Israeli firm BlackCore suspected of meddling in New York and Scotland votes
reuters.com
reuters.com
The man has almost overnight gotten the city to start doing things that benefit the general public, nto just the wealthy. Actions on bike lane projects that were stalled and actually taking action against slumlords.
All that barely gets a mention, but they seem obsessed with trying to find fault with everything he does.
During the NBA finals, he paid for his own ticket but they still took him to task for its expense ($1000) and the ticket coming from the "VIP ticket pool" like this was some abuse of his position or unethical of him.
Of course the mayor gets access to the VIP pool of tickets? And he didn't abuse the privilege to get tickets for anyone else - not staff, not family, not friends. Just him.
The moment that Mandani said he will stay home and serve the people of NYC, what asked 'where are you going to make your first visit when elected' it made him a target. He showed he wasn't willing to bow down to a foreign power.
NYT still tries to put a veneer of modicum. NY Post is the one that is unbashingly always negative against Mamdani, full on attacks all the time.
I think people had enough of it, and saw through it and voted for him just in spite.
I know all the members of my soccer team voted for him. I had no clue who he was, but all the attacks backfired and made him even more famous.
It's a pattern going back to humble origins in Australia, continued forward in the UK when they shredded Fleet Street norms, and exuberantly applied throughout their decades in the USofA.
He's showing that government can be efficient. It can help people. People can actually like their local governments. And that is completely counter to the politics of these rags and their funders.
They want to talk about how government can't work, will always be inefficient, and how it must be cut.
The people who own these papers know that the obvious solution to a lot of societal problems is "tax the rich, build out social programs" and they desperately don't want that message to get out. It makes it a lot harder to setup gig and gambling economies.
Each job has input and output with each task requiring some level of expertise that has some price tag, some financial and some social value.
I wouldn't be surprised if those numbers are all over the place. Doing it by hand would be a monumental undertaking.
Didn't stop Mamdani. Won't stop Platner.
At this point it is amusing to see them pissing away so many millions of dollars to stop a public opinion tide that has no chance of being stopped.
That's unfortunate. Choosing a leader who lies constantly and boasts of enjoying killing people seems like an unnecessary mistake. He is attacked by people who have defended far worse and are quite cynical. That doesn't mean he should be defended. He should be attacked by a left comfortable enough in its future vision as to not compromise on basic principles.
The attacks against Mamdani were disingenuous. This suspicion has heightened when the other candidates being artificially propped up had such huge flaws. I hope we can learn to see when that dynamic pops up in other places.
I hate to break this to you, but you're already rocking multiple of them.
I'm not sure what the alleged benefits of Platner are either. Mamdani has been amazing, but what is Platner for?
Platner's upside is being a senator that's not from the student senate -> Hill staffer -> party insider pipeline. We're all pretty much sick of that character, he sounds much more authentic by comparison.
He knew what it was [1]. That doesn't mean he's unelectable in 2026.
[1] https://www.cnn.com/2026/06/05/politics/graham-platner-cant-...
Honestly, I'd be more concerned with someone who knows too much Nazi minutiae rather than too little.
EDIT: reading the CNN story, I'm actually less convinced, this is all coming from a conservative activist ex-girlfriend. Its a really obscure symbol and then there's this quote:
"Platner argued that he had the tattoo for 17 years without anyone raising concerns about Nazi symbolism, noting that he received a State Department security clearance, reenlisted in the Army after being screened for gang and hate-related tattoos, and regularly appeared shirtless around family members, including Jewish relatives."
Sure, maybe. I'm doubtful. But that's irrelevant. He knew when he launched his campaign. He chose to keep it. Worse, there's a good chance his family and his staffers knew as well. This is Jill Biden covering up Joe Biden's dementia all over again, except this time for racism.
Platner is a rubbish candidate. But! There is a case to be made that he's better for America than Susan Collins.
Personally, like I said, I think the more recent sexting thing is way more damaging to his brand. "Got a dumb tattoo on shore leave and posted dumb reddit comments 10 years ago" are fine for an everyman candidate, recent infidelity is not.
Nope. But if you're sending your pics out, someone is going to come back to you with that feedback. In this case, we have someone who says they did that.
> the more recent sexting thing is way more damaging to his brand
Sure, why not. I don't think, at the end of the day, we have any evidence either is electorally relevant anymore.
Not sure why you’re being (a) so randomly wrong and (b) randomly irrelevant.
EDIT: Ah, a 4-month old single-issue troll account. Lovely.
Why do you say? What is the single issue? I can’t find a linking theme.
JumpCrisscross, I wasn't trying to pigeonhole you but that was my impression based on your interaction with a number of threads over the years, my apologies if I mislabeled you, I meant it with respect.
lostlogin, thanks for the neutral reading, I appreciate you.
It’s not like it’s some obscure icon.
If you happened to clock this particular skull shape as a symbol from an SS division, then congrats, but 95% of people just would not and that's why it didn't land as a scandal. Everyone said "Huh. I didn't know either." and then accepted "Marine gets dumb skull tattoo while drunk on shore leave" as a fairly normal thing to have happened.
Ignorance of something doesn’t change what it is. “Oops I accidentally had a Nazi for nearly 20 years and only had it covered up 9 months ago when it became a political liability” isn’t a good look to say the least.
If this were a swastika, the SS lightning bolts or even the Iron Cross, yeah, that looks pretty Nazi. Instead it's a skull and crossbones just like every other one used all over the place, including the very cool jolly roger, except this one happens to be Nazi. I didn't know, most people didn't know, he can credibly say he didn't know, and we all think the jolly roger's cool. Dog's not gonna hunt.
Or if you ever played a WWII themed video game (Wolfenstein, Call of Duty), or if you’ve ever watched a WWII show like Band of Brothers or watched a major WWII movie like Schindlers List or Saving Private Ryan. I could go on, it’s prominent in nearly any WWII media.
Honestly, I don’t know if people toting the line saying it’s “obscure” are intentionally lying because he aligns with their political agenda or are completely oblivious to any level of detail in any media.
It’s really astonishing.
If you examined so much Nazi symbology that you would immediately flag this as a particularly Nazi skull based on the angle and bone length, you are the unusual one. It's cool to have interests but understand that the rest of us just see a skull and don't have nearly the response we would to a swastika.
I’m older and have and I didn’t even know there was a special Nazi skull symbol while I do know about many of their other symbols.
It is not a regular skull and crossbones anymore than the iron cross (which you identify as nazi symbolism) is a regular cross. It's strange to insist on the former, while distinguishing the latter as obviously nazi.
And that's relevant how?
A major film with one of the most acclaimed directors of all time that won the highest award you can win as a movie had the icon featured prominently on the main villain’s uniform throughout the nearly 4 hour movie. Come on my guy.
All that said, he was very online and very much not an online Nazi. To me that matters a lot more than a bad tattoo.
There'd simply be a lot worse comments from his reddit history if his beliefs aligned with his tattoo. That, to me, is why it just doesn't matter.
Yes I remembered correctly https://x.com/ADL/status/1881474892022919403
Well this has been a fascinating case study in how rapidly expert opinion is cast aside and to make way for conspiracy theories about the scheming Jews when it suits peoples biases, so let's just end the thread at that.
This is the same org that defined antisemitism as being equivalent to criticising the State of Israel. They have zero credibility on the subject.
