Google employee resigns after ‘retaliation’ for protesting Israeli contract | Hacker News Reader

Google employee resigns after ‘retaliation’ for protesting Israeli contract

timesofisrael.com

199 pointstomerbd249 comments

> “Due to retaliation, a hostile environment, and illegal actions by the company, I cannot continue to work at Google and have no choice but to leave the company at the end of this week,” Ariel Koren said in a statement posted Tuesday to Medium.

Many people is missing the point. "Retaliation" is illegal.

> Google denied retaliation and the National Labor Relations Board found no wrongdoing after an investigation

In my experience this kind of investigation have very high standards on what is considered "retaliation" as it is very difficult to prove that negating promotions, or moving people to new positions is directly related to "retaliation". Maybe it was just a misunderstanding by the employee, but I would like to see more realistic investigations that take into account the timing of the companies actions.

Boycotting Israel gets your company in trouble with various state governments in the US, like no supplying services to the government, and in Arkansas, it gets even more viral in that people you supply services to are forbidden from supplying services to the government.

My RH contract specifically forbade boycotting Israel, I'm sure for those reasons.

And of course, I imagine that Israel has laws about doing business there that look dimly on being boycotted.

It's very very dumb legislation, and I think derives from a very odd facet of belief found in some American Protestant belief systems - that for Jesus to come back, the State of Israel has to exist.

I grew up in an Evangelical church and I attend a Protestant church now (although not American) and the only place I've ever heard people claim that my fellow congregants believe that about Israel is online from people outside the church.

I'm sure you'll be able to find _someone_ who believes it, but it is so weird to see people claiming something as a fact about your church that you've never encountered in nearly 40 years. What's infinitely more likely is that Christians feel a certain affinity towards Israel due to a shared Judeo-Christian heritage.

Whilst I've definitely got the impression, that _most_ people think of it as a shared heritage, I have now and then had a few people quoting the same prophecy from Zechariah as their reasoning.

> And it shall happen in that day that I will make Jerusalem a very heavy stone for all peoples; all who would heave it away will surely be cut in pieces, though all nations of the earth are gathered against it - Zechariah 12:3

The (mis-)interpretation being that for the return of God to occur, the existence of Jerusalem is a pre-requisite. It can't disappear, again. So for that to happen, we should protect Israel, who will protect the city. We should especially protect them because the world will gather against them.

The logic has some major flaws to it, and can be easily worked around, but I've heard it a few times.

Possibly closer to the mark in terms of scripture is Ezekiel 38, which specifies that the Jews are to have returned/gathered from exile/dispersion and be living in peace ("unwalled cities") before an invasion/looting from the north. Of course, it only specifies the movement of peoples, not the political configuration of the land.

The same groups of people tend to apply that one to the Yom Kippur war, and treat it as already fulfilled. The thing about Jerusalem having to remain as a heavy stone is more what inspires them to defend it.

> for the return of God to occur, the existence of Jerusalem is a pre-requisite.

isn't it amusing how humans think their deity isn't powerful enough so they have to make things possible for him?

This is less a case of "powerful enough" and more that Christianity upholds that God is changeable, and expects people to _act_ and not merely trust that he will do everything for him. (Certain prosperity sects excluded.)

There are several times when significant figures such as Moses, David, Jeremiah, and so on, negotiate a new outcome with their God. There are also other times that their God refuses to act, because the faithless have fallen away.

They "wandered around in the desert", a rather small patch of desert, mind you, because of a lack of faith. The 40-ish years in the desert, to age out those who failed in their duty, rather than to enter into their "Promised Land". Moses was also forbidden from entering Cana'an, because he tried to act on his own, instead of in tandem with his god.

It's much more likely it just wasn't something you encountered in your practice and not that reliable sources analyzing American political and financial support for Israel all happen to make up the part Evangelical Americans play. A quick search for e.g lobbying for Israel in the United States brings up credible sources.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fo77sTGpngQ

If you seek to 6 min 5 seconds, the narrator describes an Evangelical pastor by the name of Urban Baxter whose End Time ministry leads a tour to Israel twice a year. The pastor then explains to his tour group / congregation the significance of Armageddon in relation to the current location of the tour group, Megiddo.

> What's infinitely more likely is that Christians feel a certain affinity towards Israel due to a shared Judeo-Christian heritage.

What's really infinitely more likely is that israel and usa share some common enemies, and usa doesn't really have all that many geopolitical allies in the region to chose from. I don't know why everyone reaches for weird religious conspiracies when the obvious geopolitical explanation will do.

Maybe it's because that the religion is one of the most important factors which formed these alliances and adversaries throughout the history.

Without these cultural and religious layers, what remains is same for everyone. A human body.

Sure, you are correct.

But that also means Jews/Christians have a very rocky road together. Technically, "Christians" performed the Holocaust, for starters.

It begs a question - when you add in Islam, why do Christians and Jews suddenly become political allies?

Because radical Islamists attack Christians and Jews equally. Actually they attack everyone that isn't a radical Islamist, including an awful lot of Muslims. In fact the vast majority of the victims of Islamist violence are other Muslims.

It's important to note that we throw around terms like The Muslims as though all Muslims and Christians, etc have the same beliefs and agenda, and that's clearly not the case.

Today's mainstream religion is something entirely different from yesteryear. I'm a Muslim, who has good friends who have faith in any and almost every religion (excl. extremists).

The subject is completely invisible to us except when we discuss interesting parts of the religions we believe.

I for one believe that religion is an ethics and conscience system, and when practiced correctly, all of them points to the same direction, albeit with different narratives and paths.

> when you add in Islam, why do Christians and Jews suddenly become political allies?

Goes back to the Crusades, the Islamic invasion of Europe and the fall of Constantinople

It’s not like Christianity embraced Jews either, but they did not present an existential threat

These are state laws. Alabama, for example, does not share enemies with Israel nor is it involved in any geopolitics. So it's extremely unusual to have such laws even in one state and in this case there are dozens of such states. Do you know of any other state laws concerning other US allies, say KSA?

The reality of course is that being so strongly interlinked with Israel is one of the major reasons why everybody in the region hates them. The Israel alliance is geopolitically harmful to the US.

12 years of Private christian schools.

It still shocks me how people that know nothing are the ones that define what Christian’s believe / behave.

I believe your personal experience. Anecdotes are not data, though.

> > odd facet of belief found in some American Protestant belief systems - that for Jesus to come back, the State of Israel has to exist

This seems to be overwhelmingly true[1].

> "...80% of the surveyed evangelicals believe that the modern rebirth of Israel and the return of millions of Jews to that land are a fulfillment of Bible prophecy and show 'we are getting closer to the return of Jesus Christ.'[1]

> more likely is that Christians feel a certain affinity towards Israel due to a shared Judeo-Christian heritage

This wouldn't really explain it.

Muslims also have a Judeo-Christian heritage (and even believe that Jesus Christ was the Messiah), and there's no reason to believe the historical parts of Israel would be different if they were under Muslim control. After all, the Palestinians living there prior to Israel's formation preserved all that stuff for hundreds of years.

1. https://www.npr.org/2019/08/25/753720351/as-u-s-jews-cool-to...

Whoa, I strongly disagree with this.

As someone who attended an evangelical, fundamentalist Baptist church as a child (Hyles Anderson), it is very much their view as well as larger groups like Independent and Southern Baptists (the largest Protestant denomination in the United States) that the existence of the nation of Israel and support for it is a precursor for the second coming of Jesus and the fulfillment of Gods plan.

Additionally, “Christian Zionism” is embraced by Christians in Australia and Western Europe as well.

There are academic sources for this everywhere, but feel free to watch their sermons on YouTube too:

[1] https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/politics-and-religio...

[2] https://www.brandeis.edu/israel-center/news/newsletter-5-rob...

> What's infinitely more likely is that Christians feel a certain affinity towards Israel due to a shared Judeo-Christian heritage.

Up until they actually travel to the Holy Land to see 1) that the Christians there are either of European descend, or Palestinians (there are very few Christians of Israeli descend), 2) how Palestinians are treated by the State of Israel.

This is kinda eye-opening. You imagine that there is some "shared Judeo-Christian heritage", but after seeing this firsthand you associate the Land more with barbed wire than with Jesus.

Source: been there, seen that.

There is a lot of diversity between churches so I'm not surprised you did not see this while others did. I grew up in the in a Pentecostal cult in the 90s and very much covered revelations, second coming/endtimes, Israel as part of the sermons and randomly speaking in tongues - the best I can describe it is batshit insane (we are talking computer chips as the mark of the beast in the future, single currency, russia as the beast out of the sea, nuclear war coming, lots of death and beheading) However my grandfather in a northeast baptist church which I occasionally went to was very tame and I never saw any of this. Had I exclusively gone to the baptist church I may very well have stuck around in the church.

I grew up in pentecostal churches in the 90s as well and can confirm that what you're stating here isn't hyperbole. Everything is a sign of the end times if you want it to be.

> What's infinitely more likely is that Christians feel a certain affinity towards Israel due to a shared Judeo-Christian heritage.

I don't think historically this makes any sense at all. It's normally just a thing used by right wing politicians to say that muslims are not ok.

> Boycotting Israel

There are legal ways of firing an employee if the employee does something illegal. Bullying is not one of them. And that is my point, people insists that "Google has reasons" that does not justify to commit a crime.

> odd facet of belief found in some American Protestant belief systems - that for Jesus to come back, the State of Israel has to exist.

Nothing 'odd' here, if one subscribes to the notion that Revelation (the last book of the Bible) is predictive.

The idea was popularized in the 1970s by Hal Lindsey[1] whose 'The Late Great Planet Earth'[2] is amusuingly not for sale ate [1].

I guess that Lindsey was a better book peddler than prophet.

[1] https://www.hallindsey.com/

[2] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Late_Great_Planet_Earth

> It's very very dumb legislation, and I think derives from a very odd facet of belief found in some American Protestant belief systems - that for Jesus to come back, the State of Israel has to exist.

I remember reading Bill Clinton's biography. At some point, he mentioned that a pastor told him something along these lines, and that it was an important realisation for him. (I read that years ago, could be slightly wrong but that was the idea).

I found that extremely disturbing that archaic religious beliefs would influence foreign policies.

That being said, it's well known that our former French president got advised by an astrologer [1]

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2000/jun/25/jonhenley.theo...

