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Comment by nubinetwork | Hacker News Reader

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Political? What about simply human ?

I unfortunately agree with you, selfishly. This used to be the forum where one could mostly find interesting technology and ideas and discuss them with intelligent people. An escape from the standard online hell and it’s people who must truly enjoy conflict - which my body instead interprets as anxiety and terror.

But now it’s here, and so are they. It’s probably the same people. It’s probably me.

Genocide is political news?

Lots of tech companies involved in this genocide[1]. Unfortunately tech has bad antecedents, as IBM also supported genocide in WWII[2].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_companies_involved_in_...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_and_the_Holocaust

Many of the companies in that list have essentially zero link to the events in Gaza. E.g. a Swiss company that supplies coal to Israel is considered complicit in genocide. Because Israelis having electricity means complicity in genocide, apparently. Hyundai is included because it sells vehicles to Israel, allegedly those machines were used to destroy Palestinian building but the cited source doesn't mention Hyundai: https://www.ohchr.org/en/documents/country-reports/ahrc5923-...

Might as well have titled the page "companies that do business with Israel".

It makes sense to me. Of course Israel not having electricity would make it difficult for them to wage war and thus is a valid tactic for someone wishing to curtail their belligerence. And yes, boycotting business with countries is a perfectly normal procedure? It was done to Russia, it was done to South Africa. Where is the problem?

The opening of the page claims that these companies' goods and services are directly being used in Gaza:

> Their products, services, or infrastructure have been used extensively in military operations in Gaza resulting in mass civilian casualties, widespread destruction that amount to war crimes, and genocide.

But this is untrue for many of the companies listed.

Doesn't have to be direct military use,if it is at all being used by Israel then Israel is benefiting from it. And if Israel ends up profiting from the transaction we are directly enriching Israel. So to someone opposed to the Israeli actions, it makes natural sense to boycott them in a similar manner to a state sanction. Take Iran itself, whether Iran profits or loses, American businesses are prevented from basically any dealing with Iran. If sanctioning Iran makes sense, then to someone opposed to the Israeli campaign sanctioning Israel makes sense to.

If that's the standard you want to draw, that's fine, but the page description should reflect that.

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