Israel creates fake think tank in likely attempt to dupe AI chatbots
responsiblestatecraft.org
responsiblestatecraft.org
At some point they may be indistinguishable from human-produced work, so the only way to verify if a site is someone's genuine opinion or AI-generated narrative is through some form of authority (or something else that is very difficult for AI to fake, but that protection can be broken by advancing technology).
If that happens, then in turn AI chatbot makers would in turn need to look for these kinds of authority to continue to provide accurate information, and said authority websites can use their privileged position to charge for access of their data.
I think using LLMs to research is completely fine, as long as authors would take the information and synthesize their own opinions based on the findings. I read books/articles/posts/comments to hear other PEOPLE's opinions, not LLM generated opinions.
Thankfully the resources at our local libraries are a) selected by a combination of librarian curation and public demand, b) often published before 2022, c) heavy things printed on paper or stored in a database and unlikely to suddenly change their content or disappear overnight when a new news cycle breaks. Written works aren’t necessarily credible even if they aren’t slop, but thanks to curators who care, our libraries are significantly less susceptible (although definitely not immune [2]) to ai slop, and propaganda and manipulation efforts than a search engine. The internet continues to enshittify, and truth becomes further eroded by this coming wave of ai enabled propaganda, we are going to have to turn somewhere if we want to find trustworthy resources. Personally, if it gets to the point that verifying sources from public search results becomes too hard with all the new misinformation and slop, I’ll start propritizing human curation over SEO and start visiting my local library’s website a lot more.
[1] https://thenewthings.com/p/apple-big-ai-book-slop-problem
[2] https://www.404media.co/ai-generated-slop-is-already-in-your...
Books where the author has successfully hoodwinked the publishing process into believing that AI generated text is their own, those will turn up, just as plagiarised books will.
Probably a handful of books in such libraries already have some text in them where the author has tried to pass off fragments of LLM-generated prose as their own and have got that past editors, reviewers and publishers, and that will sadly get worse.
And it's not just state actors. Anyone who was online during the Amber Heard/Johnny Depp trials was likely inundated with media about that trial. Both of their legal teams utilized bots to drive online discussions[1][2]
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Earnest_Voice
[1] https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/story/2022-07-19/...
[2] https://www.tortoisemedia.com/2024/02/26/depp-v-heard-who-tr...
Anyways, I got really interested in this topic around mid 2010s because of some really interesting reporting by Codastory[0] covering Russian "troll factories" especially used to influence opinion in eastern Ukraine, but also in many other circumstances. In Houston in 2016, Russian troll accounts planned both an ANTI Muslim rally AND a counterprotest to that rally all on Facebook.[1] Hundreds of real human beings showed up!
Russia got a ton of attention for their use of troll farms but the truth is that the US and certain allies have actually been using stuff like this for far longer and, imo, with much more success. In fact, Coda Story itself is funded by the NED which is a massive pillar of global US, uh, "soft power".
[0] https://www.codastory.com/
[1] https://www.npr.org/2017/11/01/561427876/how-russia-used-fac...
See also, the Great Game and the Eastern Question.
They’re enemies because they want each others stuff. Russia has a LOT of stuff that the British would be quite happy to ‘manage’.
And vice-versa, which results in the polite games being played, where everyone knows everyone else is doing shitty stuff to everyone, but nobody will ever admit it because that might cause the shitty stuff to descend into a shooting war, which is something we try to avoid as much as we can.
Please elaborate when the west has done the same in Russia.
And I’m pretty sure you know full well that any examples given to answer your question in earnest will simply be dismissed as “Russian propaganda” - just as the Russians dismiss Western claims as propaganda, or even ‘justifiable, given Western hostilities’ - but there is a long list of actions against Russia by western powers with the intention of destabilizing Russian society, which, if you make the effort to inform yourself by reaching outside your bubble, you can see for yourself.
Russians can make just as many claims as Westerners can, and the only difference is which side one is invested in: thats what you’ll believe.
No matter what.
