over "see, they did it, too." I won't defend anti-semites for being anti-semitic, and I won't condemn all anti-zionists as anti-semites. I think this is where our differences on the matter arises.

I haven't read that book, but I assume that it does not actually compare the holocaust with the Arab-Israeli conflict, because that would be ludicrous. The Arabs attacked Israel with the intent of destruction (and genocide, most plausibly) and lost the war. One consequence was the mass exodus of Arabs who, correctly or not, assumed the victorious Israelis wouldn't treat them kindly. I'm sure plenty of terrible things happened during those wars, but to say they are the same or similar to the holocaust can only be done when you don't know the history. A hint for starters: the Jews did not invade Germany with the intent to destroy it.

> And you needn't publicly enumerate your disgust for all atrocities by all peoples in order to denounce the single action of a single people.

Your credibility would be much better if you did though. If the police completely ignored crimes committed by white people and vigorously enforced the law against black people, wouldn't you question their motives?

For clarification, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is a more narrow view of the Arab-Israeli conflict. Exiled Palestinians were unwelcome to neighboring Arab states. I think you should read the book because your assumption is incorrect about its content.

This is cheeky of me, but... A hint for starters: the Zionists did invade Palestine with the intent to destroy it. The Zionist movement in Israel did not respect the partitioning of Palestine set up by UN Resolution 181. Zionists committed mass murder against the Palestinians even outside of typical warfare — there were significant civilian casualties. There is no need to equivocate the criticism that "what Zionists are doing to Palestinians is similar to what Nazis did to Jews" to a very different claim that "the Holocaust and the Nakba are wholly the same."

We are horrified that Israel would commit ethnic cleansing against another group of people. It is especially horrific given they did so immediately after having been dealt the same atrocity at the hand of Nazis.

You can narrowly criticize Israel for these historical and present-day actions, and you gain credibility by standing firmly on that point.

Because my response seems to have gained some traction, I will offer you a couple more sources. I don't require or expect you to purchase and read the aforementioned book, but I hope you will look over the following:

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1948_Palestinian_exodus [2] https://www.aljazeera.com/features/2017/5/23/the-nakba-did-n...

> There is no need to equivocate the criticism that "what Zionists are doing to Palestinians is similar to what Nazis did to Jews" to a very different claim that "the Holocaust and the Nakba are wholly the same."

I think they are in the same area of related-to-reality-ness. Are civil wars usually bloody and terrible? Yes. Is it reasonable to compare that to the holocaust? No.

> We are horrified that Israel would commit ethnic cleansing against another group of people. It is especially horrific given they did so immediately after having been dealt the same atrocity at the hand of Nazis.

Is it? It's not to me. Quite the contrary: having just barely survived the murderous intentions of somebody who was aftery our life will probably have you very vigilant and possibly overly defensive against the murderous intentions of another group that's after your life.

> You can narrowly criticize Israel for these historical and present-day actions, and you gain credibility by standing firmly on that point.

You can totally criticize Israel for the treatment of the Arabs. Yet when you fail to criticize others for similar treatment of other Arabs (or the same Arabs, even, in the case of Fatah and Hamas), it suggests that your issue with Israels treatment isn't a question of ethics, but of ethnics. That is: had mass-immigration to Palestine from Turkey happened, and had these Turks declared a new state and everything else had happened exactly the same way, you wouldn't criticize them, because they aren't Jews.

And if you would: why would you limit your criticism to Israel, and not apply it to all offenders? "Oh, but you must start with one", sure, sure, but why start with the smallest one that offends much less than others and focus on decades ago instead of today? And why join ranks with terrible governments in doing so, who mock the very idea of human rights? That just doesn't make sense to me in a way of "I'm really equally against all bad things, I've just chosen to be vocal about this particular one for no specific reason whatsoever".

I said above, "And you needn't publicly enumerate your disgust for all atrocities by all peoples in order to denounce the single action of a single people." I'm happy to criticize each other group's wrongdoings; I needn't do so in a single breath.

I object to the conflation of anti-zionism with anti-semitism. On a second order, I care about Zionists' crime carrying out ethnic cleansing of Palestinians in Palestine.

It is an ugly perspective, to me, that we should concern ourselves with the Zionists' ethnic cleansing of Palestinians only after we have solved all other problems.

Anyway, check out the three sources. I think you have an interest in the matter.

> I'm happy to criticize each other group's wrongdoings; I needn't do so in a single breath.

You'll be the one-in-a-million exception then, in my experience. Most declare that they would, but never will, given the chance.

> It is an ugly perspective, to me, that we should concern ourselves with the Zionists' ethnic cleansing of Palestinians only after we have solved all other problems.

Meh, I don't even think ethnic cleansing actually applies (not least because Palestinians aren't an ethnic group, they're a cultural group). But even more so: that's not what I said. What I'm saying is that there's a suspicious focus on Israel that turns into willful ignorance and self-imposed blindness when it comes to other things. That heavily suggests it's not actually about what Israel does, but rather about the fact that it's Israel doing it.

Reductio ad hitlerium at its finest, I'd say

I hold the view that anti-zionists are often anti-semites in disguise. A view that is explained quite well in this article: https://www.jpost.com/opinion/anti-zionism-is-antisemitism-5...

I dunno, it's pretty close to the working definition of anti-semitism [1]

> Denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination, e.g., by claiming that the existence of a State of Israel is a racist endeavor.

> Applying double standards by requiring of it a behavior not expected or demanded of any other democratic nation.

[1] https://www.holocaustremembrance.com/resources/working-defin...

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