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Comment by willvarfar | Hacker News Reader

Public support for Israel is steadily falling; this poll was published just a couple of days ago https://news.gallup.com/poll/692948/u.s.-back-israel-militar... and other G7 countries are moving to recognise Palestine.

So will the administration's push to use pro-Israel reasons to censure and penalise the universities steadily get out of touch with what the public want and sympathise with?

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The poll doesn't ask about support for Israel, it asks about approval for the war in Gaza, a very different question. Easy to disprove of a war that has gone on for this long, while still favoring Israel.

When has a dictatorship ever cared about public opinion?

When setting repressive measure to mute any opposition and skyrocketing the budget of their personal security agaisnt all raising threats?

Remember, dictators are never wrong. They can only ever double down.

It's why they are so destructive.

Brian Klaas wrote an interesting article about that, saying that the biggest weakness of dictators/autocrats is that they surround themselves with 'yes men' and quickly lose touch with reality.

Sounds like the tyranny of rocket equation applied to personal security. At some point, the cost to derisk exceeds what is available or logistically feasible.

1793, France. Just ask King Louis XVI.

Is monarchy a dictatorship?

Yes

If they say god appointed the person, is monarchy. If the person say she is going to stay in power because enemies, then it's a dictatorship.

Monarchy just means "rule by one". Dictatorship means, "because I said so".

A king who gets their power from God and can make rules whether or not the people consent is both a monarch and a dictator.

If they have power, yes.

What dictatorship are you referring to?

ALL dictatorships need public support to remain in power. Even medeival kings needed public support from the merchant class.

Well, what they need is obedience, and to obtain it they often reach for the path of spreading fear, doubt, uncertainty, violence, menace, murder, torture, and so on. Sure that's not the less brittle way to grab and retain political power in your claws, as it certainly also foster an environment full of people eager to stab you too death at first possible occasion. But there is not much morale and brillant about greed.

Support for Israel among Americans is starkly stratified along generational lines, with young people on both sides of the traditional partisan divide being broadly sick of Israel's shit. This has Israel freaked out, they know their support from America is now on borrowed time and without it, they are doomed. I think this is why they're pushing so hard now, they're trying to secure their strategic objectives (particularly the annexation of Gaza and the eradication of the Palestinian people) before the American baby boomers, their bastion of support, die or otherwise age out of the political process.

Exactly this. Glad someone else can see it. Having studied other settler colonial states (I believe), Israel realizes that Western weapons and doctrine guarantees they'll win every single confrontation with the Palestinians, just like the Rhodesians & Apartheid South Africa. Easily too, with insane KD ratios.

Those two regimes won every battle easily, but what eventually did them in was sanctions. And, when the West sanctions you, you eventually collapse or stay economically irrelevant. Case in point: USSR, Maoist China, Rhodesia, South Africa, etc.

But, the Boomer, Christian Zionist generation is dying out, along with older Germans (and Europeans) who still struggle with some Teutonic guilt.

Irreligious, humanist youngsters across the Americas and Europe now see it's a clear good vs. bad struggle and the Zionists are not the good guys, so Israel likely believes they need to expel the Palestinians from Gaza & the West Bank within one generation or they'll be facing devastating sanctions within 10-20 years.

Given that Israel's economy depends heavily on technology service exports, diamonds, and agriculture, if they don't change posture and end up getting sanctioned, it'll cripple them without a doubt. Just cutting off their technology workers' foreign exchange salaries is enough to shrink the economy by half once that FX channel dries up.

What I don't understand is why not go along with letting at least WB or also Gaza get recognized as Palestine and do what India and Pakistan did going forward. Seems like it would be a lot more likely to work and a lot less risky. Maybe there are some special resources in either place?

A lot of geopolitics that leads to invasion is more about groupthink among whatever ruling class than any actual resource gains.

See Russia->Ukraine, US->Iraq, soon China->Taiwan.

