Comment by phantom_oracle | Hacker News Reader

Comment by phantom_oracle | Hacker News Reader

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This must be a PR nightmare for Israel, which brings me to my related topic of Israel's other major weapon in its cyber arsenal.

I think this falls under a type of disinformation. I don't know of any other state that has effectively weaponized any/all criticism against it as religious discrimination: antisemitism

Here is a basic example:

> (in no way am I promoting antisemitism or encouraging racial stigmas but this example is so common and the least harmless I can think of) "all Jews are greedy" - clearly antisemitic

> Israel is guilty of murdering non-combatant children in Gaza - has nothing to do with Judaism. Involves the very sensitive problem of murdering innocent children. Is part of the complex Israel/Palestine political issue. Yet this could also end up being spun as an attack on Jews and being antisemitic.

I think getting labelled an 'antisemite' in a country like the USA is career-suicide. It does play into the conspiracies about Israel's influence, but my theory goes that criticism of Israel in a country like the USA is just wrong-think/wrong-speak. Getting to this level of disinformation is incredible. Hopefully the dictators in the Middle-East(and customers of NSO) don't catch on and start weaponizing criticism of them as Islamophobic ...

All you said is fine as long as you recognize antisemitism is a thing. It is just a branch of racism/xenophobia. Any group with a name can be marked as enemy and attacked if retaliation is not expected.

Now, everything you said.

Indeed, it is a thing, and has been for a long time. But labeling free speech as antisemitic is now quite common.

Here in the US, there is plenty of legislation at the state level that requires individuals and businesses sign agreements in order to gain employment or secure funding (advertisement, in the case of newspapers). For example, the law in Texas prevents an individual from being employed as a teacher (or contractor) if they support boycotts of Israeli companies. I'm not arguing for or against these boycotts but legislation preventing boycotts is now a condition of employment in some states.

There was a good documentary about this recently in DOC NYC: https://www.docnyc.net/film/boycott/

Antisemitism is definitely a thing, a very bad thing with a very long history and lots of horrific things done to semitic peoples in many places over that long history. For sake of discussion, I will stipulate that it is a branch of racism/xenophobia.

Lots of ethnic groups/races in lots of countries have been victims of racism and xenophobia by lots of other groups in their own countries and in other countries.

Israel, as a country, has been very effective at weaponizing its "victim of racism/xenophobia." The ubitquity of the term "antisemitism" and the staunch defenders of the term are part of this weaponization. I have difficulty identifying other words that represent "a specific group that is a victim of racism/xenophobia" as well as antisemitism does.

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