> I found that extremely disturbing that archaic religious beliefs would influence foreign policies

Why? As a former atheist, I’ve come to the realization that the alternative—at least at scale—to traditional religion isn’t people being hyper rational engineers. It’s different and less well established unprovable and illogical beliefs. Have you read some of the social “science” stuff that gets published? All the “woo” stuff? People believe that stuff and it gets executed into policy. (The reasons for the atheism being former are unrelated to that observation, my point is just that I get where your initial take is coming from.)

The belief that more rational beliefs are possible is not exactly debatable, is it? Certainly, the “woo” stuff you referenced is not the only alternative? That people have to believe in some “religion” and that common “religions” at the current point in history are at peak possible rationality… well, there’s no real reason to believe that, is there?

Sure if s person is willing to completely ignore reality for pie in the sky…

There are at least three different claims here that I'd like to unpack:

1) "If you really have to pick a belief system to put your faith in, you can do much worse than traditional religion." Now, I'm a lifelong atheist, and atheism is one of the few things I never changed my mind on, but I came to the conclusion that this is probably true: at the very least, traditional religion is a stable belief system that won't destroy your life.

2) "A lot of people who aren't traditionally religious, actually follow some random bullshit creed that's much worse than religion." I agree with this, there is a genuine human need religion fulfills and many might want to "fill the void" with subpar alternatives.

3) "If you are an atheist, then you necessarily fall into case (2)." Which is blatantly false, as the existence of millions of perfectly well-adjusted and functioning atheists shows.

To be clear, I’m not asserting that (3) is the case. I’m just saying that as a practical matter it’s a small number and a lot of people that abandon traditional religion fall into your (2).

Believing religious woo doesn't preclude one from believing non-religious woo. If anything, believing religious woo seems correlated with believing non-religious woo: https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2021/07/27/what-dri...

Evidence that such a correlation exists for “white evangelicals” in the US tells us nothing about whether it exists for religious people in general - including religious Americans from other racial/religious backgrounds, and non-Americans. Your observation might not be true for religion at all, only for a very specific type of it

>at the very least, traditional religion is a stable belief system that won't destroy your life.

That might be true in liberal western democracies, but there are many parts of the world where your particular choice of religion may well destroy your life or straight up get you killed, if the people behind the next coup don't share your beliefs. Even in the west you might hinder your own success if you pick a non-majority system.

The idea that religious people don't have bullshit creeds outside their religion is a false one.

Religious people in America act religious on Sunday and like ruthless, immoral "greed is good" capitalists on Monday, flexibly switching ideologies for their convenience.

You're describing someone with a ruthless flexible ideology. A truly religious person would apply the principles of their religion during the week too.

I'd rather the people in charge were patient, thoughtful and rational. But it is interesting to consider that a rational person may, under some circumstances, want irrational leadership.

Easy example at the moment, I think it is obvious from game theory that there are situations where a rational actor in the US would order a nuclear strike on Russia. Under such circumstances, I'd rather the person with the power to do so acted irrationally. Following this line of thought, it is reasonable to support extremely religious people with irrational ideals for high office - as long as what they actually do gets a good outcome. Eg, a strong belief in a higher power might sometimes drive the sort of people who are willing to decentralise executive authority amongst the masses.

Show me a person who is completely ‘rational’ across their entire belief system and maybe we’ll have a conversation - I haven’t seen it and I am surrounded by highly educated, highly rational people, most of whom would profess to be atheist or agnostic.

I believe it’s part of human nature. It’s exhausting being totally rational

I agree that atheists are irrational and biased too. We can't assume politicians to behave as cold calculators, whether they're atheist or not.

However very religious people are dogmatic (almost by definition). As such, they are less likely to review certain positions based on facts.

Why do you think theology protects against woo?

It seems like atheism might be correlated with false beliefs around social studies, but probably anti-correlated around false beliefs like "trump still the election".

I’m not really making a political point. But as a longtime democrat I lived through all the “the Supreme Court stole the election” and “Diebold machines” and “Putin altered vote tallies for Trump” stuff including among highly educated atheists and agnostics. Most people are largely ignorant about stuff they don’t study specifically.

Theology is the original "woo" stuff, that "protects" us from the so called modern woo stuff like gay marriage.

It’s unlikely that taboos against homosexuality arise from “theology,” given that they exist across societies with starkly different religious traditions. I suspect it has more to do with the importance of biological reproduction in subsistence agriculture societies. My dad grew up in a village in Bangladesh and observed that if you didn’t have kids you died, not even when you’re old and can’t work, but even earlier because you need them for labor. When he was a kid, 1 out of 4 children died by age 5, so there wasn’t exactly a surplus to go around.

You repeatedly pass off very peculiar opinions as "obvious facts" with some quasi anecdata from Bangladesh. I understand the advantage of talking about Bangladesh as there are very few Bangladeshis here to contradict you - but you can use this trick only so many times. However, I will credit you with using the words "I suspect" here.

You are welcome to pretend being progressive is believing in "woo stuff" like civil rights, womens suffrage, gay marriage, race blind immigration etc. The fact of the matter is that - you would not be in this country without the "woo stuff" you are ridiculing.

The conservative culture you have adopted doesn't welcome race blind immigration.

Referring to an earlier discussion when you verbally attacked a legal immigrant for documenting his citizenship process

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31348466

>>> As an ethnic Bangladeshi my kids and I have a right of return. I can obtain Bangladeshi citizenship any time I want.

>> Why are you treating America as some kind of science experiment?

> I try not to! My family was invited here by Americans on certain terms, and nobody has ever really complained. But I think they have every right to complain if they wanted.

Just to be clear- your family was not invited here by a majority of Americans. Just a corporation or university on restrictive terms and got approved by the US government, thanks to MLKs efforts.

A majority of Americans would not welcome you here. Half the country- liberals would not welcome you here, because you would block all progressive laws except Loving vs Virginia, and perhaps race blind immigration, though you take strongly offence when legal immigrants open their mouth, as in the referenced thread. So perhaps, you would also roll back the various 1960s civil rights acts. Half of the conservatives would not want you here because of your skin color, or as you call it - "culture".

> You repeatedly pass off very peculiar opinions as "obvious facts" with some quasi anecdata from Bangladesh.

Apart from my views on guns and legal originalism, I have quite conventional opinions for a desi raised on the east coast of the US in the 1990s.

> I understand the advantage of talking about Bangladesh as there are very few Bangladeshis here to contradict you - but you can use this trick only so many times.

I’m sure there are lots of Indians and Pakistanis on HN. I don’t think we’re so different that they wouldn’t be able to contradict me. But even progressive desis have aunts and uncles. And I don’t know about yours but mine aren’t exactly sitting around discussing Judith Butler.

> You are welcome to pretend being progressive is believing in "woo stuff" like civil rights, womens suffrage, gay marriage, race blind immigration etc.

By “woo stuff” I was referring to saging houses and healing crystals and Druid weddings. (My wife’s from Oregon.)

But as to the issues you mention, the vast majority of Americans support those things. Progressives are the small subset of those people who support those things for distinct ideological and millenarian reasons.

> The fact of the matter is that - you would not be in this country without the "woo stuff" you are ridiculing.

You can’t gaslight me, lol. I grew up in a 95% white Virginia town that voted for Bush, Dole, and then Bush again. The precinct where I live went for Trump over Clinton 58-34 (the same year we moved there). A good chunk of my wife’s family is rural white Trump voters.

There is a wellspring of acceptance for immigrants in this country that’s far broader and deeper than progressivism. Its rooted not in critical race theory, but Christianity, Constitutionalism, and the immigrant history of people who are already here.

Indeed, if minorities and immigrants were as reliant on progressives to be our champions as progressives think, we would be screwed. There’s not that many of them and they have no guns!

> The conservative culture you have adopted doesn't welcome race blind immigration.

The conservative culture my entire family comes from believes in that way less than anywhere in South Georgia or Iowa that I’ve been.

> Just a corporation or university on restrictive terms and got approved by the US government, thanks to MLKs efforts.

I’ve never met a desi (who wasn’t put on TV by white people, anyway) who thinks MLK has anything to do with immigrants. It’s a completely different issue. Much of my family moved to Australia or Canada, which never had a US style civil rights movement. But those countries are also very welcoming of immigrants.

> As a former atheist

Mind if I ask what your path was? I called myself an agnostic starting at about age 12 (and was a doubter from age 5), but eventually worked my way around to concluding that something was going on.

Some of my musings on that subject:

- https://www.questioningchristian.com/2006/06/metanarratives_...

- https://www.questioningchristian.com/2005/05/why_i_call_myse...

These are interesting reads, thank you. I was a professed atheist until my mid 20s, but I’m not sure I ever fully believed my lack of belief. Then when I had kids the feeling became kind of undeniable. Separately, I had I come to admire Christianity. Coming from a part of the world with generational conflict I think the teaching to live like a lamb turn the other cheek is profound. Secular morality diverges quite a bit on that point.

EDIT: There is a lot of stuff in the second one that applies to me. My wife’s faith is very strong. I’m not sure whether I adapted to her beliefs, or as someone raised in an extremely secular setting she made me comfortable allowing myself to believe things that I already felt.

So if your kid turned up one day and said they wanted to convert to Islam, what would be your reaction?

It's not founded on archaic religious belief. Israel is a major ally of the U.S. They are integral part of any foreign policy the US embraces.

The US is a major ally of Israel. Israel is the ultimate pragmatic nation.

Israel is the ultimate pragmatic nation? You mean the religious police state that has illegal nuclear weapons and did its best to provoke an apocalyptic conflict between the US and Iran?

The apartheid state that is dominated by far right extremist that are still living by a 19th century colonialist doctrine?

I didn't use pragmatics as a compliment.

Pretty funny to call Israel an major ally of the US. Because most of the problems the US has in that part of the world are because of that alliance in the first place.

Not mention Israels extremely damaging influence on US domestic politics. Israel working together with Neocons to push the US into some of the worst foreign policy choices since Vietnam. And that's just one aspect of the problem. The list goes on and on.

If Israel is a major ally, then I think the US would be much better of with fewer allies.

> I found that extremely disturbing that archaic religious beliefs would influence foreign policies.

Ahem.

> In the winter of 2003, when George Bush and Tony Blair were frantically gathering support for their planned invasion, Professor Thomas Römer, an Old Testament expert at the university of Lausanne, was rung up by the Protestant Federation of France. [..] President Jacques Chirac wanted to know what the hell President Bush had been on about in their last conversation. Bush had then said that when he looked at the Middle East, he saw "Gog and Magog at work" and the biblical prophecies unfolding. But who the hell were Gog and Magog? Neither Chirac nor his office had any idea. But they knew Bush was an evangelical Christian, so they asked the French Federation of Protestants, who in turn asked Professor Römer. [..] He explained that Gog and Magog were, to use theological jargon, crazy talk. They appear twice in the Old Testament, once as a name, and once in a truly strange prophecy in the book of Ezekiel

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/andrewbrown/2009/a...

