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Comment by zhengiszen | Hacker News Reader

Europe cares about Ukrainian because it directly attacks a country in Europe and puts other countries like Germany in a weaker position. Germany has decided to grow an army in response.

Claiming racism ignores the real reasons.

Not to mention this is an emotional segway out of the daily covid grind the news has been beating. This support wasn't there in 2014 when they first invaded.

With the relations Israel has with the west and most precisely with the US it'll be a cold day in hell when sanctions are applied.

Rest assured most people are disgusted by Israel's actions just as much as by Russia's

> Israeli oppression and war crimes against Palestinians

The US likes Israel and it hates Russia. You don't need to look deeper than that.

Well, look how well sanctions on Israel worked for Ben&Jerry, losses in billions.

Source? Ben & Jerry's had 9% sales growth last year, out pacing the rest of the market at 4.5%. They haven't reported this year so I'm wondering where you're reading that, I can't find anything.

Their parent company, Unilever, saw state pension funds unload their shares due to anti-BDS legislation, with a resulting drop in share price.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/new-york-state-to-sell-unilever...

> New York’s state pension fund said it would sell its shares in Ben & Jerry’s owner Unilever PLC following a review of the ice-cream brand’s decision to stop retailing its products in Jewish settlements located in the Israeli-occupied West Bank.

> State officials said Friday that the New York State Common Retirement Fund, the third-largest public pension fund in the U.S., planned to sell $111 million in Unilever investments, accusing the company of breaking its policy that prohibits the boycott of Israel.

> New York’s decision to divest follows similar moves by New Jersey and Arizona, which have also sold Unilever holdings over the issue. Other states have said they were evaluating whether their funds would need to sell their Unilever investments.

So let me get this straight...because some groups got these BS unconstitutional anti-BDS laws passed in various states, they are now divesting from companies because of Unilever's refusal to sell in the occupied territories?

At what point do you just accept that the whole system is corrupt and rotten from top to bottom?

The big loser, of course, being the First Amendment.

Government punishment of free speech and expression is supposed to be forbidden.

> Racism because we empathize with Ukrainian more than with Arabs ?

I didn't know the European Union bordered Israel directly and Israel threatened to nuke the EU and USA...

As for Palestinians, even neighboring Arab states have long stopped supporting their cause. Are you going to invoke Arab on Arab racism here?

People trying to make the threat of nuclear war a "racism issue" are unhinged.

Russia has explicitly been threatening NATO with Nukes that's why they are getting punished. Russia have created more than 2 millions European refugees, that's why they are getting punished. Many of these companies have a lot of their IT employees located in Ukraine, Russia has been killing their employees or disrupting their operations, that's why Russia is getting punished.

I don't agree but a lot of people think Israel's justifications are valid.

There are no decent arguments for Putin's war. It's even less justified than when Saddam invaded Kuwait but Saddam didn't have nukes and couldn't veto the UNSC

It's not a question of the validity of either military action. It's just that for many years people have called for product boycotts in the case it Israel and the common response was based on boycotts having no impact for various reasons.

Boycotting Israel hasn't put much pressure because many agree with their actions and therefore won't participate. No one agrees with Russia's actions.

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