Also, it wasn't "the ADLs research wing did a comprehensive study and concluded it was not a Nazi salute". It was a tweet made solely by the CEO of the ADL, who has himself been criticised for turning away from civil rights and antisemitism and focusing on Israeli interests.
> Also, it wasn't "the ADLs research wing did a comprehensive study and concluded it was not a Nazi salute". It was a tweet made solely by the CEO of the ADL, who has himself been criticised for turning away from civil rights and antisemitism and focusing on Israeli interests.
Disingenuous. That is the official stance of the ADL and the tweet was made on behalf of the organization.
Explicit appeal to authority in 2026? Really?
They don't care at all when republicans are admiring hitler in their group chats because they're reliable votes for Israel. Meanwhile, liberals who believe firmly in equality are in the cross-hairs because that equality includes arabs as well as jews.
Also, serious question, you're going after Cory Booker as anti-Israel? My information had him as pretty tied up with AIPAC, can you elaborate?
> They don't care at all when republicans are admiring hitler in their group chats because they're reliable votes for Israel. Meanwhile, liberals who believe firmly in equality are in the cross-hairs because that equality includes arabs as well as jews.
None of that addresses what I wrote about them and it does not refute that they have a credible position to talk about nazi symbolism.
> Also, serious question, you're going after Cory Booker as anti-Israel? My information had him as pretty tied up with AIPAC, can you elaborate?
You're getting wildly defensive and lashing out without understanding the conversation. I'm not going after Cory Booker at all, because I don't think he made a nazi salute that kind of thing would just be an utterly idiotic claim to make. I brought him up because it's a good example about people who have biases will call two practically identical actions totally different based on who is doing them.
> Sounds like the converse is true actually--I haven't seen anyone who isn't a Musk stan (or anti-semite) say it's not a Nazi salute.
You asserted without evidence that the ADL are "Musk stan", or that they are anti-semites, or both.
Are you going to ask me to not believe my lying eyes? Then we are at an impasse.
Much more trustworthy than some internet crackpot conspiracy theorist, or the "trust me bro" people and groups whose political alignments compel them to also claim that Corey Booker's "nazi salute" wasn't, or that this guy's nazi tattoo is not a big deal, wouldn't you think?
I'm just commenting that people who are absolutely certain about that (without much evidence other than "trust me bro"), but simultaneously vigorously defend nazi tattoos and similar salutes from people who they like, are incapable of reasoning about this subject. The ADL might have other issues which you are desperately trying to conflate here, but clearly they are recognized experts in this, at least to the point you'd be inclined to believe them over politicians or frothing internet partisans on the matter. Right?
EDIT: And if I had to pick a Nazi symbol I think most people don't recognize, I'd go with the Black Sun.[2]
[1] https://www.amazon.com/Cruel-Hunters-SS-Sonderkommando-Dirle...
I think it is probably useful for people to familiarise themselves with Nazi symbolism though. You would be surprised how often you encounter people online using these obscure symbols, knowing most people won't recognise them.
Definitely not. SS bolts, the nazi eagle, the iron cross, the fasces, hitler's mustache, etc are all immensely more recognizeable.
The fact that in the skit they say "we've got skulls on our caps" rather than referring to the actual symbol or even accurately describing it tells you the lack of general familiarity. We all know Nazi's had skulls on their caps, no one knows there are even crossed bones there, nonetheless the particular styling. Normal people don't closely examine Nazi uniforms. Further, this is a comedy sketch playing up the absurdity of the situation for laughs; in reality it was not a Nazi symbol of how evil they were, it was a symbol that had been used in the Prussian and other German armies for centuries and then the Stormtroopers of WW1. In the interwar period it was used by the Freikorps and eventually by the SS, trying to invoke that same imagery. It has become a hate symbol well known amongst white supremacists, but not the general population.
Just compare both images:
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/3rd_SS_Panzer_Division_Totenko...
- https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/graham-platner-nazi-tattoo...
(That being said, I find the reaction from GOP-affiliated media and “influencers” very hypocritical, given that they were fine with Elon, then Steve Bannon, doing a Nazi salute on stage or MAGA people carrying Swastika flags in the street)
for context it's https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Totenkopf#Nazi_Germany , i'm surprised so many people didn't know the nazi use
if platner really didn't know, i guess it just spoke to him as a (future?) blackwater mercenary
Yes, correct. Despite that, if I lived in Maine, I'd wholeheartedly vote for him. Not sure why I shouldn't?
However, I think this is beside the point. The more relevant questions are (1) whether Platner knew what it was, and (2) whether an informed voter should want someone who doesn't know the meaning of the things they get tattooed on their body. Authentic or not, (2) demonstrates a lack of good judgement to me.
(Separately, having been to that part of part of Slavic southern Europe, it is inconceivable that any tattoo parlor that would give you a totenkopf tattoo is not plastered in other Nazi and far-right iconography. You would need to actively look past all of the other Nazi stuff and assume that the skull is the one thing that doesn't have some additional meaning.)
Not being MAGA. I have some respect for Susan Collins. But this nonsense where a tattoo and infidelity should be disqualifying on one side while the President, popularly elected this time, sleeps with porn stars and endorses anti-Semites and KKK adjacents, is unsustainable. If we need a dude with a Nazi tattoo to win Maine, I guess I prefer to be pissed off and winning.
This reminds me of the folks who had conniptions over Sinema and Manchin. You know what we'd have if we had four of those right now? A majority.
Manchin was against Build Back Better, expanding voting rights legislation and codifying abortion rights.
Yes, he was better than a Republican. But he was a big reason why Democrats are seen as the do-nothing party who never achieve things. Because he stood in the way of it.
Not to mention, Fetterman isn’t Manchin. Manchin at least voted to impeach Trump, Fetterman is skeptical of even doing that.
Doesn’t confirm Pam Bondi and Pete Hegseth. Doesn’t confirm a new numpty to SCOTUS. Doesn’t blow the budget on a fake deportation push and tax breaks for the rich.
I agree Democrats have no agenda. But Republicans don’t seem to either right now. They have talking points. But the policy passed bears no resemblance to those in the slightest.
Source: https://nebraska.tv/news/nation-world/graham-platner-calls-p...
Yes, but that should be baseline for the Democrat candidate? Are there really no better candidates in Maine? This sort of thing would be regarded as disqualifiing in the UK even for local councilors from the far right. https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2026/may/27/calls-barns...
All I see discussed is tatto which is irrelevant and does not reflect his policy
Just pure hysteria from neurotic people
I believe him that he didn't know it was a Nazi tattoo. There's no other evidence that he holds Nazi views and he has covered it up.
Stop hand wringing, vote Platner.
AOC took on a congress member that was placed into his seat, served 10 terms (and was known as the Dem party's money link to wall street) and didn't even live in the district.
Mamdani was a clean slate from the messes of the prior administrations.
Platner has many of these qualities and is also taking on candidates (both in his party and the opposition) that have repeatedly failed his community. An oyster farmer that grew up in his state, he talks a lot about his upbringing in the state. It seems like so many of his speeches incorporate how deeply ingrained he is within Maine. The community organizing that convinced him to run is probably a lot to do with his success. I remember when AOC was just starting. There were multiple community organizing groups that knew all the tricks of the Queens machine. They were able to help AOC avoid early traps laid by the establishment.
Do you think they are lying just for kicks?
I want more than this! There is a lot of room between lying and fucking up. And if you're going to present a half-baked case on first impression, it's going to be a lot harder to regain everyone's attention when you get your shit together.