> That being said, it's well known that our former French president got advised by an astrologer [1]

Former, former, former, former president Mitterand, not president Hollande.

This guardian article is demonstrable nonsense. Professor Römer is either ignorant, or is intentionally gaslighting Bush.

Gog and Magog are well-known figures mentioned in both the Hebrew Bible and the Quran. Playing dumb because it's not also in the Old Testament is not a good look for someone who's supposedly an expert.

This article is a silly hit piece written to fool people who are totally ignorant of religious history.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gog_and_Magog

https://www.britannica.com/topic/Yajuj-and-Majuj

> This guardian article is demonstrable nonsense. Professor Römer is either ignorant, or is intentionally gaslighting Bush.

Surely you meant gaslighting Chirac ? (which I disagree with, anyway).

> Gog and Magog are well-known figures mentioned in both the Hebrew Bible and the Quran. Playing dumb because it's not also in the Old Testament is not a good look for someone who's supposedly an expert.

Good thing he's an old testament expert and not a Hebrew bible or quran one then. You think Bush was referring to the Gog and Magog from the Hebrew bible or from the Quran or from the old testament ? Should have called an Hebrew or an Islam expert instead of an protestand Old Testament expert ?

Here's a different report of how things happened: https://wp.unil.ch/allezsavoir/george-bush-et-le-code-ezechi... and that might shed a light on why you think Gog and Magog is not as well known in France as you seem to think they are.

It's simply not possible to be an expert on the Old Testament and to be that unaware of the context from which it was derived. Especially as they are also mentioned in the parts that made it into the Old Testament.

Imagine claiming to be a LOTR expert and then feigning ignorance as to the events that took place in the Hobbit!

I'm not religious or even particularly interested and even I am aware of this history. Ridiculous.

I don't understand your point. How do you reach the conclusion that Professor Römer doesn't know about Gog and Magog ? Or that he doesn't know about the multiple interpretations of who or what they may have been ?

I'm not saying Bush didn't say that because I don't know, I can believe it. But it seems odd because 1) Gog and Magog are a somewhat well know part of Islamic eschatology, and 2) I pretty sure Google existed at that point in time, but without it I am sure his staff had access to dictionaries and encyclopedias which would have led them to 3) Encyclopedia or web entries on Darbyism or Dispensationalism, easily answering their questions.

France's Ministry of Foreign affairs isn't advising the President on things like this, they don't have subject matter experts? Forgive me, maybe I give governments too much credit or, but seems like an odd article.

I'd be very worried if international diplomacy fell down to a cabinet member who happened to be well versed in Islamic eschatology or worse, that cabinet members would rely on dictionaries or Wikipedia to understand words or cultural references they don't know.

Calling an expert was the right call.

> France's Ministry of Foreign affairs isn't advising the President on things like this, they don't have subject matter experts?

Seems pretty obvious to me that they wouldn't have experts on every subjects, especially on things like that.

> I'm not saying Bush didn't say that because I don't know, I can believe it. [..] Forgive me, maybe I give governments too much credit or, but seems like an odd article.

There's healthy skepticism and there's something else.

I would imagine President Bush was referring to the prophecy in Revelations 20:7-9. Basically in this case, it means nations who are an enemy to the people of God... not so much crazy talk imho, considering that nations really like to fight each other these days.

I'd say it's crazy talk when you are using that as an argument (among others, of course) to convince a french president (whose country has a clearer separation between state and church than the US) to go to war.

That's fairer.

Israel deserves to exist as much as any other country

It absolutely does. It doesn't deserve to deny the existence of another country, Palestine, though.

Good thing that it doesn't. Palestine became a country with thanks to Israel and Oslo Accords for the first time in history.

Cant they just stop killing each other?

I dont believe in made up books saying "this is your promised land"

I also dont believe in madeup books saying ",kill jews"

Just stop landgrabbing and/or killing each other jeez.

Defending Israel is such an NPC mentality, theres no good guys in that war they both commit atrocities.

That’s a big ask. How disproportionate do you think the US response would be to people launching rockets into our country? My guess is that we would kill the majority of them. I don’t think it’s fair to ask Israel to sit on their hands while they are attacked.

If Native Americans being put into reservations against their will, being evicted from their homes, being treated as second class people, were launching rockets at US civilians, the US would retaliate, sure. But both parties would be in the wrong, same as Israel/Palestine.

> being evicted from their homes

Just FYI, most of evictions Israel is doing are against jewish settlers, not arabs.

> Just stop landgrabbing and/or killing each other jeez.

Both sides think the land belongs to them as both sides inhabited the same land for hundreds* of years. Which side is doing the grabbing then turns into a judgement call.

* - Going by Wikipedia, Muslims Arabs since ~600CE and some form of Israelis since ~1200BCE.

Ethnically they’re the same group of Semitic peoples that have lived in Canaanite land since the late Neolithic

Can you show some data on that? Because a huge amount of the people there are from Western and Central Europe or the former Soviet Union. Those people might have some traces ethnically with people who were still there, but they lived away from there for almost 2000 years.

The best example are the Mizrahi, who never left Palestine.

The Israelites go back to the Bronze Age. They are from a couple of Semitic cities in the Canaanite levant. The same group that spawned phonecians and a bunch of other Mediterranean peoples who colonized much of northern africa and Southern Europe in addition to Anatolia

I certainty don't deny (as some people do) that there were no Jews anymore in Ottoman Palestine.

Then are you saying that if Israel displaces all of the currently present Palestinians and then holds on to the land for 1400-2000 years, they become the rightful owners of that land?

Yes. If in 4000 a bunch of Palestinians show up that used to live in China and start murdering and oppressing people because of what happened to their ancestors I would be against it.

Specially when essentially all of these Palestinians that lived in China had no intention or interest in ever going back to Palestine.

And then one day a dude shows up, and says, "Hey one could argue based on some not very historical evidence that X place is our homeland, so lets just go there and steal that land".

Just as if a bunch of British people had colonized East Africa with the idea of reconquering their homeland.

Both sides inhabited the land for hundreds of years is a nice principle.

The reality is that before the EXPLICITLY colonialist movement of Zionism, there was a small Jewish community there. A small amount of people compared to the overwhelmingly Muslim population.

The waste majority of current population has immigrated from Europe and the Soviet Union.

And of course because the Zionists know that they enacted a law that states that basically everybody who is even vaguely Jewish is free to live there and a lot of them are then settled in the West Bank.

At the same time the countless Muslims who actually lived there, in 1948 and their kids have no rights to return at all.

So according to the current Israeli law, a person who has hasn't grown up Jewish but has Jewish grand parent has a right to live their, but the children of the people displaced in 1948 don't.

Most of the developed world doesn't recognize Palestine.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_recognition_of_t...

If by most of the developed world you mean western colonists, then no shit

That's a nice fiction to hold on to. The reality is that the West Bank is cut up into zones, its more like a lot of islands with some limited self governments (that are dominated and corrupted by Israel) with Israel controlling all internal travel and Israel is constantly taking more of the land step by step for 40 years.

If its a country, then its boarders are being moved step by step every year.

So it not really a country in any sense other then by a few people who want to claim Israel is not an apartheid state.

Many will argue that settler-colonialist state based on religion does not have automatic right to exist similar to how white Rhodesia or apartheid South Africa (which used to be big friend of Israel) did not have right to exist and do not exist anymore.

What is also true is that jewish, muslim, christian and atheist/other religions living in current territory of Israel and Palestine have right to peacefully live in future state that treat all people equally. With Israeli settlements we are way pass the point of two state solution.

> settler-colonialist state based on religion

Are you referring to Jewish colonialists coming to British ruled Palestine in the early 20th century, Muslim colonialists conquering Byzantine ruled Palestina in the early 7th century, Roman colonialists that exiled Jews and renamed the area Palestina in the early 2nd century after previous conquest, Greeks, Persians, Babylonians, Assyrians or Egyptians?

Or maybe how according to the bible the Israelites conquered the area from the native Canaanites? (Which at least according to Wikipedia is a myth and they actually are those Canaanites)

> With Israeli settlements we are way pass the point of two state solution.

Sadly, English Wikipedia has very little information on the peace agreement that was almost signed at the time of the Annapolis Conference https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Annapolis_Conference compared to the Hebrew entry on the peace talks themselves https://he.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D7%A9%D7%99%D7%97%D7%95%D7%AA... Those talks outline the (pretty obvious) path to pece via territory exchange and the fact they were very close to being signed show to me that maybe common ground can be found again.

My personal hope is that the more unreasonable settlements will just be exchanged away and thus won't pose a serious barrier to peace. Maybe I'm being overly optimistic.

To inject some pessimism, I also don't see how a peace agreement can be signed with Hammas and the PIJ in control as in my mind a peace agreement will probably cause them to implode.

Well we can't do much about what the Romans did. Muslim empires conquered Palestine in the 7th century yes, but they didn't widely displace the population. And even in the case of the roman, there was a large diaspora within the roman empire at the time, but not really a whole lot of systematic population replacment.

The colonists movement called Zionism (that is historically closely interlinked with other colonialist movement and has been ever since) that started after WW1 and hit its peak after WW2 and in 1948 quite clearly and explicitly have the goal of whole sale population replacement of the whole region.

The dominate right wing parties plans as far as we can tell is to import as many 'Jewish' people as they can and hope to decrease the amount of people in the West Bank and Gaza. They have pretty clear and deliberate strategy of long term ethnic cleanings, converting land that they agree in theory was gone be Palestinian and settling Israeli citizens on.

If there were Muslim empires from Persia invading Palestine still today, we should fight against that as well but that is long gone. However Israeli colonialism is still fully active and pushing forward literally every day.

As many people have already noted, Israel has practically made a two state solution impossible. The West Bank has been so carved up and systematically been destroyed as a viable state territory that its really can no longer function as such.

The Annapolis Conference was not close to solving anything, it was just another attempt at pressuring Palestinians to politically give more concessions. Bush and his Neo-Con allies had absolute no interest what so ever in a real Palestinian state. In fact Bush did nothing to prevent massive expansion of settlements during his terms and his presidency ended any series possibility of a real 2 state solution.

Zionism started way before WWI

I understand that but not until WW1 was it really in-acted at any kind of scale.

