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Comment by barbazoo | Hacker News Reader

This might be obvious to others but to me this story really made it clear to me that this is probably much about fear. Fear of stepping out of line, drawing attention to yourself and as a result at best getting into trouble, or at worst deported.

The admin makes it clear, if you have opposing views and share them, you're not welcome here.

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Fall semester is about to start. Don't think the timing is a coincidence. Israel really doesn't like people criticizing and protesting against them. Especially on college campuses.

They don't care really about Israel I think, what leverage would they have to pressure the US admin to do anything? I think this is about being critical of the people in government in general. If everyone is at risk of being deported, who would go and protest anything? That would certainly make me think twice about it.

I don't understand how you can ask that question with a straight face given the last 50 odd years.

They have been very open and vocal about their reason. And it's not just the republicans. The democrats also support it as well. Pretty much the only thing the republicans and democrats both agree on.

Democratic politicians* the voters very much do not support Israel.

Israel has enormous leverage over the US administration, through the AIPAC, a money laundering operation disguised as political lobbying, ensuring a steady flow of money from the US treasury to Israel govt. and right back to the Congress. Check the amount your Senator receives from AIPAC here: https://www.trackaipac.com/congress

From AIPAC themselves: (https://www.aipacpac.org/)

> Being pro-Israel is good policy and good politics.

> %98 of AIPAC-backed candidates won their general elections.

> $70M contributed through AIPAC to support pro-Israel candidates.

> We helped defeat 24 candidates who would have undermined the US-Israel relationship.

Democracy anybody?

Now imagine Russia had a similar organization, what would the reaction be? Yet when it's Israel, it's somehow fine.

From Wikipedia: (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AIPAC)

> AIPAC was founded in 1954 by Isaiah L. Kenen, a lobbyist for the Israeli government, partly to counter negative international reactions to Israel's Qibya massacre of Palestinian villagers that year.

Speaking of fear, don't forget that "deport" doesn't mean that you will just be moved to a different country, but rather there is a good chance you will end up in a concentration camp.

Absolutely. Every single one of those 55M people will think twice about every aspect of their life. It will be debilitating for many of them.

How long can support for this last?

Well if they had followed the news they would have already thought twice about everything they said and did since Snowden showed the entire US population has been under constant surveillance for decades now. At the time most people didn't quite care because their country "did this in their best interest and it would never turn authoritarian". Yay land of the free.

How much of that surveillance was kept I wonder? I don't consider it unimaginable that someone would get expelled for saying something on WhatsApp 15 years ago.

I think you overestimate the degree to which those 55M people follow any news. My mother's housekeeper has a green card and has zero clue what's going on in US politics. She recently went home to Mexico with absolutely no worries about getting back into the US.

Mexico isn't the worst though. From other Latin American countries it's a lot worse.

I heard Mexico even has a deal with the US that they refuse entry to other latam visitors that they deem suspicious to avoid them going to the US via its land border. This is what a Colombian friend said. Not sure how true though.

The question is whether people will still want to put up with this. Why even bother going to the US anymore? I certainly won't even visit for work events any longer. I will refuse such requests. Privately I don't want to anyway.

I'm not going to go to a country that eyes me with suspicion. Especially because I'm very LGBT friendly too.

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