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Comment by gruez | Hacker News Reader

Thanks.

The quoted tweet mentions "videos", and is actually a thread of multiple posts. You have to be signed in to see them, or use a nitter proxy[1]. If you look at those videos, it's clear that they're not calling the protesters "terrorists" for merely protesting, they're calling them "terrorists" for engaging in behavior such as intimidating jewish students or praising the October 7th attacks. It's slightly misleading to round that off to "protesting Israel's actions in Gaza".

[1] https://xcancel.com/ShaiDavidai/status/1781927143758262389

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It's slightly misleading to round that off to "protesting Israel's actions in Gaza".

It's very misleading to round it off that way, and that's exactly why Israel crafted that retweet the way it did.

Even though the underlying tweet tells a different story, by truncating and framing the material in that way -- by juxtaposing the insipid "(a)-(b)-(c)" argument with a video of a perfectly nondescript protest scene -- it's very clear that the intent to convey a simple, visceral, 3-second emotional impression: "protesting Israel's actions in gaza == support for terrorists == terrorism".

>Even though the underlying tweet tells a different story, by truncating and framing the material the way they did

It seems like a stretch to argue they're "truncating" the material, when twitter doesn't provide a way to link threads besides quoting the first tweet.

>it's very clear that what they're trying to do is to convey a simple 3-second emotional impression: "protesting Israel's actions in gaza == support for terrorists == terrorism".

I certainly didn't get that impression when reading the tweet. I agree the video was nondescript, which was why I went out of my way to use a nitter instance to see whether there were more to that tweet. The standards around "well if you read between the lines..." accusations are seemingly so low that in any given argument you could use them on both sides. For instance, you could plausibly argue that by linking to a thread where the worst pro-palestinian protesters were called "terorrists", and describing that as "[israel] consider US students protesting Israel's actions in Gaza to be terrorists", it gives the "emotional impression" that you can't denounce any aspect of pro-palestinian protesters without being accused of thinking the entire movement are terrorists.

Right -- if they dig into the context (which of takes infinitely more time, and then they have to be logged into Elon's hate machine to even see it) then they'll find the more "nuanced" information below it (for what in the hasbara world counts as "nuanced" anyway), which is at least somewhat less brainwash-y and does try to make some kind of point.

But the whole intent of the retweet's framing (its truncating) of the underlying tweet is to bypass all of that, and just get straight to the cortisol-spiking emotional imagery.

>But the whole intent of the retweet's framing (its truncating) of the underlying tweet is to bypass all of that, and just get straight to the cortisol-spiking emotional imagery.

Again, not being able to quote an entire thread is a platform limitation, so to claim that it was intentional is a stretch. I agree that the tweet would be better if it contained a footnote of "btw we're not saying all pro-palestinian protests are terrorists, just the ones in the video", but given that twitter isn't exactly known for nuanced takes, claiming that the lack of such footnote implies it was intentionally truncated is an isolated demand for rigor. Moreover, if you're against truncating and "cortisol-spiking emotional imagery", of @Israel's quote tweet, you should be against the same behavior of the OP, which rounded off the entire thread to be "they consider US students protesting Israel's actions in Gaza to be terrorists".

I don't see the OP's framing as dishonest -- on the contrary, I see it as basically correct.

It's not the the Israel tweet was intending to literally say "protests == terrorists". The whole point is that was innuendo. It didn't have to be literally correct -- only to convey an insinuation and/or an emotional message.

And it seems pretty clear that emotional message was very much intentional in this case. It's also perfectly congruent with the number one insinuation / emotional message the hasbara folks have been repeating incessantly for decades (and in recent years, not merely as an insinuation but literally -- even so far as to have it successively encoded as legislation in multiple countries): "All protest/critique/doubt of Israeli policy or narratives == anti-semitism".

And perhaps we can leave it at that? I mean you can respond of course, but I'm not sure I have much more energy for this. I guess it's pretty clear that I'm pretty fed up with that country's official (and unofficial) propaganda machine, and all the mindless crap it's been spewing for decades and decades. And so I'm kind of tired of looking for reasons to give it the benefit of the doubt.

