Israel is its own nation and it isn't America's business what it does to its own citizens. However, their tools are used on American without warrants. It would be in our interests as citizens to flag all employees of NSO as spies and try them.
I would argue that as long as Israel is lobbying the US to make it illegal for Americans to boycott Israel it is in fact our business
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-BDS_laws
> The spread of anti-BDS laws in U.S. states is largely due to the lobbying of the Israel Allies Foundation (IAF), an umbrella group of Israel lobbies headquartered in Jerusalem that has received funding from the Israeli government
From the same page:
> ... A dozen local and national parliaments have passed symbolic resolutions condemning BDS. Most of these condemnations have alleged that BDS is anti-Semitic.
Austria, Canada, France, Germany, Spain...
Do you believe American citizens should be allowed to choose who they boycott?
Boycotting can hardly be considered protected speech if that's all it takes to silence it
The Majority.
> Some arbiter
Nope. The Majority.
> if that's all it takes to silence it
Nope. anti-semetic is kinda big deal. We all should treat it as such and run from it like fire.
I believe weakening protections such as free speech, which are used by the vulnerable to call attention to their plights, is much more likely to hurt Jewish people than allowing ostensibly antisemitic expression to exist
The minority here fought long and hard to stop it, lost the battle (the team came and played their games against our local teams) but now are recognised as heros.
No. It is not the majority who decides what is right and wrong.
"Boycott Israel because of their treatment of Palestinians." A perfectly acceptable political statement.
"Boycott Israel because they are a bunch of greedy Jews." An obviously anti-Semitic statement.
The problem is that people who believe the latter will often say the former. This causes opponents of the latter to doubt the authenticity of people who say the former. Some people who oppose the former might also accuse people of the latter to discredit them. It becomes can quickly become confusing, but it should be clear that a boycott can clearly have both appropriate and inappropriate motivations.
I don't believe fairly arbitrating expression based on beliefs is feasible, and I do believe it is actively harmful
Really? That requires mind reading.
Do you mean "...depending on their effects"?
Intent does, but intent is different from motivation. Do I need to explain that?
When the descendants of victims from places like the Warsaw Ghetto justify and defend their operations of the modern-day ghetto in Gaza...
In any case, where you have actual genocide - e.g. the systematic murder of a Muslim minority in China - no one is calling for boycotts or comparing it to the Holocaust, or even labeling it a genocide. Tesla opens a dealership in Xinjiang and the same exact people who want to boycott Israel go out and buy Teslas. Teslas they can charge up at the casinos on Indian reservations between LA and Phoenix. Chatting on their iPhones made by slave labor in China.
But then, where you have nothing remotely similar to systematic murder, as in the Palestinian territories, people call it "genocide" and call for a boycott. Ain't that funny?
There was an uprising in Gaza. Guess what happened. Israel withdrew its own settlers unilaterally at gunpoint and handed over the territory, leaving greenhouses which were then leveled by Hamas.
Israel is also an extremely small, densely populated place surrounded by people who want to kill it.
To your second point, you say the Warsaw Ghetto wasn't able to hold elections to form a democratic government because they "didn't have enough time"? It had absolutely nothing to do with not having enough time. The Ghetto was a transit point for people to be gassed, nothing more. Imagine if they were encouraged to form a democratically elected government and hold elections, like Gaza, and if those elections were backed and monitored by international human rights organizations, like Gaza's elections were. And imagine if what they voted in was a theocratic dictatorship who proudly proclaimed that their winning would signal the final democratic election, ever.
Finally, you might have misunderstood what I said. The Germans in my scenario are the Israelis - that is what the BDS people think. They think the Israelis are Germans, and the Palestinians are Jews. The only irony in the situation is that the people who think this are Germans and/or other Europeans who did not give a flying fuck about the Holocaust when it was happening, and now suddenly are gripped by conscience when one is not happening - insofar as they can still be antisemitic in polite company.
Go back to the beginning of Israel, check the terrorist activities of jewish groups. Ongoing settlements, landgrab, indiscriminate retaliatory measures--military or otherwise systemic in nature. Yet time and time again, no measure of accountability for a regional superpower.
HAMAS was not a "terrorist group" when they were duly elected in the Gaza Strip.
> It was not offered its own nation-state.