Maybe I'm just annoyed with this issue. But I came into this thread looking for anything actionable. I'm not finding it. Just the same old nonsese being flung across the same aisle.
- Wired for War: Why is the EU ignoring the Israeli cyber threat? - https://www.rt.com/news/639159-israel-spies-eu-pegasus/
- Wired for war: The Israeli spy-tech machine strikes again - https://swentr.site/news/640352-israel-interference-france-b...
- EU state lifts arms embargo on Israel after spy scandal - https://www.rt.com/news/641456-slovenia-arms-ban-israel/
(The whole Wired for war series on RT is interesting - https://www.rt.com/trends/wired-for-war/ - as it also describes AI techs evolving role in politics and the military).
On the one hand, it's been the first time I've no longer been able to take for granted that everyone in a room agrees with my political views and doesn't pre-judge me based on my background. On the other hand, I've gone back home to the suburbs and heard some really ridiculous hyperbole about what it's like in NYC.
Then there's the fact that while I support Isreal, I don't support all its actions. Nor do a lot of people in the [Orthodox] Jewish community, but they are afraid to speakup too much.
Modern orthdoox jews are kind of like Mitt Romney is for Mormons. Observant of all the rules, but also raised with a full secular education, encouraged to go to college, and expected to participate in society rather than isolate in thier community.
Having an obsession with Israel, focusing only on them for things done by other countries as well in the same situation, exaggerating what they are doing, and demonising them is antisemitic.
The Overton window has shifted so far that you don’t even realise how it would sound if you replaced “Israel” with other countries in your statement.
Imagine hearing someone say I’m just “anti-Ireland”. Or I have nothing against Ukrainians, I just think Ukraine shouldn’t exist.
If you have genuine criticisms to make about specific people in Israel or specific actions of the Israeli government, and you do so also about many other figures and events internationally, that’s fair. But taking a position of “anti-Israel” in general betrays a prejudice against the only Jewish country that has nothing to do with their actions.
Ridiculous comparison. Police are obligated to act impartially, private individuals are not. Expecting regular people to give every political matter equal attention is absurd.
To pass your test, which is common out there, whenever Israel is criticized we must also: prove that we care about EVERY cause in the world; acknowledge every other conflict in the world; compare against every aggressive country in the world; declare support for Israel's "right to exist" and "right to defend itself" (which are nothing by proxies for aggressive expansionism); declare our criticism is limited to certain actions; denounce every opponent of Israel to an excessive degree; and make caveats that we have Jewish friends.
This is nonsense and this is exactly the nonsense that Israeli propaganda encourages as it suppresses criticism of Israel.
Everyday people talk in generalizations about countries, people, companies, etc... in exactly the way you claim they don't. Israeli supporters especially do it all the time, especially when talking about Iran. The hypocritical double standard is incredibly obvious to anyone not blinkered by pro-Israeli and pro-Zionist propaganda or self interest.
To overlap the Israel & Jewish issues: on Israel and also antisemitism, the Overton window in the west (especially US, UK & Germany) is located well inside the pro-Israeli, pro-Jewish side of the spectrum, especially if you compare it to what you can get away with saying about Muslims, Muslim countries and people of colour. Just think about what would happen if somebody said that in order to stop Israel committing genocide they should be bombed back to the stone age. They'd not only be uproar but that person would be driven out of their job and never serve political office in the US. But that's exactly what the US president and head of the armed forces said. The uproar was very one sided.
There is a prejudice, but it's opposite to what you think it is.
Its a hard lesson to learn that there is so much astroturfing in both directions that you have to learn to ignore the noise.
Online is just another component in the political game. We saw all this nonsense in 2024 yet again. I'm kicking myself for having fallen for all these pollsters, some of which have had an impeccable perfect record for decades and yet still managed to get it wrong this time around.
This is a very well executed bit of diplomacy.
Interesting that whatever they wanted to do backfired in NYC.
https://www.heraldscotland.com/news/26188090.john-swinney-ta...
“Israel, thank you for your cooperation, my gosh, we’re really going to get to the bottom of this” = ‘We know what you’re doing, fuck off’
I suspect the song on Israeli participation is not over yet, but that’s a side tangent.
This is nonsese. The business is owned by its owners. Sponsors are the customers. For multinational staples like Eurovision, sponsors get limited say.
https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/security-aviation/2026-0...
Lowest of the low.
NSO has been sued [1][2] and sanctioned [3].
[1] https://about.fb.com/news/2025/05/winning-the-fight-against-...
[2] https://www.reuters.com/sustainability/society-equity/us-cou...
[3] https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2021/11/03/pegasus...
Yet we're never told that explicitly and it's never framed as the abusive relationship that it is.
Makes you really wonder who the press works for.
Yeah right. Surely not. Why would they even?
If there are, they certainly would do no harm in being more vocal, firms like BlackCore is unfortunately what Israel is becoming known for around the world.
Israel has several "cores" of technology. The military stuff is shameful (as well as other stuff). It's not just the NSOs (or less infamously the Wiz's/Palo Altos etc).
There are plenty of good things though - startups in the biotech/health/classic "tech" space. I'll spare you the long list of stuff like Mellanox that drives Nvidias in data centers and leave the googling of medtech to you. Lots of neutral stuff too.
I appreciate your experience. I have no doubt there's indeed been an increase in such comments. I think it's important to note that the Israeli government does work very hard to conflate Zionism with Judaism, (which itself seems antisemitic to me), making it harder for some to separate the two.
> There are plenty of good things though - startups in the biotech/health/classic "tech" space.
That's good to know, as I said in another comment, it may be time for those startups to make themselves heard more, not because they have to, but because it is in their interest if they have any expansion plans going forward, given what a poor PR the Israeli state and firms like NSO, BlackCore etc. give the Israeli tech scene.
Yes, they are trying their hardest with their actions to fuel a new way of antisemitism.
Turns out if you are a religious fundamental colony that occupies territory based on the bible, that gives bad rap to the whole religion.
Many if not most Israelis are not religious, and traditionally, religious Jews (especially the Orthodox; an extreme case is Neturei Karta) oppose Zionism and the State of Israel as a secular ersatz, believing that they must wait for the Messiah to restore Israel.
Of course, in the last few decades, a faction of Zionists have commandeered the messianic for political purposes, but this is not the origin.
My nation, the most powerful in the world, puts a menorah in its halls of government every year for Hanukkah. The legislative and judicial branches have Jewish members at the very top level. The head of government has a Jewish son-in-law.
Even online, I see much more pervasive criticism of my nation than yours.
Yet, listen to Zionists and I’m practically living in Weimar Germany. That dog won’t hunt.
People have criticisms of Israel. They may be fair or unfair. Address them on the merits and leave the rest of us out it. It has nothing to do with Jews qua Jews.
USA?
> Yet, listen to Zionists and I’m practically living in Weimar Germany. That dog won’t hunt.
Yeah this is so detached from reality I have to ask how you arrived at this conclusion and consider reexamining the way you consume information. Both in my own personal impression and according ADL global index USA's antisemitism is a low. Because "Zionists" have pro-Israel bias they will perceive any one who support Israel positively, and no one support Israel more than USA, so they will likely view USA as positive further lessening negtive views.