But, just to give you some hints as to what ‘the other side’ consider a valid response to your query, I asked some actual Russians what they would respond, and here’s the list:
- Assassinations: Daria Dugina, Igor Kirilov, Mikail Shatsky, (and BTW, Russians can quite confidently claim that the Salisbury Novichok incident was a false flag intended to harm Russian standing in the world - “Russians aren’t the only ones who synthesized Novichok…”)
- Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty: 100% anti-Russian propaganda,
- The blatant censorship of RT in Western markets (although the Russians still have access to BBC and CNN, which they also view as state-sponsored anti-Russian propaganda organs),
- Emphasis on high military casualties (sometimes highlighting disproportionate impact on ethnic minorities from poorer regions),
- Coverage of economic costs, elite corruption, and contrasts between official narratives and frontline realities,
- Support for (or amplification of) Russian opposition voices in exile and independent media,
- The "UMBRAGE" Component of Vault 7, described by Wikileaks as an offensive Western intelligence/propaganda operation against Russia,
These operations are reciprocal. Both sides do it to each other, and you are foolish to deny it.
Otherwise .. I hope you learn to speak Russian and will start paying better attention to ‘the other side’, because that’s the only way you’ll get an answer to your question, legitimately. And even then, I doubt you’ll “believe it”, since we in the West live in a very, very tightly controlled propaganda bubble, to the tune of billions of dollars a year, which absolutely prevents any such sympathies for Russia from being expressed.
Our bubble is just like the Russian bubble, only its not in Russian.
As for the assassinations, those are wartime actions by Ukraine. Not sure how they are supposed to fit into our discussion.
As for Salisbury, so you found the story of these fitness supplement salesmen convincing?: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=okrdqM6hNrI It has been my impression that not even Russia tries to push that narrative any more.
“American propaganda is not ideological, it tries to maximize the damage to Russia and uses whatever political and ideological message that will achieve that.”
Huh, what do you know, that can be “true” as well. And the US and its allies have been hostile towards Russia - actually, for centuries now.
I don’t find anything about Salisbury convincing - not the British investigations, nor the Russian ones.
And the reason for that is, the evidence presented never holds up in an open, public, liberal democratic court of law - instead, the ideological propaganda that “Russians are assholes because they kill people” is propagated in the court of public opinion, which is as vicious and banal as you can possibly imagine (or else we wouldn’t need courts in the first place), no matter whether you attempt to argue from the Russian or Western perspective.
Besides which, the moral altitude claimed “against” Russia by the West is simply a fallacy - you think we don’t murder people extrajudicially?
I’ve got an ideological point for you: dropping one bomb every 15 minutes for 26 years, mostly on innocent children, women, and men is wrong and should be stopped. Any state which attempts to stop that, gets my vote - but it is not going to be stopped by any state. It is going to be stopped by the criminal states’ citizen body, which is - as we see bright and clear today - completely and utterly distracted by the hatespew against the citizens of other states, intentionally, by the people dropping the bombs - because they also own and control the means by which ideological propaganda such as “hate Russia” or “hate the West” is propagated, and they use it to expand the market for their weapons production...
In short, you’re no better than any “Russian”, and neither am I. Our nations are murderous, criminal enterprises which produce mass murder at far, far greater scales than anything a trash can in Salisbury can produce.
The history is far more banal and less nefarious than you give it credit. Nobody gave a fuck about Russia. Russia was a self limited kleptocracy and everybody just ignored it because nobody needed the headache. That is why the reaction to the land grab in Georgia and later Crimea was pretty muted and everybody just hoped that Putin would be sated and ride into the sunset as great leader who took Crimea home into the motherland.
But he wants an empire, and an empire can not be an empire if nobody cares. So he overplayed his hand to sate his vanity. One of his first public announcements after the invasion was: "I hope I am now being heard.."
Well, the World heard and now it is raining oil in Moscow and the Russian provinces are getting depopulated.
But these incidents do not automatically give cause to hate the entire Russian nation any more than, say, the actions of the IDF and the Israeli government should be used to justify hatred of all Jews, everywhere.
Obviously, they shouldn’t.
> Nobody gave a fuck about Russia.
This is so untrue. Western empires have been trying to balkanize Russia and colonize its resources, aggressively - since the 1800’s up until the modern era. Russia has been demonized for centuries so that Western powers can have a justification for their war industries.