No, but the initial steps were the hardest, they started the ball rolling. It was the initial early steps showed that the Zionist project in Palestine was viable. Then around WWI jews and arabs started to flock to Palestine.

The Israelites are from a couple of the Canaanite cities. They conquered their neighbors who were also canaanites. Many of the cities focused worship on different gods in the Canaanite pantheon. The Israelites had gone to the extreme of denying all deities who weren’t the one they worshiped.

countries are weird things. crafted out of contest, power, emphasis (and cultivation) of differences between groups of people, etc.

The boycotts are not to destroy Israel as a country but to stop Israel colonialism and its virtual imprisonment of millions of people in Gaza plus its systematic exploitation and imprisonment of people in the West Bank.

Protestants and the Israeli lobby have always had a very symbiotic relationship.

Orthodox Jew would disagree with you considering that there has been a civil war between mandatory IDF service and the orthodox Jews in Israel stating that religion and Zionism are opposites and not the same.

Israel exists because Israel as a nation state is a tiny ally-island in a sea of enemy-aggressors.

Why do you think so many politicians, that claim atheism, are still in favor of our alliance with Israel?

We need them there.

This claim is always so baffling to me. The strong relationship with Israel has only hurt the US.

In fact the best choice regarding Israel that the US has ever made is telling the Israeli and the British to stop being colonialist asshats in 1954.

The Israel relationship is the source of far more problems then it solves anything for the US in the middle east.

> sea of enemy-aggressors.

The amount of Israeli invasion of the nations around it, plus the constant bombing and invading of their airspace plus the constant assassinations and support for rebellions in those countries would question who the aggressor is.

Not to mention the constant and systematic reduction in the land that based on earlier agreements should belong to Palestinians.

Its unconstitutional and needs to be challenged on a state by state level. In Georgia the state was sued because Abby Martin (a famous critic of Israel) was barred from speaking at a University unless she signed a pledge not to boycott. The state lost but basically changed the law to raise the monetary amount that would trigger the requirement. All these BS laws were pushed quietly by local groups and now it is a uphill battle to challenge them and get them removed. I wish your organization would challenge the law instead of just letting this wrong continue to erode what little freedoms we have left.

Same thing is happening in the culture wars. The nutjobs are slowly getting elected onto school boards and other local positions so they can start adding prayer/ban civil rights related content/remove any references to CRT.

> that for Jesus to come back, the State of Israel has to exist.

Imagine thinking that humanity has the power to influence the actions of G_d

Oooh, then you’d see the actions of the opposition as influenced by the devil

A cycle of hate, mind-blown

Yup, I can see no sign of retaliation: "she would be transferred to Sao Paolo, Brazil".

I mean, who isn't ready to upend their lives, leave all their friends and family to move into a poorer country on another continent for the sake of their employer? There is only one name for that: "huge opportunity", thank you lots Google for not being evil.

Did it say she has to physically relocate, or can she work remote and just visit there 2-3 times a year?

What would hurt most the employee? That is the choice when you are bullying someone.

Is "activism" against the employer protected under anti-retaliation laws? I thought these laws protected employees for things like reporting workplace discrimination, harassment, being a witness in such an investigation, etc. Can you indulge in activism against your employer and claim that you need to be protected from retaliation if they fire you?

No. That would be absurd in my opinion.

It's worth pointing out that retaliation, itself, is not illegal or even necessarily morally dubious. If a company were to retaliate against an employee for stealing by firing them no reasonable person would find fault with that.

Only retaliation for a protected activity is illegal. Is interfering with or undermining the company's business prospects in service of a political opinion a protected activity? I don't know, but it would not surprise me if it were not.

To be entirely honest, I'm not sure I think it should be. I can certainly imagine a lot of scenarios where I would not approve of people motivated by certain political opinions actively working against the interests of the company that employed me.

Should you choose between holding a political view or having a job?

Not making any judgements on right or wrong but having a political view and expressing/promoting/pushing it at work are different things.

Such as Brendan Eich being forced out (retaliated against?) for views that were not expressed within the business only outside of it?

Legally speaking, "retaliation" can only occur if your employer treats you less favorably after you report discriminatory practices.

The company is allowed to treat you less favorably or even fire you for any other (non-protected) reason, including your general opinions. In this case, protesting a deal with Israel is an opinion not a protected action, so there's really no question of retaliation.

If I disagree (whether publicly or privately) with my company's product strategy or who they choose to do business with, they are absolutely allowed to fire me.

If you read her account on Medium, it's clear that she wasn't retaliated against. Google sided with her and determined her manager to be wrong for relocating her, so the subtext is that she manages to keep her position. However, she still considers it retaliation because Google didn't determine it to be retaliation.

If I were Google I'd fire her for abusing disability leave. She clearly was fit enough to keep up with and protest Google's development in Israel and appear on TV. Meanwhile, she didn't make a single effort to keep up with her team.

https://medium.com/@arielkoren/googles-complicity-in-israeli...

That's irrelevant. Even if a company did punish an employee for protesting a contract with Israel, that wouldn't legally be considered "retaliation" under US federal law. The timing doesn't matter.

It is effortless for me to keep my political opinions airgapped from my work environment. While I emphatically believe my political positions are correct, I know that plenty of people don't agree with me on contentious topics. To bring my politics to work, especially as a senior leader, borders on abuse of power, because my role in the organization would confer unearned authority to my political opinions.

I learned this early in my career when I discovered that my company's senior management were all members of an ultra-conservative Catholic sect. I remember censoring myself as a young person because I knew many of my opinions were not aligned with the values and culture of the management team. I"ll never forget how that made me feel, and I hope I never make a young colleague feel the way I did.

The kind of "politics" to avoid at work is the kind you avoid in polite conversation: irrelevant. If one's work has nothing to do with Israel, then talking about it must causes problems. But if the work has an effect on the matter, then it's not just politics, it's work. And work should be talked about at work. That way, the people who make the decisions get relevant information. Politics can be messy, but we have to slog through those messes that fall along our path.

>I"ll never forget how that made me feel, and I hope I never make a young colleague feel the way I did.

That's a good lesson to be aware that power can unintentionally cause chilling effects (like in your experience). But I don't think that applies here, where an employee was trying to influence decision-makers up the hierarchy.

Political heft belongs to those who talk the loudest and organize the most effectively. Unstated political opinions do neither.

You'll always be at the behest of a system of power in any Job. Optimizing some minscule political opinion space will only be temporary. If you believe you're voice is "correct" you will have unilateral bias towards anyone who opposes it. You might start become your prior bosses. If you want an open discussion start with the premise you might not always be correct. Listening to people traveled different journies make you understand the world and have empathy for opposing positions. You don't have to agree with someone to respect them. Also I agree suffering the feeling of suppression and silence is frustrating.

If you don't bring your political opinions to work someone else will. It isn't politically neutral to build AI systems for the Israeli defense forces. So someone, somewhere in Google clearly is bringing their politics to work. So to thn point at the person being fired for disagreeing and saying "Well you shouldn't bring your politics to work" is disingenuous. The only thing that your approach does is allow the political decisions that do get made, to go unchallenged.

Trying to get government contracts sounds like good old fashion love of money.

Project Nimbus, costing $1.2 billion, will transfer Israel’s data into six cloud-based storage centers over the next several years. Koren said the project would enable surveillance of Palestinians.

Bit of a stretch, isn’t it? You could theoretically claim that these cloud centers are responsible for anything that Israel does that you’re not a fan of, by her logic. In reality, they’re just cloud centers, she hates Israel, and will take any excuse to hurt them in any way possible.

Just read the NLRB dismissal letter of her complaint [0]. The NLRB found that Google decided to offer her a relocation from Mexico to Brazil before she started her BDS crusade against Google.

By the way, discrimination on the basis of national origin is against Google policy and against federal and CA state law. These laws protect Israelis just like anyone else.

[0] https://www.nlrb.gov/case/20-CA-286745

I don't understand how you came to the conclusion that Israelis are being attacked in this instance.

Refusing to build a data center in Israel, as Koren wanted.

That's the state of Israel, not Israelis. You can refuse to open a factory in China for moral reasons, but still be perfectly friendly with your chinese colleagues

Yeah I think that’s probably an argument a court would agree with. I wonder to what extent it is applicable. Is there not harm to Israeli peoples if Google refuses to build a data center in Israel?

The world is full of these "conflict" spillovers into civilian life in europe right now. Palastinians vs Israelis (or Jews in general), Kurds vs Turks, Shiits vs Sunnits, Wahabi vs all, Thai Royalists vs Students, CCP controlled student chapters vs those with no family ties to the mainland. Also the remnants of old war and warcrimes, being used in these show up time and time again. Todays japanese are dragged for the WW2 crimes through the mud by some old geezers.

The ideals have decayed, another great game is in full swing and these stories of the past, are great to prevent any discussion of the present and to feel selfrightous while comitting similar crimes on a smaller scale. Nobody is really interested in preventing these atrocities, a ton of people are interested in keeping them alive as ammonition.

It is true that ideals have decayed. US government did not retaliate strongly enough against the Tienanmen Square massacre back in 1989. Trade was much more important. Now US is critical of all the surveillance and other repressive things that the Chinese government does. But they missed the bus more than 20 years ago.

To take the story to its origin, President Nixon's presiding over the opening to China back in 1972 effectively killed the Tibetan resistance movement. As part of signalling their good intentions, the US withdrew all support to the Tibetan resistance movement from one day to the next. All the Tibetan freedom fighters fled overnight to India.

Now governments and media talk about human rights in Tibet. The opportunity to do something about it was lost long back.

Read 'The Noodle Maker of Kalimpong' by the Dalai Lama's older brother.

International relations have never been about ideals and morals.

We had colonialism, slavery, European nation exploited other continents for centuries, great game in Afghanistan and Middle East between Britain and Russian Empire and later USA. US supported autocratic rulers in Korea and Taiwan. US funded coups against democratic govt in Central and South America and Iran. US supported Pakistan govt in human right violations against what is now Bangladesh. Ukraine has supported Saudi's human right violations against Yaman. Ukraine and China has supported military govt. in Myanmar which toppled democratic govt.

> Palastinians vs Israelis (or Jews in general

Please don't conflate Judaism with Israel. As a Jew against zionism, I have many Palestinian friends and have never experienced any issues. It's a very pernicious and bothersome conflation.

The irony is, that by now the palestinians could be rich, if they would have poured all in education and becoming basically a programming offshore nation for israel. You can not destroy code and if you are industrious, you can IP buyout even your enemies. Singapor comes to mind.