A politically powerful segment of Israel is adamantly opposed to the two-state solution. And the strategic positioning of Israeli settlers over the years on WB land (in violation of signed treaties) has intentionally rendered establishing an independent WB as "logistically impossible" due to "security concerns" (protection of the settlers). There's no way forward without removing the settlers, and removing the settlers is political suicide in Israel, where hard-right parties have an oversized influence in the government.

Antisemitism is just an excuse for these actions against universities, it's a pretext. Not a particularly believable one anyway, but that doesn't seem to matter.

The Trump administration is punishing institutions that disagree with it, or that it dislikes for some reason.

MAGA is heavily antisemitic, you absolutely right that this is pretext. They would have picked something else, this is just the best one at the time.

Considering US support to Israel, I wonder if MAGA is Trump or not...

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/christian-zionism-israel-anti...

I've never really understood the relationship between the US and Israel. The US gives Israel pretty much whatever it wants and in return the US gets ... nothing? Israel even (deliberately?) attacked a US ship during the 6 day war, with little (if any) consequences:

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

>While millions of American evangelical Christians have long been fervent supporters of the Jewish state because of End Times prophecies

Is that the main reason for this incredibly one-sided relationship?

The main reason is geopolitics. Israel is an ally in the Middle East, a key region to US foreign policy.

So is Saudi Arabia. The US doesn't have such a one-sided relationship with them, as far as I can see.

Those apocalyptic prophecies are a big part of it, yes. Many politicians are believers in those prophecies, and many more count on votes from those believers. There's also the whole "God's chosen people" stuff, and a lot of older people think Israel should be given a blank cheque due to WW2 stuff. And of course some of it comes from wealthy donors like Miriam Adelson, a desire to go overboard to distance themselves from the threat of being labelled an antisemite, a desire to paint themselves as more pro-Israel than the other party, etc.

It isn't much comfort that people who believe in apocalyptic prophecies have significant power in a country with a lot of nuclear weapons.

There's also the effectiveness of the Israel lobby. Various pro-Israel organisations fund almost all members of congress

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Israel_Lobby_and_U.S._Fore...

Yep, zero principles at play here. They would has as happily use “mistreatment of transgender people” as a pretext, despite championing such mistreatment.

It’s all just words as magic spells to justify bad behavior. Semantic content and beliefs aren’t even part of the equation.

it is not an excuse. They are a well represented community in USA and students felt not safe/had different political stance which was enough to push gov to act. How is it different from for instance BLM era with governments, media and democrats punishing some institutions and people that didnt want to say their slogan, were having opposing idea or even just didnt went to publicly bend the knee, ending whole careers and sometimes even killing them without any reason beyond rage? Once again you guys built and used the same tools than Trump is now wielding. A few people that were against biden era politics were pointing this simple fact that by creating a precedent and believing that your cause was righter than the others you just helped your opponent to do the same

What precedent? When did the Biden administration pull funding from universities to control speech it didn't approve of?

democrats didn’t need as they controlled those institutions. they however did it to the police to punish them just like trump did to school. For education, It was their funding and they put in power the people that did the coercion, lied on their resume and instead of having the will to educate the students just pushed down their throats propaganda. if you were against BLM or even a bit vocal about the tactics and negative things they were doing your carrier / studies would have ended and violence was also physically ok.

why do you think no major company care about it anymore? why diversity HR teams or Sustainability teams are getting disbanded? why do we have “sydney sweeney has good jeans” ads now while we had overweight models during biden Era? we are living through a different propaganda era that the market decided to follow like the previous one just to bank on it.

Democrats don't actually control those universities though. That's like saying Republicans control churches because churchgoers are more conservative on average. But we all know the Republican party isn't actually directing churches across the country, just as Democrats aren't directing universities.

So I don't see what kind of precedent was set as far as use of executive power goes. You're saying because BLM happened (which was under Trump BTW), that gives Trump the right now to control speech at universities?

  That's like saying Republicans control churches because churchgoers are more conservative on average.

Anyone can walk into a church and become part of the congregation.

Universities have gatekeepers.

There are many paths to college, and they require neither membership in nor adherence to ideals professed by the Democratic party. College campuses across America have people from every demographic axis - every race, religion, ethnicity, country, socioeconomic status, etc. Amongst them frequently are conservatives and white men. This is because the gate universities keep is based on merit, not ideology.