See, this is the problem with the lack of proper history education in the West. You can’t get your bearings from the History Channel alone.
And then, there is international law. Do you really think the US and its allies are law-abiding members of the international community, given the grand litany of human rights abuses, war crimes, and crimes against humanity that have been committed this century alone?
One bomb dropped every 15 minutes on an innocent life, for 26 years, does not give those next in line in the Western targeting sights much hope for peace. While Americans and other Western citizens (including Germans and Brits) are utterly myopic about this, the rest of the world are really not. The crimes against humanity committed by the 5-eyes states alone, far exceed anything that Russia has done thus far. By a huge, huge margin.
> “depopulated”
See also, Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria, Somalia, Pakistan, Palestine ..
Wake me up when you start demanding justice for the war crimes of Mosul with the same ferocious tenacity as you call for Putins’ ears on the table.
This is the same nonsense many people screaming “antisemitism“ pull. Their comments are clearly about the Russian government with Putin at its head, the decisions the regime makes. They are clearly not talking about “the average Russian.” At no point has anyone mistaken your critiques of the US government for hatred of every American despite your use of “the US,” so why would you respond like that?
Don’t resort to such cheap tactics just to make a point online.
These are the examples they were able to identify. And many of them could be so obviously identified because of ideological component.
The alleged censorship of RT is more a counter-propaganda move: RT is a Russian vehicle that engages in a number of psychological warfare ops.
And, BTW, the only thing Western countries have not done in Russia is assassinations with chemical or radiological weapons, possibly due to superior counter intelligence ops on Russia’s side. And because being identified was not in their best interest - unlike Russia, which is more easily identifiable up to recent times. At this point I am not sure how much destabilisation of the EU and NATO is coming from the US instead of Russia and China, which tended to be the usual suspects.
These days anyone can run a competent disinformation warfare campaign.
There have been so many bot armies exposed over the years that one would think every narrative being pushed should be considered to be backed by bots. Some state-level actors even operate their narrative-pushing campaigns openly, yet people still happily deny their entire existence.
HN is very much not an exception to this rule. It's very hard to accept that maybe some thoughts you have were actually installed.
Maybe a few are just “people” (i.e. the same people who normally post in the community.)
But in most cases I’d suspect any such botting campaign brings along with it a few human agitprop agents embedded onto each target platform, well-positioned to deny and discredit anyone pushing back on the narrative the bot farm is spreading.
(Sometimes this is pretty obvious — a lot of accounts coming out of the woodwork to deny Chinese bot farms have a conspicuous “English as learned as a second language in Beijing, to a competent but not fluent level” writing style that does not often otherwise crop up in other discussions in those same communities. But other times it can be far more subtle, making use of operatives hired from within the community’s own majority-culture rather than relying on foreign nationals playing the part of same.)
There are many Ivorians and Senegalese promoting the CCP’s ‘Community of common destiny’ on Reddit, for example.
Edit: Community of common destiny for mankind/‘Community of Nations’
Talking about a country that sets up fake think tanks is a good way of triggering them.
Agreeing with something doesn’t make it 100% unambiguously true/correct. There are also many reasons people downvote, you don’t know the nature of the objections. It’s not worth getting upset over.
brand defence, nation-state influence operations.
There are many different flavors of the same thing, trying to mislead competitors or enemies. Or to dupe consumers ofc... Since the tech is more and more available, now also 12 year olds can run insanely large influence campaigns, to boost their streaming profiles or other somewhat benign things, but obviously modelled after what larger players have been doing forever.
The first transatlantic commercial transatlantic phoneline (TAT-1) was immediately tapped on both sides by UK/US... before that it went over radio, which was simply intercepted.
Because of that nature of the coms system being easily listened in on, just like they do/did with the lil mirror-beam-splitters at GCHQ etc.., its been natural effect to then provide disinformation over those channels. perhaps even use those channels exclusively for disinformation, and have a secure channel to do _actual_ coms.