In general, I think (or at least hope) your experience is the more common one. But fwiw I do have a Jewish friend who was personally cussed at and threatened by his own coworker explicitly for being Jewish (well, and probably because they were from Florida if I'm being honest, but there aren't as many slurs for that). The guy who did it was fired (whole thing was recorded iirc), nobody sided with him, he was clearly off his rocker in some way - but it doesn't take much to get shaken up - it sticks with you. And my friend was understandably, shaken up.
I know that because I used to live in Seattle, and unfortunately I had a really scary experience of being threatened (he yelled "I'm going to kill you b****") and chased down by a homeless man for nothing other than being a woman on the same street as him. So I saw my own perspective shift when it happened first hand. I was no longer excited about living downtown in a big city after that experience.
So what I'm saying is, neither me nor my friend took the experience and made it a defining thing. He still lives where he does, didn't blame the community or anything. And I'm back to taking public transit, talking to strangers on the sidewalk, and all the other stuff that comes with spending time downtown in a big city. But this time the city is Charlotte, my home city. It's probably not any safer than Seattle (maybe worse), but experiences shape perception, and I've always had really good experiences on Charlotte, including with homeless people. I could say it's because Charlotte has more police presence lately, or because there's not visible tent camps or open drug usage. But deep down, I know, crazy people are always gonna be out there, and the most trivial thing can make you a target.
So I really get the pull by people who have experienced victimization like that to talk about it. You feel kinda crazy if you don't, because you are surrounded by people who say it never happens because they've never seen it. That was such a big part I think of the Floyd protests - a lot of white people lived in a bubble and didn't know how pervasive overly violent interactions with the police can be (though the ironic part is that a lot of white people still don't realize that they can also be targeted by police with just as much malice). Most American black people already knew first or second-hand that police brutality was real and not uncommon - but until it was undeniable on video, it was treated by others as if it never happened.
So there's some honest middle ground somewhere, but the extremists are the one who have the most to gain from convincing people to believe otherwise.
"This is definitely made easier by the fact that the arrogance, the endless lawyering, the shady dealings, the greediness, the constant switching between attacking and playing the victim, they all match to a tee the most known historical antisemitic tropes." https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48515906
"Large American investment companies that were also both founded by Jewish people. I'm sure it's just a coincidence, though" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48516750
The correct way to address this perception is to prove that the attacker (Israel, who is attacking everyone around them) and Jews are not the same. Israel is working very hard to make them seem the same. THAT is what you should be complaining about. Non-Zionist Jews should paint yourselves as the victims of Israel, not the victims of anti-semites. That is the single biggest contribution you can make to this conversation.
We are more than two years into full-on genocide and you hesitate to be political? This position reminds me of many Russians who prefer to "stay out of politics" because there are "two sides" to the conflict and it's an uncomfortable topic for them.
Even someone neutral to sympathetic can’t help but look on in disgust at your PM and his supporters.
Edit: The point being that it tarnishes everything that Israel does, and makes fault-finding way too easy.
At least according to this study, almost all Israelis are monsters who openly support genocide.
Not saying I agree with any of it, but I find the parallels illuminating. If anyone wonders why there's more anti-semitism now, s/he can perhaps compare it with how all Muslims are condemned as being members of a barbaric sect after any terrorist attack (yes, even attacks where the perpretator doesn't claim to be doing it for Allah).
Additionally the anti-Muslim hate was not "ah let's very justifiably cut ties with some mad country" it involved widespread and open islamophobia, calls for mass deaths and indeed invasions of muslim-majority countries.
The two situations are not remotely alike
It seems unlikely that you don’t know that.
Especially since there are plenty of people who post here who won't work on defense-related activities despite availing themselves of their protection.
However:
> There are plenty of good things though - startups in the biotech/health/classic "tech" space.
Besides the point. I truly won't touch anything from that Apartheid, gen0cideal state.
c.f. the boycott of South Africa during Apartheid. Same principle.
https://iea.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/mister-gotcha-...
To be clear, the job of the ordinary citizen in this situation is not to opt out. I criticise China often and yet my phone has Chinese chips. Would you have me shut up about China?. And so it is with Israel.
The job of the ordinary citizen is to do what they reasonably can to protest the gen0cidal, N'azi behaviour of its current administration with the support of a significant percentage of its populous.
Given how the troubles have turned a significant number of the population into blood-thirsty land thieves, the country should be de-N'azified like they did to Germany after WW2.
You're welcome.
/S
But yeah, there is indeed some irony in the term "antisemitism" in the context you describe
(More broadly, "they're semites too" is the "Elon Musk is African American" of I/P discourse. You can recognize extraordinary human tragedy without re-using race science.)
(By comparison: nobody who isn’t a racist talks about Japhetites or Hamites, but these are the coextensive groups implied by the existence of Semites.)
I'm sorry for responding as though we were using the received definition, because we're now solidly in the "Elon Musk is African American" quadrant of stupid I/P meta-arguments.
The only erasure is the attempt to diffuse the term to include Akkadians, Amharics, Carthaginians, Phoenicians, Black Israelites, adherents to the Nation of Islam, all 1.3 billions Arabs, what-have-you, when it always and only ever referred to anti-Jew hatred.
I agree with you that it is the job of the state to do diplomacy, I would argue that the Israeli state has done an extremely poor job at that, so it may be left to some of its greener industry to pick up the slack, unfortunately.
Not because they 'have to' but because they would want to if they want to expand abroad and not get overshadowed by the bad PR the Israeli state is so good at putting out.
I disagree with you that 'other people are biased'.
One of the reasons Israeli soft power is so weak at the moment is precisely because its diplomats always insist everyone is just simply biased against Israel, often invoking some thousands year old hatred of its people etc. rather than for one second introspecting on the fact that the actions of the state may indeed have something to do with that perceived bias.
It should indeed be the job of Israeli diplomats to work and promote Israel in the best light possible
He later worked at NASA.
Say rather that he's apolitical
"Once the rockets are up, who cares where they come down?
That's not my department!" says Wernher von Braun
But some think our attitude
Should be one of gratitude
Like the widows and cripples in old London town
Who owe their large pensions to Wernher von Braun.
Hypothermia research, sleep deprivation research, etc. really cruel stuff.
Turns out you can't do proper experiments when the subjects are also being starved and worked to death, when you lack a proper control group, or when you interpret all the results from a heavily racist perspective. And that doesn't even touch the completely nonsensical hypotheses yet.
You rarely read about Finland spying on other nations, or trying to influence their politics.
There is the AIPAC, I challenge you to find anything similar from any other country.
Totals since 2016 Country Total Spending China $562,676,323 Japan $504,111,211 Liberia $432,968,270 Saudi Arabia $421,890,448 Marshall Islands $382,012,024 South Korea $363,237,700 Bahamas $293,205,139 United Arab Emirates $269,529,107 Qatar $269,260,794 Israel $215,168,616
So for small countries UAE and Qatar(no surprise here, they just gifted 1 billion airplane to Trump)
(Perhaps it should be! But it should be consistent, whatever it is.)
Agreed. Any lobbying that centers on the interests of a foreign country should IMO count as foreign lobbying, I have no problem in including Korean-Americans, Kenyan-Americans etc. in that too.
Put another way: it seems very risky to allow the federal government to determine the propriety of political speech just because it happens to concern two (or more countries) at once.
An egregious, non-controversial example of things going poorly is NYC Mayor Adams and Turkey. He basically accepted bribes and favors from the Turkish government and their proxies for specific actions.