Indeed, many Republican congresspeople were accepted into and graduated from prestigious ostensibly "Democrat controlled" institutions, despite their conservative beliefs.

  This is because the gate universities keep is based on merit, not ideology.

Many US universities have required prospective employees to demonstrate their adherence to preferred ideological stances, during processes for hiring and promotion.

This is widely documented:

https://www.thefire.org/research-learn/fire-statement-use-di...

I have read information about these mandatory statements on official web sites of universities themselves, so I know the issue isn't a fabrication.

Separately, SCOTUS found in both SFFA vs. Harvard and SFFA vs. UNC, that these universities did not admit students based solely on merit, but also discriminated against some individual students due to their race.

  Amongst them frequently are conservatives and white men.

Funny you should say that. A few days ago, a conservative white man filed a complaint against Cornell. He alleges (supported by written evidence) that Cornell deliberately set out to hire a non-white person for a particular role, and did so by making a shortlist of candidates without even advertising the role. More details here:

https://www.wsj.com/opinion/cornell-university-discriminated...

> Many US universities have required prospective employees to demonstrate their adherence to preferred ideological stances, during processes for hiring and promotion

That does not mean the Democrats control hiring decisions at universities. This would be like saying the Republican party controls CFO hiring decisions because corporations might filter for people who are fiscally conservative.

All organizations look for "culture fit" when making hiring decisions, and the culture of a university is one that is typically open and accepting of people from all walks of life. It's counterproductive to hire who think "empathy is a fundamental weakness" for example. They don't fit well with fostering a welcoming educational environment for young people, so typically we look for some degree of empathy in candidates, people who want to build community, foster individuals, and yes, who value diversity.

Notably, this filter is not very good at preventing conservatives from being hired and promoted and admitted to universities, because that happens every day.

> but also discriminated against some individual students due to their race.

This thread is about Democrats ostensibly controlling schools. That some schools were found by a court to racially discriminate in their admitting practices is unrelated, nor does not show affiliation to the Democratic party was used as a filter for hiring or admit decisions.

> a conservative white man filed a complaint against Cornell.

Well, no. From the link you provided:

  I’m an evolutionary biologist, a liberal

Anyway, diversity statements were never about being a political litmus test. Diverse hiring pools are not a white filter. These are just something butthurt people say when they get an outcome they don't like. This seems more a case of a failed scientist being rejected for a tenure track role and blaming discrimination instead of his middling research agenda.

You said this in an earlier comment:

  There are many paths to college, and they require neither membership in nor adherence to ideals professed by the Democratic party.

I have examples to show why I believe that to be incorrect.

I'm not saying that people have had to show adherence to (or loyalty to) the Democratic Party. But they have had to show support for positions and ideologies that are part of the Democratic Party's platform.

In your last paragraph, you dismiss Colin's complaint, without acknowledging the wrongness of the process that I outlined. Instead of seeking the best person for the job, the school made a list of people using race as one of the filtering criteria, and went down the last until someone accepted the job.

The fact you didn't engage with the major point I made here suggests you're more interested in winning an argument, than in furthering your or my understanding of the truth.

I am not interested in trying to win an argument. Your replies are not helping me to develop my thinking. So this will be my last reply.

Have a great day!

> But they have had to show support for positions and ideologies that are part of the Democratic Party's platform.

Even if we just agree that's what's happening here, the overlap of ideology doesn't imply control over the institution or process by the party, because you haven't shown any causality. What's to say university policy isn't influencing the Democratic party's platform?

Anyway, that's not what's happening. People qualified for these positions have no problem answering those questions and getting accepted to these institutions despite any conservative political leanings.

The evidence for this is that conservatives are well represented on campuses across America. They're not a ideological filter placed there by the Democratic party to keep conservatives out of college. They're a tool that colleges came up with on their own to help with culture fit.

> In your last paragraph, you dismiss Colin's complaint, without acknowledging the wrongness of the process that I outlined.