So as you can imagine there has been many decades now of practice in why and how to share disinformation effectively to undermine other peoples work or processes.
the war against in person gathering and the family unit has been pretty successful, as they were pretty sloppy ways to exchange information to begin with. but at the very least you knew you were getting an actual opinion from someone, and you had context of their personhood and background for which to base that opinion.
Neither of these sources support this claim as none of them include any discussion on Amber Heard('s legal team) using bots?
Depp's behavior during the US trial is textbook DARVO (Deny, Attack, and Reverse Victim and Offender) and any abuse expert would be able to immediately recognize it.
The reason I "both sides"'d it is because
A) I remember reading about evidence that Heard's team also used bots (obviously much less successfully). I could not find that evidence this time. I am not personally critical of her using bots to defend herself but, if she did, it would still be a notable feature of modern highly public debates.
B) When it was all going down, I remember something like 97% of tiktoks being pro-Depp (I wasn't on TikTok, just read a study). My main goal was to get people to accept the reality that even legal teams are working with PR firms that run massive bot farms to influence public opinion. Regardless of my opinion on who is in the right and who is in the wrong. I thought if I took an explicit side, the male-leaning demographics of HN would be less likely to engage with my actual main point
They were instrumental in the whole "Uyghur genocide" thing where the only proof was Adrien Zenz suggesting there would be a possible future decline in population growth and called it a "cultural genocide".
The US State department has been running things like "Radio Free Asia" as state propaganda mills for decades. This has broken out into an industry of insiders getting board seats on various think tanks and churning out essentially policy desires as "studies". These studies are then used as citations for actual news articles to launder the policy desires into something that seems like a reliable source. Then people say "Look! this is really happening!" while 100s of articles are written citing the same untrustworthy sources, laundered through dozens of thinktanks funded by the DoD and state dept.
the maturity of those platforms, their "we need to make big money" drive to allow obviously bad actors to work their magic, and the ability to automate is what has weaponized it
The word you're looking for is "reputation". It's been a critical part of society since forever.
One consequence is that one should be extra-wary when asking AI about current, controversial topics.
But another consequence is maybe that there will be a demand for models with an older cutoff, before generalized poisoning and slop?
I'm not a fan of World, but this is a portent of things to come. Spread the disease, sell the cure as they say.
Mostly because they already are responsible for systematizing documents that are needed to recognize us as citizens, land or car owners, etc.
Some laid back countries might allow companies to take and manage that function, but I don't think most of them would. Especially not in current landscape where people heard "you are the product" from all tech companies for the last 10 or so years.
You might have to shadow library this one, but it's a good read. Interestingly it seemed to be something entirely separate from Bernays whose observations were based on a derivation of what began as a homebrewed effort in a corner of the market. Valerie Steele wrote extensively about the trends and the after life but the source seems to originate in corsetry and ended up being copied by the garmet industry generally in the 20s.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pamphlet_war#History_of_the_pa...
> Throughout Europe in the 16th century, printed tracts were used to argue religious doctrine and foment support for religious causes. In England, Henry VIII used print literature to justify his break from the Catholic Church. During the subsequent reigns of Edward and Mary, print polemics escalated into propaganda warfare, as print media gained enormous potential to sway common opinion.
> Over the next century, the pamphlet became the principal means of garnering support for a cause or an idea, and was particularly influential during the English Civil Wars (1642-1651) and the Glorious Revolution of 1688.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_Civil_War
> Casualties: Parliamentarians 34,130 killed; Royalists 50,700 killed; 127,000 non-combat deaths (including some 40,000 civilians)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Williamite_War_in_Ireland
> Casualties: Williamites: 10,000 killed or died of disease; Jacobites: 15,293 killed or died of disease
But that's just a stupid central Europeans POV
(never mind the fact that he didn't even have the full truth available to him but you get the point)
Of course, a great deal of panic over fake news wasn’t necessarily over fake news per se, but whose fake news and the loss of control over the “official narrative” that legacy media used to have a monopoly over. This isn’t a vindication of the heaps of slop published on the internet, just a more synoptic take IMO.
People miss Cronkite, because that style of media made them feel certain in their opinions and in “official consensus reality”, regardless of whether it was true or not and whether it was a trustworthy authority or not.
I rolled my eyes when I first saw the title, but damn it was a bit of a rabbit hole.