A “doing it right” example that wouldn’t have been controversial until recently is Denmark. They mostly focus on direct diplomatic policy lobbying, and leverage consultants to promote mostly tourism. Their affiliations are known and registered. Now they hire K-Street lobbyists to influence policy objectives re: Greenland, etc.
The difference is that when the papers found out about Adams being a crook… that didn’t turn into accusations of racism and fomenting sectarian hatred. In the AIPAC example, there will be a both a legitimate visceral response from Americans and astroturf from lots of prominent people.
I think there's a much more parsimonious explanation for this: the average American doesn't know that much about Turkey, know very many Turkish people, etc.
In contrast, the average American has been steeped in I/P and related proxy conflict news for their entire adult life. That, combined with the fact that the US has a large Jewish population means that there's a degree of salience to accusations around AIPAC that wouldn't exist if the equivalent Turkish-American political lobby entity[1] was caught bribing politicians.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turkish_Coalition_of_America
I don't think AIPAC is making that ridiculous claim!
The point of the lobbying is make the people American serve the interests of Israel.
There is a book written about this:
https://www.amazon.com/Israel-Lobby-U-S-Foreign-Policy/dp/03...
> America is safer, stronger and more prosperous when its relationship with Israel is ironclad. AIPAC works with Democrats and Republicans in Washington to advance that partnership. AIPAC lobbies Congress to pass annual U.S. security assistance to Israel, support lifesaving missile defense cooperation, and fund joint programs that help protect our troops and our homeland
(Note that “homeland” here refers to the US, not Israel.)
Should they just die already? Are legal pathways for survival just too good for those pesky Jews?
Meanwhile OPEC will buy American presidents outright and you'll welcome their culture of imprisoning rape victims, hanging homosexuals, and torturing journalists? That lobbying doesn't count? We only count Jewish money?
Is it better that we fund the Palestinians to overthrow the powers that be like we did all over the world for the last 100 years? Will you count the 10 million deaths that creates as just another American mistake? Sweep them under the rug because it was "not my president?" America doesn't need to be held responsible for those things?
Personally I'm very thankful that people with an agreeable moral compass are lobbying to correct the problems in American politics.
I'd sure like to see America finally step in to fix the problems that Jimmy Carter created in the Middle East, rather than blaming everyone else for them.
WE made the IRGC. WE made Israel. WE made Gaza and the West Bank.
We should take some accountability and let the people living in the hell we created tell us how to fix it. We shouldn't be surprised that they are using legal pathways like lobbying to encourage what should be common human decency.
I was adjacent to state level politics for a long time. The German, Korean and French economic development organizations would come around every now and again with promotional events coordinated with their embassy to promote partnerships and business opportunities. Sometimes they had lobbyists focused on general relationship building, more often for specific issues.
The Israeli ground game is different. American PACs affiliated with or specifically “not affiliated with, but always talking about” Israeli interests show up at every level of government - a good friend is a town board member of a big suburban town and they call on him, and he refuses the contributions so will likely get primaried.
The real difference is information awareness. There is a CRM somewhere the ground guys have access to, and relationships are cultivated and used. My buddy is being targeted becuase there’s a good chance he’ll be in the state legislature someday. There’s a pipeline to get targeted American politicians to tour Israel for whatever reason. When critical attention is focused on this stuff, the reaction is fast and painful for the media outlet or political actor.
The only thing close to this is China, who does similar stuff with a different playbook. They’ve been caught embedding agents of one sort or another in California and New York governments at a high level, as well as places like Florida or within government contractors with lower level people.
Note that we’ve purged the FBI counterintelligence division, so the brazenness of the “bad” stuff will get worse - nobody is watching.
OpenSecrets laid off 30% of its staff due to financial problems [0] and I'm absolutely sure that site is AI generated. No idea what numbers are displayed there but no country can afford 10% of GDP for 10 years for influence in Washington.
> If there are, they certainly would do no harm in being more vocal ...
Perhaps, but - talk to someone who's done PR work for startups. Ask them what it would take for an Israeli startup working on, say, home bagel-making machines to get the sort of world-wide media attention that any Israeli creep-tech firm can get - for free - by association with a few nefarious deeds.
Not everything in Israel is about or related to Palestinians. The Palestinian bias only exists in circles where every thought regarding Israel is immediately evoking a Palestinian connotation. In reality, most Israelis never interact with Palestinians.
To suggest that a sector of Israeli startups exists on the experience of people "suppressing Palestinians" is definitely biased, absurd, and is a slippery slope.
I would suggest to you that the focus on Iran is because Iran is perceived as being an obstacle to Israeli hegemony in the region and thus undisputed Israeli rule over Palestinian territory.
Iran also justifies its actions in terms of standing up for Palestinians.
So yes, it's very much related.
This could mean anything from a couple of ghettos to all of the modern state of Israel depending on what you think Palestinian territory is or should be.
If you take the approach that all of it is Palestinian territory and the state of Israel shouldn't exist, then yeah, sure? that's different from the assertion that all of the intelligence related businesses in Israel are founded because of direct experience in conflict with the Palestinian people.
You know there's such a thing as internationally recognized Palestinian territory occupied by Israel, right?
Start with that, instead of deploying the 'do you want Israel to not exist' deflection tactic.
Maybe I have a wrong read on the situation between Iran and Israel. But my impression is that Israel is more concerned with Iran as a general threat, moreso than they are concerned that Iran will intervene on behalf of Palestinians, current Palestinian territory, or Hamas.
If Iran didn't get involved directly after ~2 years of open warfare and inarguably genocide-shaped atrocities carried out on civilians, what are they waiting for? Meanwhile Netanyahu has been talking about the danger of Iran developing nuclear weapons for decades now.
Keep in mind I was responding to a post about an assertion that there are so many military startups in Israel because so many Israelis, in their IDF service, have hands-on experience fighting against and oppressing Palestinians. I responded to a post that seemed reductive and misleading in support of that perspective.
Iran has never attacked Israel unless attacked first. As for their 'proxies' they only really exist because Israel has invaded Lebanon long before Hezbollah existed and its creation was spearheaded primarily by Lebanon's local population as a response to the invasion, with Iranian support.
Iran supports these local 'proxies' because it sees itself as a leader of the Shia and more broadly as a leader of the Muslim world and the Palestinian cause as being the responsibility of every Muslim nation (incl theirs) to get involved with.
Israel is indeed concerned with Iran as a threat, but only because they see the other governments in the region as willing to overlook the Palestinian cause, in exchange for economic links with Israel.
In that sense Iran is very much connected to the Palestinians, this assertion that Iran is just super irrational and wants to see Israel go down because they want to laugh watching it or something is nothing more than cheap Israeli propaganda.
Of course Iran is not just looking for the Palestinians out of altruism, they want a leadership position in the Muslim world and this is their way of gaining legitimacy, but the reason why Israel sees them as a threat is very much because of Iran's interest in the Palestinians.
Iran was involved in attacks against Israel and Israeli towns in the 1980s and 1990s by their mercenaries in Hezbollah and direct IRGC presence in Lebanon. This happened even when Israel supported Iran during the Iraq-Iran war, so this is strictly not true
Other incidents were the Iranian bombings of the Israeli embassy in Argentine or the Jewish center there, and attempts on the London and Bangkok embassies
Furthermore financing of Hamas during the 1990s suicide campaign with the direct goal of derailing the peace process.
This is part of a long line of Iranian aggressive actions that have led them to being isolated and in a string of wars that greatly destroyed their already diminished economic power
Except Israel invaded Lebanon before that. It also engaged in assassinations, espionage, terror and sabotage before that. In fact Israelis engaged in those even before the state of Israel was officially pronounced.