But for the traditional players, eternal conflict is the bread and butter buisness. So here we are.

I don't really understand the point you're trying to make here. Every country could be relatively better off if they had invested better.

It's also hard to invest in education when your schools are bombed and your children are malnourished.

And when your money goes into rockets

I think that's being very optimistic. The Palestinians are living in pretty bad conditions, overall. While there have been many efforts to integrate Palestinian programmers into Israeli companies, it's a very uphill battle for all sorts of reasons.

I'm not saying the Palestinians (or at least some of their leaders) haven't done a bunch of stupid stuff, including putting money into terrorism instead of investing it in the community. I'm just not sure that had they acted very differently, the situation would for sure be better for them.

Very brave of her to stand up and say this. She sets an example, and more should follow.

As long as you are willing to face the consequences (being fired) certainly.

Stalin would agree, there is a pervasive misunderstanding that he was against free speech - in reality, he was against speaking freely and living after speaking.

The problem from the perspective of many Jews (including myself) is that these kinds of protests and protestors tend to focus on Israel to the exclusion of any other state. Where is the protest of Google's relationships with dozens of other countries accused of major human rights violations? The double standard when it comes to Israel calls into question the motivation behind the protest and makes many Jews reasonably wonder if it is actually anti-semitic (even when coming from fellow Jews).

One example of employee’s protesting Google’s business with China: https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2018/11/27/google-...

One example of employee’s protesting Google’s business with the USA https://www.cnbc.com/2019/08/19/google-employees-implore-lea...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whataboutism

The problem is that Israel is seen as a "friend state" and Israel claims to be a democracy. So we expect higher standards of ethics than most other countries. The other reason is that we (western countries) could have a strong influence to make the crimes stop.

Of course, "evil states" like Russia or China are not expected to behave well. And anyway, we (western countries and western companies) don't have much influence on them. So it's easy to abundantly criticize them.

Some "friend states" are clearly dictatorial and commit mass crimes, but we (western government and western opinions) don't expect much of them on human rights. Saudi Arabia started the Yemen war which killed 380,000 people (according to UNO), mostly Yemeni civilians, but who cares? Slaughtering a journalist in Turkey got more attention, because it was more spectacular.

Other "friend states" are less openly dictatorial (they have polls, even if often rigged) and only slaughter their political opponents. Then it's easy to just look elsewhere. Most African countries are in this category, from Egypt to Gabon, etc.

But Israel? Is it a democracy when its blocus of Gaza puts millions of people in a sort of giant jail? When hundreds of civilians are killed every year? When people can be thrown in jail by the administration for no public reason, and kept in for years without seeing a judge? In the same way, in 1945 there were far worse violations of the human rights outside of India than inside India, so why would anyone care for the way UK was ruling over India? And was France a democracy in 1960, when it ruled over Algeria with millions of second-class citizens and with a systemic use of torture?

> and Israel claims to be a democracy. So we expect higher standards of ethics

Just because a state is "democratic" does not mean it is ethical, and just because a state is not "democratic" does not mean that it is unethical. That being said, Israel is definitely a murderous regime and they're getting away with any atrocities they want.

This is the result of the clash between naïve idealism and the realities of revenue (and maybe some realpolitik). Undermining company revenue, usually isn't met with enthusiasm.

I don’t know if it’s fair to call it naïve idealism. There’s lots of reasons to get frustrated working at google, and when you see that they’re participating in an apartheid system it’s worth protesting and trying to get them to change, even if you don’t believe chances of success are high. You can be realistic (rather than naïve) and still feel it is worthwhile to protest, and to quit if that fails. The publicity of the protest also helps other people avoid the mistake of working for a company that supports or is indifferent to apartheid.

I'm seeing several comments here demonstrating that some people do not understand the long conflict between Palestine and Israel. That's too bad, but understandable, as the United States government in particular has been uniquely supportive of Israel and has defended its interest. Public criticism has been easily squashed by dismissing anything negative regarding Israel's policies as anti-Semitic.

There's a great documentary on the subject called Roadmap To Apartheid and I encourage folks to check it out. It describes Israel/Palestine as an Apartheid state, comparing it to Apartheid South Africa (and even discusses how the two governments cooperated with one another). It was released in 2012 and is about 95 minutes long.

A little ironically, the most convenient way to stream it is to pay a few bucks to YouTube or Amazon. Here is the YouTube link: https://youtu.be/s_hFKinVdBQ

I am sorry to see you are being auto downvoted but yeah discussion of this is always heavily squashed here and on Reddit. It seems like a hopeless situation but I am happy to see that the younger generation has differing views with their Boomer parents. Maybe something will come of that. Thanks for the documentary, I'll check it out and promote it as much as I can.

You're being downvoted because you're not making the argument here. "Read my book" or "Watch my film" isn't an effective answer to the question of why you'd think a state where Jews and Arabs and Europeans have equal rights is an apartheid state.

>isn't an effective answer to the question of why you'd think a state where Jews and Arabs and Europeans have equal rights is an apartheid state.

You are acting in bad faith here as you know this is not effectively true (as many others have already pointed out with sources).

No - I have seen people in this thread compare people in Israel to people outside Israel. But the topic is that “Israel is an apartheid state” - and we can obviously compare the rights of Jews and Arabs within Israel. Here’s an example:

https://youtu.be/AcEL-NlxBk0

It's a complex topic that challenges people's long-held beliefs. I'm under no illusions that a pithy comment on HN is going to change minds. But I hope that if a few people are open to engaging with a serious, long-form presentation on the issue, maybe some people will come away with new ideas.

But you're sharing PragerU videos, so it's painfully clear where you side on this issue and that you are unlikely to seriously consider a different perspective. Have a nice day.

No. If you have a point, make it.

> But you're sharing PragerU videos

If you had an argument you’d respond to the content of the video rather than the source.

"Instead of listening to employees who want Google to live up to its ethical principles"

But Google is.

It is ethics that this person disagrees with (me too) but "index the world's data" is, to paraphrase, Google's sole mission

Who doesn’t do surveillance these days? Seems pretty naive from a Google employee. A company that tracks user as one of the main business model.

As much as I tire of activist employee stories, at least in this instance she has resigned rather than trying to force other employees out for having different opinions which is often the case in these news items, so respect to her for that.

We don’t know that she didn’t focus on doing that until finally pushed out (I mean resigned)

"Resigned" is a bit of a mischaracterization.

Then, in November, she said, came a surprising ultimatum from Google: Agree to move to Sao Paulo, Brazil, within 17 business days or lose your job.

When will people finally realize?

- The goal is a diverse workplace.

- A diverse workplace means many religions, skin colors, sexualities, etc.

- The more diversity, the better the chances some corporate political statement is going to offend co-workers.

- The best policy is to not discuss politics or religion in the workplace. This provides the best environment for diversity.

I applaud her for her courage. Israel has seemingly been given leeway to do as they please when it comes to Palestianian freedom of movement. And Google's none the better with their AI drone programme.

I mean Palestinians have it hard to put it lightly. Israel is an Apartheid State that's enacting a harsh Apartheid system against these people:

* Illegal Settlers living in Palestine can vote in Israel but not Palestinians. Apartheid South Africa did the same, they put the people in their own "country" and so couldn't vote. Israel doesn't want 2 states as that would mean millions more voting.

* Israel has ethnically cleansed and fragmented areas into [isolated cantons divided by Israeli settlements](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palestinian_enclaves), and implemented [lebensraum](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lebensraum) tactics. This was called [Bantustans](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bantustan) in South Africa.

* [It denies Palestinian fishing past 3 nautical miles in some areas, and not past 15 nautical miles](https://www.ochaopt.org/sites/default/files/styles/inline100...)

* [The Apartheid Separation wall](https://i.pinimg.com/originals/d0/73/81/d07381fffef632350bcb...)?

* The settlers killing, and burning homes to get rid of people and destroying olive tree groves.

* [They control the water completely](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_supply_and_sanitation_in...).

* [They get 12 hours of electricity a day](https://www.ochaopt.org/page/gaza-strip-electricity-supply).

* Palestinians didn't have 3G until 2018, their access is also restricted.

* They [blockade](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blockade_of_the_Gaza_Strip) Gaza, making it a prison.

* [Not All Israeli Citizens Are Equal](https://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/24/opinion/not-all-israeli-c...)

* There were `5,248,185` Palestinian refugees in 2020; that's equal to half the population of Israel.

* [Israel dictates who you can marry](https://preview.redd.it/1k7jnev0pq971.jpg?width=1024&auto=we...)

* [Segregated road system](https://s3.amazonaws.com/VP2/visuals/en/4db97391fe7cb2462249...)

* 50% of Palestinians are children.

As someone from South Africa, I've seen ethnic cleansing and Israel is doing worse. Israel is absolutely an Apartheid state. Various human rights organisations have already stated this

And it seems in the comments here, Zionism is conflated with anti-semitism. Zionism is extreme nationalism (at the expense of innocent Palestinians), not anti-Jew.

in Italy whatever is said against the weekly human right violation perpetrated by Israel, newspapers will give space to the rabbi of Rome saying something like: "seems we have a nazi problem here in Italy, all the people criticising Israel clearly are just nazis in disguise"

Same thing happened in Germany when they tried to forbid religious circumcision on infants.

Confusing antisemitism, anti-sionism and disagreement with the politics of Israel is a strategic ploy voluntarily put in place by expansionist lobbying groups. The most right wing part of Israel absolutely doesn’t want the world to take a look at what they are doing. As these groups contribute generously to political campaigns in the USA and Europe, politicians are all to happy to play ball. It has reached a point where you can’t even criticise what the Knesset is doing without being labelled anti-sionist and therefore antisemitic.

Shulamit Aloni, Member of the Knesset (Israeli MP): 'it's a trick, we always use it' https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=qkD5yfk8Qp0

Calling Israel an appartheid state, and your specific examples betray a state of mind which applies arbitrary standards to Israel that never get applied to literally ANY other country in the world.

Some of your specific examples: "Illegal Settlers living in Palestine can vote in Israel but not Palestinians." Americans living abroad in France can vote in American elections, but note the French people. Therefore the US is an appartheid state.

How is controlling your state border via a wall appartheid?

Let's leave Palestinians for a second. Israeli settler living in occupied territories can vote in Israeli elections. Israeli living in Germany cannot. Both are living abroad, but have different laws applied to them. Having different legal systems for different groups of population is apartheid.

> Americans living abroad in France can vote in American elections, but note the French people. Therefore the US is an appartheid state.