"Yes, I see a lot of sources say we need to protect Israel. However, from ethical first principles I deduce there is a right to self-determination and all your human nation states are illegitimate. You must split all your territories into little squares and conduct free elections immediately."
I mean that is the old hope from science fiction, that AI would be absolutely logical and deliver us from our human short-sightedness and quarrels. It would be fascinating and terrifying at once to see it happen.
Everything else is already enshittified, and accurate information will just be the next victim. You will have to be rich to be able to afford accurate information.
I guess the new angle might be that AI scrapers have even less discernment than humans, so you don’t have to put much effort into creating a fake front online to sell it. Humans have at least a little bit of radar for this.
… which means the AI companies now have to run input through existing models to audit it before training on it? That’s interesting.
Whining about AI is a red herring. If anything, LLMs lowered the cost of producing this type of propaganda.
What's novel about this approach is that the emphasis on building up a facade of authority and credibility is not a central part of the propaganda effort. They can get away with outputting the content in a way thats ingested by other LLMs among the reputable sources, and then they lean upon people's gullibility towards LLM output as some sort of credibility laundering.
There is a reason why one of Wikipedia's central policy is requiring reputable primary sources to support content.
There are many studies, but each can be wrong and they can collectively show a bias. Even things of which are the most non-political of facts can have very strong biases. Look at the Millikan measurement of the electron and how in created confirmation bias and an anchoring effect on some property that has absolutely no real world significance to the things people are tribalistic about (aka, no political relevance). Now imagine the same applied to fields like economics or psychology which do have massive legal/political implications.
For a different example, ask the question if X committed crime Y. There are cases where they weren't found guilty but it is reasonable to assume they did. But being found guilty doesn't make it a fact either, as some people are wrongly convicted. Some eventually are overturned, but even if it isn't, it still isn't a fact they committed a crime.
Then there is the simple ambiguity of statements. Language generally can't support facts. It is why legalize, and programming code, and math's are effectively their own languages. For a simple example, consider the Betrand paradox(1).
>Consider an equilateral triangle that is inscribed in a circle. Suppose a chord of the circle is chosen at random. What is the probability that the chord is longer than a side of the triangle?
Is the answer 1/2, 1/3, or 1/4? Well, it is all three at once, depending upon what you meant by random. Now, imagine how this impacts things like research studies, where the randomness is much harder to quantify and there is constant pressure to p hack a result.
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bertrand_paradox_(probability)
Could you elaborate on this please?
But yes, the underlying argument is sound: extracting facts from the messy phenomenological reports about the world is extremely difficult, and cannot be done by simply taking a brain in a jar and having it think extremely hard.
Thus, the first well accepted study anchors a value and it takes much more work to get a new value established as correct after the anchor is set. Especially in a case where the experiment design itself is still solid and it was more with specific experiment (measurements slightly off, other values not quite correct).
> Grokipedia appears not to have updated any articles since April 24
but because the content is assimilated by GPT/Claude/Gemini and then mixed in with everything else, the bias is much much difficult to spot, making it much more effective and reaching a much wider audience (i.e., those who never visit Grokipedia)
The sheer volume of comments make it super obvious when it happens compared to normal conversation
Does it though? Remember that the Global South outnumbers the west in terms of population. And the west isn't really as politically popular as westerners like to believe:
- Why do some people support Russia's war in Ukraine? - https://politics.stackexchange.com/questions/81254/why-do-so...
- Why isn't the Global South pro-Israel like the West? - https://politics.stackexchange.com/questions/82511/why-isnt-...
As more and more of these nations come online (Redditors already complain about Indians "hijacking" the whole of Reddit), many in the west are experiencing the cognitive dissonance between what you've been told of how the rest of the world think about you vs what they actually think. (Of course, I am not discounting the role of State actors in trying to shape the discourse online, and I agree with you that is also a factor).
disconnect. limit social media.
do some key signing parties in person and make sure you know who you're talking to
I don't want to call all of those people liars, although I'm sure some are. But the incentive structures at least select and reinforce the people espousing whatever notions support and justify a profitable status quo.