I'm not saying the Iranians or Lebanese etc. never play dirty, but this portrayal of them as just irrational and aggressive for no reason whatsoever against their peace loving Israeli neighbors is just dishonest.
For one, neither the Iranians, nor the Lebanese are occupying foreign territory. The same cannot be said for the Israelis.
Israelis will say they invaded Lebanon in the 70s/80s because of the PLO, (no Hezbollah yet) however the PLO was itself a consequence of Israeli occupation of Palestinian territory.
In conclusion; there's a fairly simple way to disarm the Iranians and strip them and their proxies of any perceived legitimacy they may hold with anyone; stop occupying Palestine.
The PLO was not an inevitable force of nature, it was an organization that consisted of human beings, making conscious decisions.
The British took Palestine from the Ottomans and handed it to the state of Israel. Maybe morally it's an occupation, but if so then the USA is occupying Hawaii.
You realize that there's a non-negligible contingent of Hawaiians who absolutely believe this, too?
That is moving the goal posts, as these are not instances of attacking Iran, it's hard to claim Iran never attacked Israel first when it is either financing attacks against Israel or participating in them for the last 45+ years
> Israelis will say they invaded Lebanon in the 70s/80s because of the PLO, (no Hezbollah yet) however the PLO was itself a consequence of Israeli occupation of Palestinian territory.
Back when the PLO was founded there was no "foreign territory occupied by Israel", only internationally recognized Israeli borders and Gaza/West Bank which were under Egyptian/Jordanian occupation. Two countries that refused to create an independent Palestinian state
No, they're instances of attacking Palestinians.
> it's hard to claim Iran never attacked Israel first when it is either financing attacks against Israel or participating in them for the last 45+ years
The Iranians supported the Palestinians Israel was attacking the same way the Soviets supported the Vietnamese. This was not the Soviets attacking the US, this was the Soviets supporting indigenous forces that the US was attacking. It's the same as the Israelis supporting Kurdish groups in Iran, Turkey etc.
These groups have their own motives and agency, the Lebanese opposed to Israel are not mere 'proxies' of Iran, neither are the Palestinians. They're opposed to Israel for their own reasons, namely Israel occupies their land.
If you're so concerned about Iran being able to come in and support them, then stop occupying foreign land and the whole reason Iran is able to make inroads with your neighbors disappears.
You won't do that of course, because Israel is the one who first conducted attacks on Iran directly. Therefore it does not get to play the card of being attacked. It invaded Syria too for no reason whatsoever, other than taking more land.
> Back when the PLO was founded there was no "foreign territory occupied by Israel", only internationally recognized Israeli borders and Gaza/West Bank which were under Egyptian/Jordanian occupation.
Which is why the PLO has a bloody conflict with Jordan, which you conveniently omit. It's almost as if they were opposed to being occupied, period.
When Israel invaded Lebanon back in the 70s/80s, it already took control of Gaza and the West Bank by that point.
> Two countries that refused to create an independent Palestinian state
I love this talking point. So because someone else was horrible to the Palestinians, that justifies Israel being horrible to them too?
The PLO tried to takeover Jordan after Jordan stopped occupying the West Bank, I don't see how that makes sense chronologically. You could also point at Palestinian attempts at taking over Lebanon, but that doesn't really support your argument that Palestinians are aggressive due to being under occupation
Regarding the Iranians comparison with the Soviets, The Soviets were an aggressive actor and that's why the world was on the brink of nuclear war numerous times in the 20th century, causing both sides to regulate. Iran had never really toned down its aggressive behavior towards Israel, culminating in the October 7th massacre and ended eventually with Iran in complete ruins
If there's something you could count against the Soviets, it would be their support for Israel and arms supplies because they naively believed Israel would be a socialist state aligned with them.
And Iran was neither behind Ocrober 7, nor is it 'in complete ruins'.
I mean, come on dude. You explaining away the actions of Iran's proxies as not the actions of Iran is just ahistorical nonsense at best. They funded them, trained them, and directed their actions.
> Israel is indeed concerned with Iran as a threat, but only because they see the other governments in the region as willing to overlook the Palestinian cause, in exchange for economic links with Israel
The complete lock down of the border between Egypt and the Gaza strip is because Egypt is beholden to Israel? Is that what you're saying here?
> the reason why Israel sees them as a threat is very much because of Iran's interest in the Palestinians
And by "interest" you're referring to backing the most violent terrorist groups in the region, who have the blood of thousands of Israeli citizens on their hands.
Such as the Stern Gang? /s
Or it's ok when Israel does it because when they kill 20k+ children in Gaza that's a state doing it so it's not terrorism?
Perhaps at some point Israel (the dominant party) needs to take the first step towards peace, instead of constantly playing the victim.
The Palestinians are merely a tool for Iran to gain influence, Hezbollah and Shias in Iraq were far more important for them historically
you say that as if israel doesn't have the exact same ideology against iran (it does)
What are the parallels in Israeli society for Iranian school systems morning chants of "Death to Israel" and a public countdown clock to the destruction of Israel?
But to answer your question directly, the Iranians would say they equate Israel with ethno-supremacy, same as apartheid South Africa. Getting rid of apartheid in South Africa was not about getting rid of while South Africans as such, it was about getting rid of the ethno-supremacy underpinning apartheid.
Iran ideological wishes of destroying Israel are pretty much in the open, no need to try to weasel around it. While there isn't any such ideology in Israel towards Iran
israeli ideological wishes of destroying Palestine, Lebanon, Iran, etc are pretty much in the open, no need to try to weasel around it. Heck, israel doesn't even recognize Palestine's right to exist in the first place.
> israeli ideological wishes of destroying Palestine, Lebanon, Iran, etc are pretty much in the open
This is pretty ironic considering that Iran, Hamas and Hezbollah are all quite explicit about their ambitions of wiping out Israel, while the reverse isn't true at all. Israelis have no desire to kill Persians a thousand kilometers away, they just don't have much choice but to fight foreign armies who attack them.
The Palestinian state already exists, so the least they could do is recognize its right to exist, which is equal in every way to israel's. That is to say: if israel has an unconditional right to exist, then Palestine's right to exist is equally unconditional. Likewise, if israel can place conditions on Palestine's existence, then Palestine has equal rights to place conditions on israel's existence.
> Iran, Hamas and Hezbollah are all quite explicit about their ambitions of wiping out Israel
This is pretty ironic considering that israel is pretty explicit about their ambitions of wiping out Palestinians and taking their land, as well as destroying Palestine, Lebanon, and Iran.
> Israelis have no desire to kill Persians a thousand kilometers away
This unsupported claim is immediately belied by their actions (they initiated a war in which they are killing persians a thousand kilometers away), and also ignores that they are also killing Palestinian and Lebanese people.
There exists a national identity, but the organization that claims to be its government does not enjoy popular support, and more importantly, has never really controlled the territory that it aspires to govern.
> This is pretty ironic considering that israel is pretty explicit about their ambitions of wiping out Palestinians and taking their land, as well as destroying Palestine, Lebanon, and Iran.
This is false; there's absolutely nothing resembling Iran's, Hamas' or Hezbollah's clear, explicit goals of destroying Israel.