If you have a different take, then that's fine for you of course.

>I don't see the OP's framing as dishonest -- on the contrary, I see it as basically correct.

"basically" is doing a lot of the heavy lifting here. At best the claim was directionally correct in the sense that Israel hates pro-palestinian protesters, but that's neither a secret nor controversial. The specific claim of "they consider US students protesting Israel's actions in Gaza to be terrorists" is only true if you believe the highly subjective read-between-the-lines-and-consider-the-context interpretation.

>not merely as an insinuation but literally): "all protest/critique/doubt of Israeli policy == anti-semitism".

literally?

Source?

Moreover, you don't see the irony here? You're accusing the israelis of pushing a message of "all protest/critique/doubt of Israeli policy == anti-semitism", but here you are, rounding off a tweet thread where the worst pro-palestinian protesters were called terrorists as "they consider US students protesting Israel's actions in Gaza to be terrorists"? I'm sure you find the latter to be more justified, but surely you can see the issue when someone who's vaguely skeptical of the pro-palestinian view is reading your comments?

Ok, you caught me violating my own rule with regard to "literally".

It's not literally "all". But there does seem to be strong, steady insinuation in their propaganda that much protest/critique/doubt of the State of Israel's actions/shenanigans is, ipso facto anti-semitic.

There's no source needed for this. It's been omnipresent in the environment of discourse (at least since the dawn of the ADL/Dershowitz era).

Though I do think it's quite fair cite both the Nakba Law within Israel itself, and the anti-BDS legislation adopted in certain countries as attempts to (at least partially) codify this omnipresent insinuation into law. More specifically the idea seems to be brand this visceral association (between strong critique and anti-semitism) as highly intrinsic -- to such a degree that can be called "close to literal" -- in people's minds.

It's both bizarre, and all too mundane and predictable somehow, the extent to which they've been able to keep pushing the envelope on (and reaping dividends from) this effort.

But here we are.

Nice deflection but you're arguing in bad faith.

The OP is correct, since although the official Israel account is quote tweeting Shai Davidai, the most shameless zionist hasbarist on twitter, Israel's tweet is still self contained and is clearly trying to demonize and vilify the protestors as terrorists based on their "ideology" i.e. fighting back against your colonizer and oppressor is "terrorism" because any opposition to the racist colonial enterprise that is Israel has to be demonized and delegitimized by Zionists while they themselves engage in blatant terrorism. Israel's propaganda is so awful and lazy that it has become predictable. They will always hyperfocus on fringe cases, even manufacture such cases if they don't exist, in order to delegitimize the whole protest.

And anyone who actually followed the protests carefully has witnessed that Zionists were the aggressors trying to intimidate anyone who opposes Israel's actions in Gaza in any shape or form. Furthermore, the "they were intimidating jewish students" narrative has become so laughable at this point because zionists perceive any opposition to Israel as "intimidating" and so they are abusing the jewish identity as a shield to protect the israeli apartheid entity from criticism. People are sick and tired of this game because they have seen zionists playing these sick and twisted mind games for decades.

I never claimed that those videos are representative of all anti-israel protests, or that either accounts aren't engaging in bad faith argumentation, but at the end of the day, the linked tweet does not substantiate the object level question of "[israel] consider US students protesting Israel's actions in Gaza to be terrorists". The examples might be cherry picked, but it's a stretch to claim that a thread calling the worst protesters "terrorists" actually means they think all anti-israel protesters are "terrorists". Cherry picking is bad, but two wrongs don't make a right.

It's not a stretch by any means - you are bending over backwards to sanitize the most obvious propaganda to vilify and demonize protesting students at columbia by hyperfocusing on the fringe and leveraging that to delegitimize the whole. It's a pattern of propaganda in which Israel engages in regularly, one of their favorite strategies in fact. Both Israel's official account and Shai applied their smears indiscriminately, so there is no reason why I would need to interpret either tweet charitably since they are both primarily engaged in propaganda.

That sounds like what the IDF would say too. Do you have anything to back your statement?

>Do you have anything to back your statement?

Did you not see the xcancel link?

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