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Comment by ivan_gammel | Hacker News Reader

No. Your message is. A lot of people commit mortal sin of logical fallacy by extending the responsibility for actions of certain group of people to everyone sharing with them ethnicity or religion. It‘s the stupidity worth of the strongest condemnation given the context.

It‘s not jews committing war crimes in Gaza, it‘s zionists. It‘s not muslims or Palestinians planning and executing terrorist attacks, it‘s religious extremists and far right nationalists. When there will be common understanding of this simple truth, fighting the root causes will be much easier.

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I think GP was making a joke - since zionists claim any anti-zionist behavior is anti-semitic.

Then I apologize without retraction.

Good instinct to fight against antisemitism, because there is a lot of it. Unfortunately the Israeli government lobs accusations of antisemitism at its (legitimate) critics frequently, enough so to muddy the waters between actual antisemitism and criticism of the Israeli state.

Nah, let’s not let them to set the narrative. It is not antisemitism to criticize Israel and I do not care what Israeli or my (German) government says about it.

Yep. It's used as a shield for the worst humanity has to offer.

But it's not all zionists committing war crimes in Gaza, it's the IDF. And it's not all IDF members, only some individuals. And its not all of those some individuals, only some of their brain and trigger finger. And it's not all the time, only some of the time.

We mustn't generalize.

You are surprisingly right. I know people who served in IDF and would prefer to have nothing in common with those criminals. Generalizing to them would be wrong. It is not voluntary service, different people are required to serve. But people aside, is IDF as institution rotten? It is not generalization to say „yes“, when such things happen. An institution is an entity with the agency to prevent such things and not only did it fail, it covered up. Is Israeli government complicit? Hell, yes, same reason.

There were people in the German army (Wehrmacht) who wanted to have nothing in common with those criminals. Some even tried to kill Hitler and get rid of the regime.

Not the majority though, else the wehrmacht would have done less war crimes.

I think this depends on whether you draw the boundary at "refuses to do X even when killed for it" or "wouldn't have done X on their own".

Most soldiers who disagreed with the Nazi left the Wehrmacht by 38 (or were pushed out, or were beaten and restrained for month in 'black site', often disaffected warehouses where socialists and Communist were 'retrained', basically proto-concentration camps).

In 42-43 some were reintegrated forcefully, and those I agree do not bear responsibility for the Wehrmacht war crimes.

My grandmother had a lot of stories about the Wehrmacht and was very disappointed that they were basically whitewashed from their pedophilic rapes, public executions and other group punishment.

IDF is an army of Israel, not some unknown militant group.

Israel is a state, as they call "democratic", which elected officials who have control to stop these crimes, but not stopping deliberately.

Zionism is the idea of self determination of Jews in their homeland. You separate Jews from zionists. How would you call the Palestinian self determination movement, would you separate it from the rest of the Palestinians? Would you call that group for committing war crimes?

That‘s just two flavors of nationalism, an outdated idea from last couple of centuries that leads nowhere. The only reasonable way is federalism and deep political integration, where Israel, Palestine, Lebanon, Syria, maybe Jordan build a common state with free trade, free movement etc. That may sound a distant future at best, but the alternative is the same bloody status quo.

Their message didn't make any of the extrapolations that you're suggesting and I don't think that the post itself does that either.

The message is ambiguous. It can be interpreted the way I read it.

I disagree that it's ambiguous, and I think how you choose to interpret it comes down to the difference between charitable interpretation and bad faith.

Whether you agree with it or not, does not matter. It is ambiguous due to a simple fact that I did not had the choice of interpretation in my mind. It is how I understood it and it differs from your understanding. The author should have been more clear.

> why is this flagged ?

Because flaggers deem it to be anti-semitic

> committing war crimes in Gaza, it‘s zionists

This is 1) extending responsibility for actions of induviduals to everyone sharing with them ethnicity or religion 2) a display of anti-semitic bigotry

Otherwise it, like most tech heavy investigations, showcase how much useful information there is fly around out there in the air just waiting to be hoovered up - and (althought not the case here) YC funded companies happen to be at the frontlines of such work

Zionism isn't an ethnicity or a religion.

whether or not you agree that zionism is intrinsically jewish or not, it would serve you to understand that the poster you're arguing against does not believe that zionism is intrinsically jewish, and thus, you're talking past them.

I believe religion is a reasonable extension. Some of them explicitly call for murdering unbelievers.

it‘s „some“, not „all“. Religious extremism by definition.

I was talking about religions, not individuals.

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