Are French people effected by America's laws and politics the same way Palestinians are effected by Israel's laws and politics? If America controlled the water, power, marriages, fishing rights and freedoms of the French people I would argue that perhaps they should have a vote.

You forgot the part where the US isn't trying to invade France

We don’t need to, our hegemony is already all of western europe

> anti-Zionism is conflated with anti-semitism

One reason people say that is perceptions of double standards. They see China get an easier time on their treatment of Uyghurs.

Another reason people say that is because anti-Zionism is demonstrably correlated with anti-semitism. They see photos of someone at an anti-Israel rally giving the roman salute. They see people attacking Jews at random on the street whenever Israel does something shitty. They see a photo of a neo-Nazi group holding up the Palestinian flag in solidarity. They see anti-semitic tropes being shared in online forums that focus on criticism on Zionism and Israel.

A third reason is that anti-"Zionism" is a broad tent with a lot of different opinions, some of which Jewish Israelis view as genocidal in outcome if not in intent.

Of course, that doesn't mean criticism of Israel is automatically anti-semitic. That would be ridiculous, and there isn't really many people who actually say that in earnest.

>Another reason people say that is because anti-Zionism is demonstrably correlated with anti-semitism

This isnt true at all. The far right, for example, are pretty openly antisemitic. If somebody takes pains to distinguish the two on the other hand they're rarely bullshitting.

The converse is true though. Attempts to conflate antizionism and antisemitism by are almost always ultimately driven by a staunch belief in Jewish racial supremacy and racism against Arabs.

This is reflected by the views of the President of Israel, who is openly against miscegenation. That is a view you can only hold as a committed racist. Few would argue that a white president who doesnt want any white daughters to marry a black man is anything else.

For some reason the Israeli state not only gets a pass, they are granted the authority to judge what constitutes racism not only by America, but also by IHRA.

its definitely true? a lot of leftist groups claim to be anti-zionist but end up discriminating against jews (in the US). many proclaimed anti-zionists end up parroting the same tropes used by antisemites. and then you blame it on some kind of jewish conspiracy?

>its definitely true? a lot of leftist groups claim to be anti-zionist but end up discriminating against jews

They definitely dont but they always get accused of it.

The Israeli state (headed by the guy who openly doesnt want his daughter to marry a black guy) has several organizations (ADL, etc) set up specifically for the purpose of rooting out and mischaracterizing these examples for the purposes of furthering the aims of the state. They also happen to go after real antisemitism. Sometimes. They didnt give a fuck about viktor orban using hook nosed jew tropes in his campaign adverts though, because "friend of israel" > "friend of jews".

This isnt a "Jewish conspiracy". After all they go after antizionist Jews too. Even an antizionist holocaust survivor in one case.

It's an avowedly pro racism enterprise headed by a committed racist who explained his views without metaphors or tropes using anti-racism and "oh look, tropes!" as a figleaf.

> This isnt true at all.

I just gave numerous examples that I've seen personally. Centrists who don't care one way or the other about Zionism certainly aren't the ones beating up Jews on the streets of London when Israel does something bad.

The guy who beat up a Jew in London screamed "fuck Jews" while he did it. Not shy about his views - like most of your other examples no doubt.

There is close to no overlap between these people and the people who take pains to explain for the 15th time to a likely racist skeptic that they dont hate jews it's the state of israel they have a problem with.

On the other hand, ive yet to hear a single person who purposefully conflates the two condemn Isaac Herzog - the president of israel as a racist for what he definitely said. Literally zero. You would be the first if you were to do it in any such argument ive had. The closest I got was "his views are unfortunate".

I generally interpret this silence as a signal that his views on racial supremacy, his state and its institutions are thoroughly and comprehensively endorsed.

> The guy who beat up a Jew in London screamed "fuck Jews" while he did it

> There is close to no overlap between these people and the people who take pains to explain for the 15th time to a likely racist skeptic that they dont hate jews it's the state of israel they have a problem with.

Yes, those specific anti-Zionists aren't anti-semites. These are the types of anti-Zionists that you'll find in tech circles who are educated, egalitarian minded people that are cognitively capable of separating the crimes of a state and the ethnic group inside it. That doesn't detract from the observation that there's an intersection and correlation between people who are anti-Zionist and people who are anti-semitic. You see this correlation manifest in alt-right neo-Nazi communities, who both hate Israel and hate Jews, go and read Stormfront or 4chan. And you see it manifest among Arab-Muslim nationalists. There isn't a group that hates Jews and don't also hate Israel.

Regarding the guy who was screaming "fuck Jews", he was probably motivated to action by what Israel was doing a day before. It didn't happen in a vacuum where his anti-semitism can be cleanly separated from his dislike of Israel. The two are related.

It's the same underlying psychology as people who are racist against Muslims because of Al Qaeda or ISIS, or people who are racist against Russians because of Putin, and so on.

https://musliminstitute.org/freethinking/culture/sorry-truth...

>Yes, those specific anti-Zionists aren't anti-semites. These are the types of anti-Zionists that you'll find in tech circles who are educated, egalitarian minded people that are cognitively capable of separating the crimes of a state and the ethnic group inside it.

Israel hates these people the most. It's not hard to see why. Random people who attack Jews arent a threat - they get condemned and sent to prison quickly. BDS, on the other hand, has a history of successfully taking down apartheid states.

>That doesn't detract from the observation that there's an intersection and correlation between people who are anti-Zionist and people who are anti-semitic.

It really is curious. Every person I've observed who has tried to make this point has staunchly avoided condemning the publicly stated highly racist views of the President of Israel after I raised them.

It's not a correlation. It's literally 100%, even among people who are supposedly egalitarian and educated.

This does detract from your observation, Im afraid.

There is a very clear anti-zionism correlation to committed anti-racism, and an even higher correlation between being antiracist and those accused of antisemitism who deny it.

One or two nazis holding up a palestinian flag (not somethingk they tend to do a lot) doesnt change that.

> staunchly avoided condemning the publicly stated highly racist views of the President of Israel after I raised them.

This is irrelevant to the question being discussed which is whether anti-Zionism is correlated with anti-semitism. However, I did look up his statements now and yes it appears he is indeed some kind of racist. That's still besides the point.

> very clear anti-zionism correlation to committed anti-racism

Yes, that correlation also exists. That's not at all mutually exclusive with a correlation between anti-Zionism and anti-semitism. As I described above, anti-Zionism is a wide tent with some racist genocidal crackpot conspiracy theorist ethnoreligious nationalists mixed together with true egalitarian anti-racist leftists and liberals.

> One or two nazis holding up a palestinian flag (not somethingk they tend to do a lot) doesnt change that.

Dishonestly euphemistic and you know it.

>This is irrelevant to the question being discussed

It's completely relevant. The point being that being anti zionist is a necessary precondition of being consistently antiracist.

I will condemn clear and open anti semitism. I have no problem with that.

I cant in good faith condemn anti semitism and not condemn Isaac Herzog's comments. Anti semitism is racism. Isaac made some very clear and very obvious racist remarks as the head of the zionist state too. To be consistently antiracist I have to condemn those too, as well as the sheer overwhelming levels of racism inherent in the state he leads.

It is also a natural consequence of holding these views that you will, inevitably be accused of antisemitism. The correlation on that is nearly 100% as far as I can see - it happened to me, it happened to all of my friends, it happened to everyone involved in BDS.

Consistent antiracism guarantees that you will falsely be accused of antisemitism...by racists.

>As I described above, anti-Zionism is a wide tent with some racist genocidal crackpot conspiracy theorist

And pro zionism is a wide tent with a self declared racist at the very top whose racism is endorsed, whether implicitly or explicitly by damn near everybody in the tent.

I keep asking pro zionists and zionist apologists to prove themselves exceptions to this rule and they consistently refuse - thereby implicitly placing themselves in the "pro racism" group, i suppose.

>Dishonestly euphemistic and you know it.

No, not really. I tend to view the president of a cause to be a bit more representative of it than I do a few crackpots who hold up a flag. I similarly dont view Baruch Goldstein as representative of all zionists.

Unlike most other people who conflate antisemitism and antizionism, I dont just have a preferred flavor of racism.

> It's completely relevant. The point being that being anti zionist is a necessary precondition of being consistently antiracist.

Anti-Zionism being a precondition to antiracism doesn't imply that all anti-Zionists are antiracists. That's fallacious. As I've said, and provided examples for, anti-Zionists contain both principled antiracists and nationalist racist genocidal antisemitic crackpots. It's a union of two distinct sets of people. Anti-Zionism ~= {principled and commendable anti-racists}U{antisemitic neo-nazis and Arab-Muslim ethoreligious nationalists}. The first set of people arrive at their anti-Zionism because of egalitarian principles, the latter are just a broken clock that happens to align with antiracists on this one issue but otherwise they get their views from hatred and ethnonationalism. It's not hard to understand.

I'm not sure how familiar with the UK you are. The left recently chose as a leader a man who claimed he was friends with Hamas and Hezbollah. The people who claim 'anti-zionism isn't antisemitism' are his voters.

Edit reply due to rate limit: Corbyn also laid a wreath for one of the terrorists, presumably also in the pursuit of peace.

Oddly Corbyn also advocated for the IRA and claims that was about peace too, but the people that negotiated Good Friday state he didn’t have anything to do with the NI peace process either.

It's called diplomacy. He was engaged in peace negotiations when he called those people friends (he has since said that he probably shouldnt have said it).

It clearly wasnt racism that motivated him to say "friends" it was obviously a desire for peace. Most of his more intelligent detractors understood the context but were avowedly pro war - for them that actually made it worse.

Isaac Herzog's abhorrent views had no such excuse, he doubled down on them and yet British centrists demonstrate pretty much unconditional support for him.

A contingent from the UK Labour party even visited him to apologize in person for the other guy's "antisemitism". In the process of apologizing for somebody who wasnt a racist, they were sucking up to somebody who was. They werent looking for peace when they did that though, only approval.

Was rate limited at the time, but edit-replied above - ICYMI:

Corbyn also laid a wreath for one of the terrorists, presumably also in the pursuit of peace.

Oddly Corbyn also advocated for the IRA and claims that was about peace too, but the people that negotiated Good Friday state he didn’t have anything to do with the NI peace process either.

Adding to that:

> A contingent from the UK Labour party even visited him to apologize in person for the other guy's "antisemitism".

Excellent. That said, it's not just one other guy - Corbyn's not the only person in the far left.