Because you're both misrepresented what's going on. He's doing it because he's upset they didn't hire him. Your opinion is on the basis of what he said, so I don't know what else to add except to wait for the verdict. Either way he's wasn't rejected on the basis of his conservative beliefs.

> Have a great day!

Same.

> Anyway, diversity statements were never about being a political litmus test. Diverse hiring pools are not a white filter. These are just something butthurt people say when they get an outcome they don't like. This seems more a case of a failed scientist being rejected for a tenure track role and blaming discrimination instead of his middling research agenda.

hence why Asian community sued multiple universities for discrimination.

No, those lawsuits were about affirmative action in student admissions, not faculty hiring.

wasnt there a harvard head of faculty that faked her resume and hired through affirmative action?

Democrats don't control these institutions. Look at who is on the boards of these universities (both public and private).

I don't agree, because these actions are part of a bigger pattern of Republicans trying to find ways to ban criticism of Israel. Anti-BDS laws are very popular with the Republican party apparatus and politicians, as well as with older Republican voters.

> Not a particularly believable one anyway, but that doesn't seem to matter

it's well chosen because it's also one that requires no proof, since "anti-semitism" has long been the worst accusation one can make, and one that's very hard to refute without demonstrating unequivocal loyalty to Israel and its actions; it's basically a purity test

Do you really think the Trump administration is committed to its pro-Israel position? If they flipped sides, how long would it take for 90% of their voters to adjust and be happy again?

Whatever Trump personally feels, he is demonstrably acting in Israel's interests. Maybe they have him blackmailed through Epstein stuff, or maybe he supports Israel due to his family connections or bribes. It doesn't really matter, the end result is the same.

Agreed, but not what I asked.

You asked if the Trump administration is committed to the pro-Israel position. I think they are. There are many potential reasons this is the case, but whichever of them may be true the result is the same.

Given their positions on things like Russia, the Epstein files, free trade, etc. (where the position has changed from things that were either broadly "American" values or positions that Trump directly supported) I would guess it would take a day or two. The core "Trump is infallible" demographic will follow him no matter what. If he said the sun set in the morning, they'd blame the sun when it rose.

It is perhaps the deepest position on the American right now, and extremely unlikely to shift.

To the point that you have people who have politics that derivates from a populist/nativist right wing historical current that was always virulently anti-Semitic, now being the staunchest backers of the current Israeli government.

In the post-9/11 era, hatred of Islam, putting an equals-sign between Jewish and Israeli, and smearing anybody on "the left" who criticizes the actions of the Israeli state as "anti-Semitic", and shoring up the Israeli state with massive financial support ... this is all an ideological bundle that is working extremely well for them.

And is allowing them to siphon off support from "moderate" American Democrat voters who share these biases but not the rest of their ideological bill of goods. It's actually allowed them to build a powerful base of support even when they're doing extremely controversial things.

Nyeah. Maybe. Please don't make me mention an even deeper issue on the US right that is shifting as we speak.

I think this poll is disingenuously quoted here and may not represent public opinion that well.

The questions are very specific rather than general. For example you can disapprove of the military action and the president of a country, but that doesn't mean when asked "pick a winner" you'd pick the other guy.

I mean if the US went to war with North Korea and Pyongyang got flattened, I would certainly disapprove of the US military and the president, but I probably wouldn't consider the other party "winning".

So as always it depends on which question you ask. You can ask questions to get the answer you paid for (speaking as an ex-statistician who worked for a pollster)

Relevance to the NSF grant or just practicing whataboutism?

What does “recognizing Palestine” even mean?

This is breaking news over the last few days. Some of the coverage https://www.ft.com/content/2fe65dbf-65a5-41f3-aaab-5661c0146...

Sure, but what kind of action does it imply? North Korea is recognized by (almost?) every country too, but that doesn't mean anyone is hurrying to provide aid to starving North Koreans. Similarly the international recognition of Azerbaijan and Armenia did nothing to prevent one from taking Nagorno-Karabach from the other earlier this year.

So "recognizing the Palestinian state" is all good and well, but unless anyone also gets off their butts and actually does something then the situation in Gaza won't actually change.