> they initiated a war
This perspective only makes sense if we pretend that proxy warfare doesn't count. Once we acknowledge the fact that Iran funded, armed and trained multiple terrorist groups specifically to attack Israel for years, it becomes very clear who started the Israel-Iran conflict.
I would expect a proposal that any self respecting people could accept, what Israel has proposed it then itself described as something 'less than a state'[1].
And that was under much less radical government than is in power in Israel now.
These word games such as don't fool anyone anymore.
1 - https://jewishvirtuallibrary.org/pm-rabin-speech-to-knesset-...
Most importantly, both groups exist as a direct result of Israeli persecution of their civilian populations. They weren't created by Iran, they're a predictable result that happens when you occupy people's land and oppress them, you get resistance groups.
As a reminder: Shia are a minority in Lebanon; it's not even close.
Hezbollah do see the Iranian supreme leader as the leader of Shia Islam, and they do see Iran as their key ally, but they didn't even exist before Israel occupied southern Lebanon in the 80s and abetted all sorts of massacres. They have a reason to exist besides being Iranian stooges, they're real people.
One more interesting narrative frame: Fighting in Syria for Iran? Not for Assad? Was Assad a thoughtless Iranian appendage also?
None of these observations make me a supporter of the Netanyahu government; my opinions of Likud have nothing to do with my opinions of Iran and their IRGC militias.
I'm just saying they have rational interests in addition to religious/sectarian, and we can see in the current situation that it would have been nice for them to have Assad still in charge of Syria right now. Calling them an IRGC militia isn't any more correct than calling UK/Israel a "USA militia".
I'd be happy to see Netanyahu in prison. But the horrific death toll in Gaza is a small fraction of what the IRGC has wrought in Syria, Iraq, and especially Yemen. When the IRGC orchestrates starvation sieges, as they did at Madaya in Syria and Taiz in Yemen, they brag about it. They film videos for the besieged residents jokingly eating off banquets.
Winding back to the top of the thread, all this is just to say, Israel is not necessarily wrong about the adversaries they face outside of their borders. (They're definitely not wrong about Hamas and PIJ, but they're seemingly wrong about just about everything else that happens inside their borders.)
For example, Iran never directly intervened in Yemen, they limited themselves to sending weapons, but the Saudis did a SHITLOAD[1], to the tune of 10k troops, hundreds of sorties and a "war crimes" section on the wiki page. Yet somehow the IRGC is the most salient group in this conflict to you, despite not doing any direct fighting?
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saudi-led_intervention_in_the_...
And I'm not saying they're good guys but the next step is weighting their atrocities on the same standard as those committed by the Saudis with our support.
Also it's dishonest not to include the actions of the Saudis and the UAE when discussing the Yemen conflict. As well as the sustained U.S targeting support in bombing the hell out of that country.
You have never, ever seen me on this site stick up for Saudi Arabia. I feel like this is a big way people get themselves into trouble thinking about MENA. In most of these conflicts, there isn't a protagonist.
The rest of your reply is basically non sequiturs. For this part however I would sincerely be interested in seeing a source.
Netanyahu and his ilk realized that rather than a rapidly moderating, rapidly gaining sympathy and support PLO was not the enemy they "needed" for their own agenda - "from the river to the sea", which, let's not forget, was actually Likud's official election slogan in the 70s and 80s (a "hilarious" irony when certain people try to point to Palestinian usage of this as a "gotcha" - "See, they want to exterminate us!"), and that IDF intelligence showed that Hamas was likely to be more extremist and thus garner more sympathy for Israel, so Israel started supporting Hamas' rise.
No one was officially blamed for Stuxnet years ago but it's widely believed that the US and Israel were responsible [5]. And of course we had the pager operation [6]. If anyone else had done the same, they'd be labelled as terrorists and be under economic and diplomatic sanctions.
As for BlackCore, I guess it's part of the wider story of Israel's extensive influence campaign on foreign elections and politicians. We've seen this get really overt. For example, Thomas Massie's primary was the most expensive in history when AIPAC and AIPAC affiliates spent a combined ~$35M. I actually think it's this extreme and overt because Israel has lost the PR fight and are increasingly desperate.
Another less-talked about example was the character assassination of Jeremy Corbyn in the UK, which was essentiallya Zionist takeover of the Labor Party and, lo and behold, a few years later we're locking up grandmothers indefinitely for holding up signs that say "Palestine Action" [7].
And of course we have the Jeffrey Epstein of it all where it's really obvious that Epstein was an Israeli access agent and likely Ghislaine Maxwell was as well, particularly when you look at the entire history of Robert Maxwell from WW2 to arming Jewish militias pre-1948 and the IDF after that until finally "falling off" his own yacht.
Oh and there are claims that some unidentified hacker breached the FBI's systems in 2023 and accessed files related to Jeffrey Epstein. There are claims that 500TB was destroyed and 400TB of that was recovered [8]. That's so weird.
It's depressing to me how many people support a state that is functionally the Nazi Germany of our times. Like go ahead and find me the functional distinction between Gaza and the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. But also how impervious Western politicians are to public opinion on this issue, which has drastically switched in the last few years. Opposition movements are suppressed with brutal violence.
[1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lfOgm1IcBd0
[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pegasus_(spyware)
[3]: https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2022/2/8/what-you-need-to-kno...
[4]: https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/press-release/2021/07/the-...
[5]: https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-12633240
[6]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2024_Lebanon_electronic_device...
[7]: https://www.france24.com/en/live-news/20250807-uk-pensioner-...
In the UK, the Israeli company Elbit Systems produces arms for Israel through its British subsidiary, which holds major Ministry of Defence contracts including the Watchkeeper drone programme (worth over £800 million) and the Jupiter training system (around £130 million) – sources: UK Companies House and MoD contract notices. People protesting for Palestinians at Elbit sites have been arrested: between 2020 and June 2024, over 140 arrests were made at more than 50 actions by Palestine Action, but police and court records show that no terrorism charges were filed, and the High Court rejected a legal challenge against policing of these protests in May 2024. Two main lobbies cover both major parties in the UK: Conservative Friends of Israel and Labour Friends of Israel.
In the US, a similar two‑party structure exists but with far greater financial power. The American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) and its super PAC spent over $4.5 million in the 2023–2024 election cycle, mostly to defeat progressive Democrats critical of Israel, including successfully spending $14.5 million to unseat Congressman Jamaal Bowman (source: Federal Election Commission filings). The Democratic Majority for Israel and the Republican Jewish Coalition mirror the UK's Labour and Conservative lobby groups, while the US provides Israel with roughly $3.8 billion in annual military aid – a sharp contrast to the UK's limited sanctions on the IDF. Unlike the UK, no US protester has been arrested under terrorism laws for actions against arms companies supplying Israel.
In practice, Israel and Russia do similar things: they affect or subvert foreign elections by manipulating information and social media, and they directly influence politics via foundations, think tanks, and by cultivating politicians and influencers. For Russia, this includes organisations like the Russian House in Washington and sympathetic think tanks such as the Heritage Foundation – though the Heritage Foundation is American, Russian state media and proxies have actively courted its positions.
Russia has also influenced figures like Tucker Carlson, who repeatedly echoes Kremlin talking points, and JD Vance, who has opposed military aid to Ukraine; no public evidence proves formal recruitment, but both have amplified narratives favourable to Moscow and JD Vance made a powerful endorsement of Orban, a corrupted pro-russian statesman, in the past election in Hungary.