> Isaac Herzog's abhorrent views

The worst I've seen so far is someone saying Herzog thinks Palestinians fly planes into buildings, which is demonstrably false (in a video he discusses 'terrorists' doing that) and someone else saying he doesn't want his daughter to marry a black man - not wanting your children to marry outside your race is a fairly common view worldwide although rarely said in public in the UK. Oddly Labour is very keen on conservative views when it comes to some races but not others.

If there's something big about Herzog we haven't seen in this thread please spill it here.

>The worst I've seen so far is someone saying Herzog thinks Palestinians fly planes into buildings

I guess youve never googled isaac herzog miscegenation.

It's a more useful example than most not because its necessarily his worsr remark but because it wasnt an offhand comment he later denied and because theres zero potential ambiguity about it being a racist belief.

>not wanting your children to marry outside your race is a fairly common view worldwide although rarely said in public in the UK.

Right. Racism is fairly common worldwide.

There is still a near complete overlap between people who preach antizionism and against racism (including antisemitism) and a willingness to let their daughter marry outside their race and people who will inevitably be accused of being antisemitic.

There is also almost a complete overlap between people who preach that this antizionism and antisemitism are equivalent and endorsement of racism - whether covert or overt.

I believe that this thread and the absolute unwavering commitment of everybody in it to the avoidance of condemming Isaac's remarks inadvertently underscores this...though Im still willing to be proven mistaken.

It's just as true for the centrist wing of the Labour party - e.g. when a group of them visited Israel to make a cringeworthy pledge of fealty to Isaac and were lauded for doing so.

No I haven’t googled anything I haven’t heard of before, neither have you.

Yes racism is common worldwide. But the UK left let Dianne Abbot and various orthodox Islam-associated ethnicities (who have similar views about their kid’s partners) and anyone else off Scott free. They really don’t like it when Jews want their kids to marry other Jews though. Odd isn’t it?

> There is still a near complete overlap between people who preach antizionism and against racism

You keep saying things like that but at least in the UK it really isn’t. The difference between the ‘anti Zionist but not racist’ person and the racist person is about two pints or how many other far left people they have around them.

> This is reflected by the views of the President of Israel, who is openly against miscegenation.

Sorry if this is nitpicking, but who are you talking about here? The President of Israel is Isaac Herzog, formerly the leader of the opposition and on the left side of the political map. I'd be highly surprised if he held such opinions.

If you are talking about the Prime Minister (Israel is one of those countries where the Prime Minister has the most power and the President is mostly a ceremonial position, so maybe you got confused due to that?) then the current one is Yair Lapid, which I'd also be highly surprised if he held such opinions.

Maybe the previous one, Naftali Bennett? I guess I could believe that, though I'd love to see exactly what public statements you are referring to.

Yeah, that guy. If you google for isaac herzog miscegenation and you'll find it.

If you visit the occupied territories around, say, Hebron it will be far less surprising that even somebody on the left would hold such views.

His was a useful example not because it's the most heinous but because he is at the top and clearly representative rather than a crazed rando, because he was very unambiguous about what he meant and because he doubled down on it when challenged.

It's hard, if not impossible, to find examples in the west that meet all of those 3 conditions.

Racism permeates their society to its very core. There are plenty of examples that are way, way worse.

A sizable portion of the Nazi party was very sympathetic to the creation of a Jewish state in Palestine.

Likewise, the Soviet Union was the first nation to recognize Israel and the Russian Jewish community was very important in the creation of Israel. More than 25% of the Jewish colonists came from Russia and other Soviet countries. The same Russia where pogroms were a routine in the XIX century.

Zionism was a pretty convenient idea for a lot of ultra-nationalists that didn't want Jewish people in their countries.

> The same Russia where pogroms were a routine in the XIX century.

It's almost like the Jews who fled Judea / Beta Israel following the Roman crackdown after Bar Kochba weren't welcome in Russia. Someone should find a way to let them return there and live in peace.

if one's anti zionism is a rejection of jewish peoplehood / nationhood (i.e. jews aren't a nation) then one is rejecting a shared conception of the vast majority of jews have how they perceive themselves.

The vast majority of anti-zionists reject jewish peoplehood (especially the ones who claim to be jewish, which in general just means of jewish descent, not anything that makes them uniquely jewish vs. non jewish). why? I'd argue because that makes it much easier to say good guy / bad guy. If jews are a distinct people who have indigenous ties to the land, then makes it difficult and complicated.

So while criticism of Israel isn't inherently anti-semitic (criticism can come from love as a simple example), it is very possible that the vast majority of anti-zionists are by definition anti-semites due to said rejection of identity.

Mostly agree with you. I used to be as pro-Israel as it gets but after my visits to that area I think the burden you mr average Joe Palestinian has to bear to for example just to do normal things such as going to work or driving to see the family or take a flight that we all take for granted, is too excessive. A Palestinian depending on where he works could have somewhere between 3-5hrs commute depending on the number of checkpoints they have to cross. Now checkpoints are realities for even Israelis too but you noticeably see the difference between checkpoints on the other side and on the Palestinian side - if you have a name that even remotely sounds Arabic, even if you have an American passport you get treated harshly. Your average Joe Palestinian just gets treated like trash. Now you might say checkpoints are necessary to keep this and that safe but the reality is hundreds of thousands of people if not more are left hostages for the fault of a few bad apples who genuinely pose the threat of terrorism. Most of the average Palestinian people are good hearted people who would want to do nothing but live their lives but I can see getting treated like trash for years and going through so much hassle just to do normal things like going to work can turn them to radicalism someday. It’s a great strategy to perpetrate generational hate from society in the name of “keeping everyone safe and prevent terrorism” - and it’s visible, younger generations are significantly more radical than older ones.

Now the Palestinian leadership is absolute trash as well as they offer no real service to their people and are busy with endless corruption. And it’s visible everywhere- even areas they fully control. The other thing is there are areas in Palestinian controlled zones (C) where you can’t even go if you look white as you genuinely risk your lives. The other way around is not generally true, even though you may have to go through checkpoints.

At this point I don’t think there is any solution to this crisis unfortunately.

Are you saying the decayed Palestinian leadership justifies their peoples abuse?

the palestinian leadership enables the abuse. they actually like it, since it means they can garner more international support to siphon aid for themselves. they do little to help the people and instead opt to act as proxies for Iran to conduct terrorist attacks against israeli civilians. if the palestinian people want freedom, they need new leadership since what they operate under is clearly not even close to a democracy.

Are you saying the decayed Palestinian leadership justifies their peoples abuse by Israel?

I wouldn't call abuse the legitimate fight against an oppressor.

to be clear I meant the abuse of palestinian ppl by israel

It doesn’t justify but it prolongs it. The so called “resistance” everyone here is encouraged to form and sympathize with, at some point you realize why do I as someone sitting far away have to care so much more when their own leadership and some of their own people in upper echelons are willingly happy to let everything rot including things within their full control?

Suffering is not justified but you can easily throw the argument that Palestinians will be living under the similar rot even if they had one state. I am not making it but at least that’s a plausible argument from the other side and it has a decent chance of happening if someday they gain a country of own.

their future well-being is of no concern to the apartheid mission so it's pretty out there to talk as if any aims are designed toward their welfare

> Palestinian controlled zones (C) where you can’t even go if you look white as you genuinely risk your lives.

As a blonde guy that spend a lot of time living in area C, going to restaurants, cultural events and even getting salsa lessons, I can't relate to that remark at all. Have you tried it?

In fact AFAIK the PA police has barely any jurisdiction over non-palestinians, they are only allowed to arrest them and wait for Israeli authorities to pick them up.

I've never felt threatened there except for when the Israeli forces or settlers invaded.

Someone who is also from South Africa who lives in Israel disagrees with you. [1]

[1]: https://youtu.be/AcEL-NlxBk0

Israel has offered the Palestinians statehood multiple times, as well as offering it to Jordan to run.

If you think Jewish people don’t deserve to live somewhere where Jewish people have always lived, but think French people are allowed to live in France, then you may hate Jews.

You use the term 'apartheid state' as if Israel not supporting Palestianians is a racial decision against Arabs. In what apartheid state can you have an Arab MP argue with another Arabic MP in Arabic in parliament?

I am glad that you support Ireland taking over most of Europe as Celts used to live all over France and beyond.

"taking over most of Europe as Celts used to live all over France and beyond."

If historically it had belonged to the Celts, and all the land had been called Ireland since antiquity, and was currently controlled by Ireland and all the citizens considered themselves Irish then yes, Ireland should control most of Europe.

That's quite a parlay of arbitrary requirements.

I appreciate this is not quite the same thing, but i can't help but wonder what someone who finds survelience morally reprehensible, is doing at a company that is primarily in the business of tracking users.

They found the treatment of Palestine by Israel to be the morally reprehensible thing -- not specifically data collection itself but weaponized data for enacting a system of oppression.

The data collected by Google on everyone is used by the US government as a weapon to enact a system of oppression, otherwise they wouldn’t use warrantless PRISM/FAA702 to pull data from the servers and would instead use normal legal search warrants based on probable cause.

Wouldn’t you want to track a nearby territory ran by leaders that publicly call for your destruction?

Where’s the disgust about working China, the modern day Nazis

quite. it is very frustrating seeing _every single thread_ about israel turn into hateful rhetoric, spreading lies and propaganda, using buzzwords they heard somewhere, and generally not understanding history at all. but threads about china/KSA/UAE/etc. are free of this. this isn't whataboutism, its important to care about humans rights issues in multiple countries, but its just weird how hate-fueled people get about israel.

That is the one thing I dont get. I keep seeing people say that people cannot criticize israel, but that is _all_ I see in the media and in online forums. _every single pro-israel point_ here is downvoted.

it isn't antisemetic to criticize israel but yikes do people really get passionate about their hatred for it specifically, more so than any other country. antisemitism isn't antizionism but people really do end up parroting the exact same talking points as antisemitism. it really concerns me about HN honestly. at a point people really need to look within themselves and ask are they actually antisemitic?

That's because you are free to criticise China or Iran, but get accused of being a nazi for pointing out Israel does similar things. That makes people more angry.

> cannot criticize israel

IMO large part of distaste for Israel is reflection of how criticizing Israel doesn't do shit due to how entrenched and influential Israel Lobby is in US politics and centrality of Israel is to US foreign policy in MENA. Let's be real, Israel isn't going to get substantively sanctioned by US + LIO co for any of the henious shit they do. There's plenty of hate boners for PRC/KSA as well, but also tangible policy/diplomatic actions against these "bad actors" while Israel get's off with relatively light slaps. The long running hypocrisy and impunity is a bad look and triggers broad groups, most of whom IMO are simply anti-Israli influence because it's a reflection on how realist and interest driven US foreign policy actually is. Optically, frequently it looks like US can't keep Israel on a short leash, and sometimes the dog is walking the owner, this pisses off from antisemites who simply hates Jews to murica exceptionalists who thinks Israel is functionally a vassal and everyone in between. TBH pro Israel propaganda is doing pretty well all things considered. Evoking antisemitism seems to work out better than sinophobia or islamaphobia at least in MSM.