Yes, recognizing Palestine should be a very simple and uncontroversial thing. And yet.

It’s noble of you to say that countries might as well not recognize Palestine because it will do no good, but by and large the Palestinians have a different view and see such recognition as a first step.

This is not at all what my previous comment said. I said that it might be a first step, but that first step doesn't matter if no further steps are forthcoming.

> Sure, but what kind of action does it imply?

A BBC article from a couple of days ago lists about 150 countries that have recognized a Palestinian state, dating back to 1988 (which is, btw, when North Korea recognized it). I don't know what kind of action it implies.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cvgp5z1vvj5o

Rabid zionists don't want people to recognize Palestine because if Palestine doesn't in some sense exist then in some sense that erases the crime zionists are committing in eradicating Palestine.

It's crazy but that's how it works. Refusal to recognize Palestine is a form of dehumanization, one of the key stages of genocide.

One of the things that makes a country a country is recognition by other countries. Look it up.

As it’s a threat, it’s cheap and easy words to pacify growing hostility within society.

It has nothing to do with helping the Palestinian and Israeli people or holding the Israeli government or Hamas to account.

Tangle has a great breakdown of what this means in their article yesterday: https://www.readtangle.com/emil-bove-trump-lawyer-federal-ju...

Turns out, it's complicated.

Palestinians don't 'recognize' the Palestine that is being recognized. The borders, the leadership, etc. How can a nation recognize a country that that countries' people don't?

the god of israelites is merely (trying to) reassert dominance because

we have invented universal translators, so all humans can talk to all humans. like in the myth of the Tower of Babel, this pisses of god Israel so they're throwing a huge tantrum

Tower of Babel: The Limits of Human Unity and Ambition

The State of Israel: Victims of collective abuse proceed to collectively deliver the abuse they received

the self-perpetuating orphan state, where each orphan is a tragedy and more than that, it's a derelict form of parenting which made sense in the dessert more than 3k years ago

What's going to be interesting is when the next Democratic administration comes into power, they're going to be extremely anti-Israel, given that the Democratic base is fully against Israel now at a 5:1 ratio. There will never be another Democratic President that supports Israel (none of the pro-israel candidates have any hope of ever being President) and this will mean extremely hard anti-Israeli action, using precedent like this to push anti-Islamophobia messages.

You can imagine the next Democrat administration defunding universities based on their collaboration with Israel, for example. Or defunding universities based on their punishment of pro-Palestinian demonstrators, etc..

People should accept that Israel lost against Hamas and be prepared for the consequences of that going forward. It's pretty much the same as a Vietnam situation, with the war being won/lost based on public opinion.

Haha, that's funny. What'll really happen is they'll campaign and say one thing, then do another once in office, maintaining status quo for the elite and war machine as they've been doing for decades in tandem with the Republican party, gaslighting the American public at every level.

The party largely fully supports Israel.

I live in Europe and according the common media outlets, the US absolutely, totally, forever support Israel. "largely" is too weak of a word here.

And now honnest question: why is this support so strong in the US ? are the ties with the jewish/israely community so deep between these two peoples ?

The only country the Americans love and worship more than their own country is Israel. I can understand brain dead nationalism for your own country, but brain dead nationalism for another country, especially one doing the things Israel is doing... it's very strange.

There's at least a few factors in play...

Christian sects that believe the second coming of Jesus is not too far away believe that Israel's existence is critical to bring that to pass.

People with anti-muslim or anti-arabian feelings see Israel as a counterweight to muslim and arabian power in the middle east.

There's a lot of people who, consciously or not, equate anything other than total support for Israel with antisemitism.

The real story here is the way Zionism has so deeply and intensely and succesffully managed to tie Jewishness to Israel-iness.

And so many people who are rightfully proud of their Jewish ethnicity and cultural identification -- a rich and beautiful culture that has had absolutely outsized contributions to art, science, culture in the west, with a history of being persecuted and mistreated by said "west" -- have become defacto "citizens-abroad" and advocates for Israeli positions in all things.

That combined with a deep and historical distrust of Islam in western culture...