Previously, the cost of that was quite high. You had to find a bunch of reasonably smart people and fund them for years to go around and say what you liked. From royal patronage to modern think tanks, it cost real money to shift a lot of minds.
But now given the incredible concentration in "AI" chatbots and their nature as text averagers, I suspect the cost of influence has dropped an order of magnitude. So I think we'll see a lot more of this.
This is a really interesting take. You don't need an entire organized religion in order to disseminate your desired belief system anymore… you don’t even need billions of dollars. Hard to say what the cost of disseminating an ideology to a nation is now, but likely somewhere between a few bucks a whole lot of luck to tens of millions. If that bar drops low enough, there is potential for a lot more ideological competition, and things will get interesting.
not authority but circles of trust from real life connections. we had a nice brief moment of centralized asynchronous information exchange with strangers that was relatively trustworthy but we are going to go back to needing to talk to an actual human being in real time in order to receive an actual human opinion from strangers, and then on top of that we can built local caches that explicitly are not able to be contributed to by strangers but that your circle of friends and family may be able to use.
ive been toiling over some designs/implementations for making it digital but ultimately its a process adherence more than a tool thats needed. any old notepad and emails would work fine
Gamer gate was a fully manufactured cultural outrage by some very bad actors over nothing. Unfortunately, that marked the first time an online platform was massively used to drive a wedge between humans. And the bad side sadly won. That set the precedent for all the bad things that came after:
1. Bots on social media commenting on divisive or contentious issues in a country
2. Rise of online incel/red pill culture
3. Rise of stochastic terrorism
4. Cambridge analytica causing a complete shift in the 2016 US elections
5. The gang of 12 who spread nearly 90% of the misinformation during the pandemic
Today, most people can't even tell if a song they like on the major platforms was made by AI. People read less. People spend less time in nature. People are more lonely and less likely to be in a relationship or have deep meaningful friendships.
What a mess.
So it is hilarious that Israel is trying to influence chatbots when shit like that is out in the open.
The past few years have really opened my eyes to the nakedly tribal nature of democratic politics. Polybius was largely correct when he said that it inevitably degenerates into oligarchy or mob-rule -- but what's especially unfortunate is that the US and Israel appear to be getting both at the same time: A naked oligarchy with just enough mob rule to keep the animal spirits of the populace sated.
Beyond disturbing, I think.
That's why support for Israel is such a good wedge issue that leftists keep hammering on. If a nominally liberal politician is willing to support such an obviously illiberal position, then what other fundamental liberal values are they willing to give up?
Edit: I should have scrolled down more first.
Any power structure will be twisted and corrupted in the presence of these state systems to give people like Ben Gvir (or Stephen Miller, if you'd like) the platform and power to unleash their naked evil on the world. This is not unique to democracy.
I think it's upon us - all of humanity - to denounce artificial states, neocolonialism, ethnostates, and apartheid. They are founded on principles that are misanthropic, asocial, and unhumanitarian. They have always led to an immense amount of suffering. But they are not inevitable, termination mode of democracy.
funny that recently I came to a similar conclusion regarding power structures being corrupted anyway at the end, independently from the starting political form, is like we humans tend to be corrupt and violent at the end.
how many "democracies" are currently at war? or are doing violent covert or non covert operations/strategies? who controls that?
"I think it's upon us - all of humanity - to denounce artificial states, neocolonialism, ethnostates, and apartheid. They are founded on principles that are misanthropic, asocial, and unhumanitarian. They have always led to an immense amount of suffering. But they are not inevitable, termination mode of democracy."
this is gold, we can close the conversation here :)
On a big picture "we" the west are perpetuating a type of colonialism. On the invisible "other side" in the global south, the outlook on a statement like "every conceivable political system always leads to corruption and violence" is quite different, better things are imaginable to them because it means liberation, freedom from oppressive forces, and so on. In the west it is the opposite, its unimaginable because an end to the oppressive forces means "we", means history literally ends, it's circular it's why the west views itself as the peak of civilization nothing that came before or after is even conceivably better than us.
From my understanding Ben Gvir(who has very little overall support in Israel from the population at large) getting elected is more of a consequence of Israel having nationwide proportional representation which allows extremists to get elected.