Neither Gaza nor the West Bank has been offered it's own nation-state.
Palestine declared statehood in 1988 when Jordan renounced the West Bank. In 1993, the Oslo Accords would have granted statehood to Gaza and the West Bank. This was rejected by the PA leadership under Arafat because it would have foreclosed the possibility of a return to land within Israel proper, and they didn't have the political strength to make that palatable when most of their power rested on raising the street in anger. The fact remains that a free Palestinian state was offered to the PA, which would have included all of Gaza and most of the West Bank.
There's no evidence of any BDS leaders saying this.
On the other hand, there's a bundle of evidence of vehement racism in the highest levels of the Israeli government (calls for "racial purity", collective punishment against arabs, "all arabs grow up to be terrorists", etc).
The fact that apartheid south africa was closely allied with israel, shared a nuclear project and was taken down by a BDS movement is, of course, not a coincidence.
The veneer of anti-racism has seemingly been co-opted to support a white european colonialist project behind an apartheid state that purports to represent a race (again, like apartheid South Africa).
>it should be clear that a boycott can clearly have both appropriate and inappropriate motivations.
It should be clear that evidence-wise, being anti boycott most likely indicates at the very least stark naiveté and perhaps darker, more racist motives.
There's a trend towards allowing complainants to define what actions are discriminatory, and therefore criminal. It's weird.
And it cant be decided by the majority.
Campaigning for BDS does seem to be speech, and regrettably institutions seem to have gathered around the view that it's antisemitic speech.
BDS constitutes much more of an existential threat to the state - they're keenly aware of its pivotal role in taking down apartheid South Africa.
That is, it's the explicit anti-racist grass roots and history of the movement that they object to so vehemently.
This is why they routunely throw out unfounded accusations of antisemitism & throw all the quite considerable lobbying firepower they have in key countries to try and stamp it out.
Support for killing BDS in other countries is as a result, indirectly, an accurate bellwether of which politicians will support/tolerate racism and which politicians can be bought (e.g. Trump - big ally, easily bought, largely pro-racism). There are some in most countries.
Unfortunately Israel is effectively politically sanction-proof - even for much more abhorrent policies and actions.
Second, Israel is a shining example of a robust democracy in a part of the world that is more or less run by kleptomaniacs and dictators. Israel's politics -- especially with the coalition government -- serves as a role model for citizens of other countries. I think it seems reasonable that we extend foreign aid to them.
It pays off in the long run.
"Israel among the U.S.’s most threatening cyber-adversaries and as a “hostile” foreign intelligence service." [2]
"Israel’s snooping upset White House because information was used to lobby Congress to try to sink a deal" [3]
[1] https://www.timesofisrael.com/new-nsa-document-highlights-is...
[2] https://theintercept.com/2015/03/25/netanyahus-spying-denial...
[3] https://www.wsj.com/articles/israel-spied-on-iran-talks-1427...
Just a few months ago, we were caught red handed spying on the EU and our closest allies [0]. I’m sure their equivalent of NSA lists us as the most aggressive hackers behind China and Russia.
When your economy or your survival (in Israel’s case) is at stake and you have the tools, the temptation is just too strong.
[0] https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/us-security-agency-spie...
Israeli aid has nothing to do with why the US is "floundering". If anything, bickering over small potatoes like our foreign military aid budget instead of focusing on larger issues like the necessity of our own military budget likely is a bigger contributor to us "floundering".
The rhetorical tactic of citing some much larger number to justify a misuse of funds is meant to obfuscate and confuse, and it's not a good faith argument. It's like a mayor saying "yes, this program is wasteful and corrupt, but look at how big our military spending is! Why aren't you talking about that?!". Or "Yes, I may have created a made up job for my brother, but look at the trillions we spent in Afghanistan! Why aren't you talking about that?!"
We should not be falling for that type of rhetoric when calling out government waste and abuse.
There is no reason that the U.S. should be sending any aid to Israel (or, for that matter, Egypt), it's not a poor country, there are many more countries deserving of the aid, and the aid is being used to increase the militarization of a region that has already had too much military conflict.
If you think it's a good use of the money, then defend it.
But changing the subject and questioning people's motivations, or insisting that all larger forms of abuse in the military be talked about before anyone can call into question our aid to Israel - that's not a legitimate argument.