Don’t worry about the deflections and karma flagging censorship as consensus, because its not
Jewish and Jewish Israeli people are raised to be afraid of the entire world, and think losing a perception game will result in their eradication perpetuated by everyone around them. This is due to a 1,000 year history of exactly that, so I can empathize, but not at the expense of fiction. I don’t want anyone to hurt them. I want the corrosive traits in their culture to be checked and go away.
Put all those PhD’s that some people are so proud of into other pursuits.
Actually it goes way further. It seems that a large part of Jewish religion and culture is centered on the idea of being persecuted. A quick list goes from the Egyptian slavery, to the attack by the Amalekites, to the Babylonian destruction of the First Temple, to Haman's plot to exterminate Jews in Persia... and we're still at the book of Esther, 5th century BCE. The list goes on and on. Each of these is commemorated in a religious or civil ceremony: Passover, Purim, Hanukkah, etc.
This is to say, Judaism is built around grievance. And grievance in turn, if kept unchecked, is dangerous because it can justify unethical behaviours that are seen as reparatory.
As if Rudolph Höss' innovations in chemical and civil engineering somehow excuse Auschwitz.
People need to start being clear about subversion and inhumanity exported from Israel and not attempt to bookkeep that against their B2B SaaS'.
This demonic rhetoric would not be valid in any other circumstance.
* iStrat, Avisa's predecessor, was separately linked in French reporting to fake online personas used to publish commentary about business disputes. The Avisa Partners Wikipedia summary, based on French media reports, says JDN traced fake analyst profiles and critical commentary to iStrat-era activity, while iStrat and its owners denied the claims. [4]
* There was also a France-linked, though not company-linked, covert influence operation in Africa. In December 2020, Facebook/Meta removed networks for coordinated inauthentic behavior targeting African audiences; one network was linked to individuals associated with the French military. Meta said the operation used fake accounts, pages posing as news or military entities, and off-platform domains. Graphika and Stanford described it as French and Russian influence operations going head-to-head in Africa. [5] [6]
* The Washington Post reported the same Facebook takedown as people affiliated with the French military using fake Facebook accounts to meddle in African politics, while noting that Facebook said it did not have evidence that the French military institution itself directed the activity. [7]
[1] Operation Fake Info: firm used by French business elites suspected of infiltrating Wikipedia https://www.mediapart.fr/en/journal/france/230722/operation-...
[2] L'affaire Avisa Partners sur Wikipédia, expliquée https://www.wikimedia.fr/affaire-avisa-partners-sur-wikipedi...
[3] France: Avisa Partners withdraws its defamation actions against a number of media outlets https://europeanjournalists.org/blog/2023/06/29/france-avisa...
[4] Avisa Partners https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avisa_Partners
[5] Removing Coordinated Inauthentic Behavior from France and Russia https://about.fb.com/news/2020/12/removing-coordinated-inaut...
[6] More-Troll Kombat: French and Russian influence operations go head to head targeting audiences in Africa https://graphika.com/reports/more-troll-kombat
[7] People affiliated with French military used Facebook to meddle in Africa https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2020/12/15/people-...
* Rally Forge, a U.S. marketing firm, was linked by Facebook to a 2020 domestic U.S. operation run on behalf of Turning Point USA, involving fake accounts and coordinated behavior. Axios reported that Facebook removed 200 accounts, 55 pages, and 76 Instagram accounts. [3] [4]
* New Knowledge / Project Birmingham is another ugly example. In the 2017 Alabama Senate race, Democratic-aligned operatives experimented with Russian-style disinformation tactics, including fake or misleading Facebook activity and buying retweets. The effort was reportedly small and probably did not decide the election, but it proves the category exists inside the U.S. political ecosystem. [5] [6]
* There are also U.S.-linked pro-Western covert influence operations. Graphika and the Stanford Internet Observatory analyzed accounts removed by Twitter and Meta for platform manipulation or coordinated inauthentic behavior; later reporting said the Pentagon ordered a review after fake accounts suspected of being run by the U.S. military were taken down. Meta later attributed a campaign targeting the Middle East and Central Asia to people associated with the U.S. military. [7] [8] [9]
* Cambridge Analytica is adjacent but not identical. It had U.S. offices and U.S. political clients, and it was part of the broader “election manipulation for hire” world, but its central scandal was data harvesting, psychographic targeting, and political ad targeting, not necessarily fake-account bot networks in the same narrow sense. [10]
[1] August 2020 Coordinated Inauthentic Behavior Report https://about.fb.com/news/2020/09/august-2020-cib-report/
[2] Facebook deletes dozens of fake accounts, pages run by CLS Strategies https://www.prweek.com/article/1693342/facebook-deletes-doze...
[3] October 2020 Coordinated Inauthentic Behavior Report https://about.fb.com/news/2020/11/october-2020-cib-report/
[4] Facebook removes inauthentic campaign linked to Turning Point USA https://www.axios.com/2020/10/08/facebook-turning-point-usa-...
[5] Researcher whose firm wrote report on Russian interference used questionable online tactics during Alabama Senate race https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2018/12/19/researc...
[6] Project Birmingham (disinformation campaign) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Birmingham_%28disinfor...
[7] Unheard Voice: Evaluating five years of pro-Western covert influence operations https://public-assets.graphika.com/reports/graphika_stanford...
[8] Meta, Twitter take down accounts pushing pro-U.S. messages https://www.axios.com/2022/08/24/meta-twitter-take-down-acco...
[9] Fewer Bots, More Ads: The Pentagon's Evolving Online Influence Campaigns https://www.lawfaremedia.org/article/fewer-bots--more-ads--t...
[10] Cambridge Analytica https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cambridge_Analytica
As an Israeli (note the article exposing them is Israeli too) I was not aware until I saw this and I definitely intend to protest/organize about this (though to be fair I've been protesting about other stuff in the past and the climate here sucks).
Are you saying that this isn't political? It's literally about politics. The comments section will be predictable and it will be flagged for that.
Do you disagree?
I claim there might be a pattern of supression. Are arguing against my main point that it would be good to have more transparency so I can support or refute my claim?
Do you want to count how many times words like nazi, genocide, terrorists appears in comments section about Anthropic vs here? Do you see the difference?
But I am going to point to https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
Blackcore isn't a startup. It was already covered everywhere in the news. So there is no need to post yet again.
Sure it's about politics, but it's also about tech. The intersection of politics and tech is a fascinating area, of great interest to many folks on HN, and probably within HN's charter.
I think that merely touching on politics should not be grounds for flagging a submission, even when the specifics are highly controversial (as in this case).
Can you point me how was the tech used in this article about *tech* and politics. I didn't see anything.
Do they get flagged?
HN has plenty of unflagged political topics.
its worth a flag in that its rage bait, and not surprising or new by any means that israel is aiming to meddle in elections
In 2016 the UK based Cambridge Analytica was blamed for Trump's win in 2016. Then he won again in 2024 without them. Meanwhile both USA parties invested heavily in social media campaigns.
In my country local government elections are in a few months and political parties are already flooding my social media with rage bait (primarily Instagram and Facebook).
This short article is about a private company, not linked to the government, that may or may not have been retained by locals, that may or may not have breached foreign interference laws, and that certainly did not lend its targeted candidates an overwhelming advantage (Mamdani was the most popular candidate in the NYC mayoral election). But because it is about Israel everyone goes crazy.
Most countries only allow citizens to vote. By your logic, they should let anyone vote, because what's the difference between a citizen and a foreigner when it comes to elections?