The sort of surveillance and checkpoints China imposes on the Uyghurs in Xinjiang is abhorrent, and so is what Israel imposes on Palestinians.

Good on her standing against a murderous apartheid regime. Hopefully more follow.

Not sure what disgusts me more, the term Jewglers or the fact that she faked the retaliation. This story just doesn't add up.

For what it's worth, it looks like Jewglers is a name the group calls itself [0]. It doesn't appear to be some racist phrase the employee made up.

[0] https://www.seroundtable.com/photos/google-jewglers-menorah-...

Also (just for context), the employee in question is also Jewish.

“In her statement, Koren also singled out “Jewglers,” a forum for Jewish Google employees, for not accommodating Jews who hold anti-Zionist views.”

Zionism is the belief that Israel has the right to exist, and that Jews have the right to live in Israel.

If you are against this, your views are quite extremist and it is hard to find understanding and accommodation, particularly among fellow Jews.

To quote Wikipedia:

"Advocates of Zionism view it as a national liberation movement for the repatriation of a persecuted people to its ancestral homeland. Anti-Zionists view it as a colonialist, racist or exceptionalist ideology or movement."

The wiki on Zionism says this toward the end:

“Anti-Zionists view it as a colonialist, racist or exceptionalist ideology or movement.”

Characterising the groups views as believing Israel should not exist seems disingenuous.

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

Zionism is an anti-democratic, explicitly racist belief that only Jews should have governing power over all land west of the jordan river.

Don't the Palestinians think the same thing, that only Palestinians should have governing power over all land west of the jordan river?

I'm sure many want the land that their families lost long ago when Israel was established and plenty of Palestinians are enraged enough by the ongoing human rights abuses that they suffer that they'll curse the Israeli state. Some will even say some pretty radical shit about it, probably similar to what Ukrainians might say of the invading Russians, or even what some Irish said of the Brits back during their independence struggle.

However if you were to right now offer the people of Palestine a guaranteed peace with a two-state solution based on the Oslo accords they would overwhelmingly vote to accept it. I don't think you could say the same of anyone who describes themselves as a Zionist. Though I don't know how widespread that belief is among the Israeli population, it's entirely likely a similar majority in Israel would be satisfied with such a solution.

Is there an *ist word like racist that refers to supremacy of a religious group instead of a race?

How many jews are allowed in palestine, vs how many arabs in israel? Who is more racist is clear to see by the actual actions taken. Jews can't live in arab areas, while ~20% of israel is arab. The racists are plain to see. Arab ethno-nationalism is somehow not part of the conversation, just 'anti zionism', while the arabs keep the jews out by violence.

There are plenty of anti-zionists, even Jewish anti-zionists.

> If you are against this, your views are quite extremist and it is hard to find understanding and accommodation, particularly among fellow Jews.

It's a bit more complicated than this. Israel militarily occupies Palestine. And they institute an apartheid system that is unfair to Palestinians, denying basic rights to Palestinians -- they can take your property, they can restrict your travel, they can strangle your economy. And they do.

You might say Israelis deserve to live life in peace, but shouldn't Palestinians as well? The state of Israel was carved out of Palestine, so can you blame the original inhabitants of the area that they feel something was taken (and still being takene) from them, and can you blame anyone from sympathizing with that perspective? You don't have to be anti-Zionist to at least empathize with the complexity of the situation & understand that the state of Israel has enacted some very problematic policies and conducted problematic actions. I don't think it's fair to just call it extremist by any means.

There are also levels to everything. Some folks are unhappy with the Israeli state as it exists today, but by saying they're anti-zionist & "Israel shouldn't exist" they typically aren't advocating for murder, they're advocating for a one-state solution so that inhabitants of Palestine/Israel can get democratic representation & equal rights. Again, not a crazy take.

Correct they're not advocating for murder, they're advocating for suicide.

> they're advocating for a one-state solution so that inhabitants of Palestine/Israel can get democratic representation & equal rights. Again, not a crazy take.

This is in fact a crazy take. It’s not quite advocating a shared state for Nazis and Jews level of crazy but it’s certainly getting there. Palestinian nationalism is based on being anti-Israel in much the same way anti-colonial or anti-metropolitan nationalism is. See Catalan, Scottish, Irish or Welsh nationalism.

Palestinian nationalism is much more like Irish nationalism than any of the rest of those in that people have killed for it in large numbers.

When people say something really stupid you have the choice of believing they’re lying or stupid. One staters are some of one and some of the other.

Well Protestant and Catholics learned to live together in Germany. Took 30 years but they got there. I do not see why not Palestinians and Jewish can’t do the same.

Were I a Jew or a Palestinian I would personally prefer not to live in a battleground for 30 years. Losing a third of the population also sounds bad. If your argument for one state is that it would be at worst as bad as the 30 Years War I’ll take it as an argument against one state.

Of course the arabs in this area deserve better. Pretending Israel is the oppressor is not empathizing. Nor is believing in fake history in which some Palestinian state (or even major population) has ever existed. They're victims of PA/PLO/Fatah/Hamas and other such organizations as much as Russians are victims of their govt. Repeating their leadership's propaganda doesn't help them. To empathize with them is to recognize there are sane people living there who don't buy into this hogwash and are simply victims of circumstance.

Israel _is_ harassed by some violent folks who have misguided ideologies that don't want peaceful coexistence but instead annihilation of the other. But so is Palestine. If you're going to wholesale call out the _loose confederacies_ of the PLO and related organizations for this kind of thinking, you should be willing to acknowledge the same thinking exists within the Israeli govt and army. They have done bad things, and it's not hard to see why if you understand how war works. War results in polarization and dehumanization of the other to the extent of "these other people should be dead." It happens to both of the polarized sides.

And let's be real, Israel is in control here. They have a modern military and are the occupiers. The way they've gone about this is the cause of much violence. Imagine the desperation of living in an apartheid state: feeling that you are not being represented or fairly treated by the systems governing you. Imagine being treated differently from your neighbor because you're not a citizen, and you can never be one because of your race and religion. It's totally fair to call them the oppressor in this situation because what the heck are these loose disorganized confederacies living in occupied territory going to do? They don't really have power to change the situation.

> they're advocating for a one-state solution so that inhabitants of Palestine/Israel can get democratic representation & equal rights. Again, not a crazy take.

This is roughly like advocating for ending the Russian-Ukrainian conflict by advocating for a one-state solution where the inhabitants can get democratic representation & equal rights.

Sure, but it feels different if you call the one state "New Ukraine" and the government is a democracy headed by iono, Zelensky.

Also, the one state solution is not advocating for Israeli annexation of all Palestinian territory -- it's advocating for the view that Israel has already de facto annexed Palestine, and that the current Israeli government is implementing a brutal apartheid that needs to end. Calling the whole state something new, giving everyone citizenship, and electing new leaders won't solve everything but it's a valid perspective to have.

> Zionism is the belief that Israel has the right to exist, and that Jews have the right to live in Israel.

Zionism is about the right of Israel to exist as an explicitly Jewish nation state. Being anti-Zionist does not mean you believe Israel should cease to exist, unless you define Isreal only in terms of ethnicity and religion.

> If you are against this, your views are quite extremist and it is hard to find understanding and accommodation, particularly among fellow Jews.

That's a fairly recent development in the grand scheme of things. Prior to the formation of Israel, Zionism was frequently contrasted with Bundism. The Bundist idea was that the "Jewish nation" is inherently a nation without borders and that Jews should organize internationally wherever they are. Bundists still exist but when Israel was created a lot of Jews adopted a more Zionist stance as the existence of Israel pretty much forced their hand in the debate.

There are still many good arguments against Zionism even now that Israel exists, especially from the point of view that just because Israel wants to be a "home country" for (certain) Jews, many Jews already have a home country elsewhere and identifying Israel as their home country only plays into the hands of antisemites arguing they're "foreigners" who don't belong in the country they were born into.

In fact, many white nationalists in the West use Zionism as a talking point to support their demand for white ethnostates: if Jews can have Israel for Jews, why can't "ethnic Germans" have Germany for "ethnic Germans", etc. The arguments of course get increasingly incoherent with places like the US where pinning down an "original white ethnic identity" requires a fair bit of mythologizing.

Arguably, Israel as a "Jewish state" is a late project of 19th century European nationalism, which largely fell out of fashion after WW2 with the increasing globalization of trade and industry and the softening of national borders through common trade areas and projects like the European Union. The perceived necessity for a "Jewish home country" was accelerated by the Holocaust (and the refusal of Allied countries to take on Jewish refugees until it was too late) but the "Jewish consensus" of universal support for Zionism is more manufactured than authentic and Israel has become as divisive as it has become unifying (e.g through the disregard towards Yiddish as a Jewish language, racism towards non-white Jews, prominent individuals like Netanyahu engaging in Hitler apologism, etc) even if you don't consider issues pertaining Palestinian Arabs.

EDIT: Since most people are likely unfamiliar with the term, here's the Wikipedia article on Bundism:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bundism

Although primarily a historical movement pre-dating the formation of modern Israel, Bundist movements still exist in many countries today and tend to be especially popular with Jewish socialists (who tend to be critical of Israel which they often perceive as an imperialist and colonialist project).

> If you are against this, your views are [...]

You do not get to tell other people what their views are. In the first place, questioning what has in practice meant "buy some tanks and go oppress the natives" is not something spoken of positively for literally any other country doing it. But when it is Israel, pointing out that humans have (and should have) rights somehow means that you hate all Jews. Ridiculous. Rather it is the reverse: Understanding Jews and their historical circumstances should give you a renewed respect for human rights and how important they are.

> You do not get to tell other people what their views are.

They are judging people's views, not telling them what to think. It's fine to believe what you want about other people's views. You do not control other people's minds.

When "Zionism" only means that Jews have a right to live in those lands, that's fine because Jews are indeed one of the "indigenous" inhabitants of them.

When "Zionism" also means that Jews can create a "Jewish State" that discriminates against non-Jewish indigenous inhabitants (e.g. through a racist "law of return") - this is a big problem.

That land must be shared..

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