I put that restriction on the thread when I started to notice brand new accounts showing up to post abusively (call them trolls if you like). There's no intention to prevent legit anonymous comments, but we have to do what we can to protect this place from complete conflagration. I'll turn that restriction off now.
"Anti-BDS laws are legislation that retaliate against those that engage in Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions. With regard to the Arab–Israeli conflict, many supporters of the State of Israel have often advocated or implemented anti-BDS laws, which effectively seek to retaliate against people and organizations engaged in boycotts of Israel-affiliated entities."
From Wikipedia. Also: "Not to be confused with Anti-BDSM laws."
There's obviously a lot more going on from a social/religious perspective, but I'm prone to thinking of large-scale shifts and trends in terms of economic incentives.
Have you seen how the US Congress, half of which boos the US presidents along party lines, suddenly all rise up and fall in line when Netanyahu visits the Congress?
https://idsb.tmgrup.com.tr/ly/uploads/images/2024/07/28/thum...
Have you see the strange photos of all US politicians with yamakas near this wall in Israel as if they're pledging allegiance to something?
It's humiliating
Its not just funding and religious indoctrination. The very, very serious question that nobody seems to have the courage to ask, is this: where are Israels nukes?
The answer to that question might provide some insight into why things are so supplicant in certain halls of power ...
They have power by being able to expose western leaders for any number of hypocrisies.
What’s surprising is that this not a bigger part of the conversation.
If you read history and understand that Jews are persecuted and murdered in every country that is not Israel, what are they supposed to do?
Should we blame the Ottoman Empire for not industrializing earlier and losing the technology race to Europe and collapsing? After all, if the Ottoman Empire hadn’t collapsed at the end of WW I, Palestine would likely still be a Muslim territory.
That’s how far back you have to go to find a good starting point to explain how the conflict got to the point it’s at now.
Through a socially viral "no net new tax" promise, once Norquist secured pledges from party leaders, essentially all federal elected Republicans had to pledge as well. They were otherwise threatened with losing endorsement from Norquist and faced being ostracized and primaried. The leaders themselves were then caught in the net and none felt like they could break.
ATR influence has waned in the face of MAGA's more populist fiscal liberalism, but that was pretty much just one guy.
Extend that singular goal to a network with a narrow and aligned interest, and it can be very effectively maintained with intelligent and shifting messaging and reputation management. Consider how people like Loomer and Raichik that have emerged, not through established power brokers, but organically through social media platforms, and the significant influence they possess even in the White House.
https://nordicdefencereview.com/u-s-tops-arms-trade-while-al...
The UN declaration was recognition of reality on the ground. And was, btw, rejected by the Arab parties and doesn't carry the force of international law. Israel declared its independence irregardless of the resolution the following year.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographic_history_of_Jerus...
In any case, go look at the malaria maps and desert areas. Notice how they match up with the areas allocated to Jews. The Jews may have gotten allocated slightly more land, but it was not fertile or desirable land.
Holocaust was not the reason for the plan for a Jewish national home in historic Israel, Arab persecution of Jews in the region was.
> Israel was created as a pretty bad solution to displaced Jews post-WWII
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographic_history_of_Jerus...
This is a huge leverage.
The current genocide is to blame on the US as much as on Israel.
Why does this one country have such unwavering support? Why is the current president for example not trying to save some money by just not giving it to them?
- Early Soviet support to undermine British Imperialism
- Balfour Declaration from Britain vs. Ottomans
- Nuclear tech from France vs. Nasser and anti-colonialism
- Military/Nuclear from Apartheid South Africa vs. shared pariah status
- Hegemonic power from the US vs. every unaligned country including Cold War, OPEC, Arab Nationalism, Islamism
The more recent metastasising of support into a political-religous-racial belief-system is even more troubling than the apocalyptic machinations of great powers because pure ideology departs from reason itself and is untethered to any care for the consequences.
Because it holds so much power over the government of the United States, and thereby benefits from the power the United States has over the world.
Some of the gist of what he talks about:
Just as there is an 'underworld', there is also a corresponding and related 'overworld'. Essentially organised crime, corporations, and security services cooperating in nefarious ways (often usurping - though not always violently - the power of states).
It's arguable that Israel is particularly interested and involved in this 'overworld'. See the early history of the CIA, FBI, Meyer Lansky and the mob, Epstein, the reach and effectiveness of Mossad relative to other similar organisations, etc.
Call me a conspiracy theorist if you like, but I believe that most significant western leaders have probably been compromised in some way by 'overworld' influences. Look at what happens to 'the wrong type of candidate' that gets too close to power. Jeremy Corban was thoroughly and dishonestly scandalised by a campaign instigated and supported by Israeli interests. Why? The complete bandwagon type behaviour of mainstream British press of the left and right in that campaign is very reminiscent of the way recent mainstream media coverage reports on Gaza - it looks coordinated and in unison.
Of course, I'm probably wrong. Just trying to make sense of the madness I see around me.
TLDR; My theory is that Israel has corrupted our media and politicians through a nexus of nefarious actors that Aaron Good refers to as the 'overworld'.
Undeclared and un-identified nukes.
Israel has been an amazing success for Western security.
“Some form of” is doing a lot of work in that sentence, to the point of being dishonest propaganda. E.g., California is counted as one of those states based on AB 2844 of 2016. Which, to be fair, started out [0] as an actual anti-BDS bill (targeting state contracting only, but still an anti-BDS bill.) But the form that actually passed and became law does nothing that actually impacts BDS; it requires that state contractors with contracts of over $100,000 certify under penalty of perjury that (1) they are in compliance with California’s Unruh Civil Rights Act and Fair Employment and Housing Act, and that (2) any policy they have against a “sovereign nation or peoples recognized by the government of the United States of America”, explicitly including but not limited to Israel, is not applied in a way which discriminates in violation of either the Unruh Civil Rights Act or the Fair Employment and Housing Act.
It is not, in any meaningful sense, an anti-BDS law.
[0] Well, “started out” isn’t really true, either, since it was introduced as a technical change the an environmental health law replacing "Department of Health Services” with “Department of Public Health” in one section of law, reflecting a reorganization that had occurred subsequent to the law passing, went through a “gut and amend” switch to become a bill that would add new sampling requirements for drinking water, then went through another “gut and amend” to become an anti-BDS bill focussed on public contracting. But then it went through a number of more regular amendments which stripped out all the anti-BDS parts—both the operative anti-BDS language and the proposed legislative findings and declarations of purpose at the opening, replacing both the operative provisionsn and the findings and declaration portions with anti-discrimination rather than anti-BDS provisions.
From an HNer I'd also expect the understanding that yes, old accounts does give less protections, trivially from an information theory perspective.