It's the same story here in Canada. How deep the bank account for this blank cheque is, I don't know.

I should say that as a left wing critic of what happens in the middle east under Israel's banner, I am also deeply uncomfortable with some of the anti-Semitic tinge some forms of the protest take. It's a conundrum.

It is absolutely important to make it clear the criticism is of the actions of Israel, and not "Jews"

You and the other replies focus too much on the Jewish community within the US. Support for Israel is very strong in the US, particularly among Republicans, because of the rise of Evangelical Christians. Evangelicals have ... religious reasons for supporting of Israel. They also strongly identify with Europe and people with European backgrounds. They have an inability to identify with Palestinians.

When it comes to the democratic parties loyalty to Israel I think it's mostly the work of AIPAC that is responsible.

There's some truth to this but it's also an anti-semitic trope. There are a whole bunch of Jewish people on the Left that don't support the current Israeli regime.

Largely as we have people like AOC, Ilhan and Bernie. Maybe a stretch to say they're part of the party.

The Democratic party supports Israel just fine. The party is not run by weirdo academics who can't even remember the Hamas attacks.

The worst that serious Democrats might do is publicly compare Israel's current behavior to the US's lashing out at Afghanistan after the WTC attacks.

The Democratic Party doesn't support Israel at all. The current elected officials do, but not the base. Polls show support for Palestine over Israel at a 5:1 ratio.

This is resulting in current Democratic elected officials being removed from power when their term expires, starting with the US Presidency last year, which was lost BECAUSE of their support for Israel. A YouGov poll earlier this year showed the primary reason Biden 2020 voters didn't vote for Harris was because of Israel: https://www.imeupolicyproject.org/postelection-polling

This is all happening quickly. You won't see any Democratic candidate that supports Israel run for President in 2028.

Sorry, that is a mix of speculative fiction and self-contradiction. The GOP supports Israel at least as strongly as the Democrats do. So how did Harris' support for Israel cost her the election?

Supporting Israel, including acknowledging their right to respond militarily to terrorist attacks, is one thing. Falling deeply in love with Netanyahu's current policies is another. Freaking out and caring only about Hamas is ... a third thing.

Trump got less votes last time than when he lost to Biden. The democrats lost, trump didn’t win. People stayed home.

Good point. I'm not convinced that support for Israel was the issue, though.

There are lunatics in the US who seem to have completely forgotten the 1300-1400 Israelis killed by Hamas just last year, but who can see the human disaster in Gaza. I don't think those people are so politically engaged on that single issue that they deliberately stayed home from the polls and let Trump win ... in order to ... help people in Gaza? I could be wrong, but it doesn't seem to fit together.

EDIT: To be fair those same folks are notorious for shooting themselves in the foot. So who knows?

EDIT 2: Some of the lunatics above are probably anti-Semitic, despite Trump's claims that they are anti-Semitic. But again how does that drive them to help Trump right now?

> completely forgotten

More like the two things aren't even remotely in the same ballpark. Imagine if the US had surrounded Baghdad and intentionally starved the residents. And even that example still fails to account for some of the context.

Sorry? Do you not remember Fallujah?

You mean the siege where the US allowed 70k refugees to leave 10 days in, actively facilitated the entry of aid, and ultimately gave in to the political pressure to relent in slightly over a month? That Fallujah?

For the record I don't doubt for a second that the same people who protest against Israel now would also have been among those campaigning against the US at the time.

Parts of that are true. Parts of it are a bedtime story to help Americans cope with the reality of what our nation did. EDIT: Recall that Iraq had nothing to do with the WTC attacks.

Some people truly try to protest all the horrors of war on all sides, everywhere. Others try to make "Country X" sound worse than anybody else. I don't have your insight into who has what agenda.

From Wikipedia right now:

2024: Trump 77,302,580

2020: Trump 74,223,975

>People should accept that Israel lost against Hamas

It looks to me that the extremists in Hamas gave extremist Israelis the excuse to do what they always wanted to do. And everyone who isn't an extremist lost. Meanwhile, the Hamas leadership are living in 5 star luxury in Qatar.

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