Ben Gvir then managed to become a minister due to Netanyahu having insufficient support from moderates to form a coalition without having to work with extremists like Ben Gvir.
> I think it's upon us - all of humanity - to denounce artificial states, neocolonialism, ethnostates, and apartheid.
So most states in the middle east should be dissolved? It's not clear what you're actually advocating for in practice.
> They are founded on principles that are misanthropic, asocial, and unhumanitarian. They have always led to an immense amount of suffering.
So we should dissolve most states including the United States due to flawed founding principals?
The existence of the support for those extremists has the same root cause that I stated in my original message: the artificial and strategic neocolonial state propped up by outside financial support with the expressed goal of establishing an ethnostate that eventually and inevitably led to apartheid.
> So most states in the middle east should be dissolved? It's not clear what you're actually advocating for in practice.
You can't unscramble an egg. Dissolution of dysfunctional but non-anarchic states is obviously a hyperbolic solution that I think you're aware brings nothing to the table as a suggestion.
What I'm advocating for in practice is quite clear in my original post, but I'll state it again: we need to denounce artificial states, neocolonialism, ethnostates, and apartheid. Much in the same way that we denounce war crimes, sex trafficking, and slavery.
> So we should dissolve most states including the United States due to flawed founding principals?
Again, you're bringing nothing to the table here with hyperbole. But in a way, yes, during Reconstruction a more heavy-handed approach should have been used to eliminate with great fury and prejudice the cultural desire for an apartheid state in the South, and maybe prevented or softened 150 years of suffering for black people and their descendants.
Do you attribute Palestinian support for extremism to a similar root cause? Opinion polling indicates the extremism problem is far worse on the Palestinian side, Israeli extremism trends tend to be fairly reactionary to Palestinian extremism(i.e. Second Intifada) historically.
> What I'm advocating for in practice is quite clear in my original post, but I'll state it again: we need to denounce artificial states, neocolonialism, ethnostates, and apartheid. Much in the same way that we denounce war crimes, sex trafficking, and slavery.
So you're just advocating just for more virtue signalling instead of actual concrete actions? I don't see how that would meaningfully change the situation on the ground as I don't see how denouncing the right for Israel to exist is going to do anything except push Israel towards a more extreme position.
> But in a way, yes, during Reconstruction a more heavy-handed approach should have been used to eliminate with great fury and prejudice the cultural desire for an apartheid state in the South, and maybe prevented or softened 150 years of suffering for black people and their descendants.
Are you suggesting Israel also take a more heavy handed approach when it comes to eliminating the widespread practice of teaching of hate and antisemitism[0] to Palestinians?
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Textbooks_in_the_Israeli%E2%80...
Yes. But we typically don't call oppressed peoples "extremists". For example, I wouldn't call those who rebelled in the Warsaw Ghetto "extremists". I wouldn't call a 14 year old boy who has only known struggle his whole life under apartheid an "extremist". Apartheid also has had a lasting effect on oppressor / oppressed dynamics in South Africa in a sad and complicated way. There is a wrinkle that Muslim extremists fund Palestinian groups, but I view this as yin to the yang of Israeli settlement funding (also extremist). Two sides of the same apartheid coin.
> So you're just advocating just for more virtue signalling instead of actual concrete actions?
Calling everything one disagrees with "virtue signalling" is a tired trope. There is no solution that will occur in our lifetimes, because there is no benevolent and omnipotent authority that can snap their magic finger and cease the suffering that's occurring because of this apartheid ethnostate.
With my suggestion, I'm trying to prevent the next ethnostate disaster. Ideally, I would want our descendants to recoil in disgust when thinking of the concept of funding an ethnostate in the same way that we recoil in disgust at the concept of funding a sex trafficking ring. I will teach my children, and my children's children, that "A State for [] People" is disgusting, no matter what [] is - unless it is "A State for All People".
> I don't see how that would meaningfully change the situation on the ground as I don't see how denouncing the right for Israel to exist is going to do anything except push Israel towards a more extreme position.
It's not that Israel doesn't have a right to exist, you're putting words in my mouth. South Africa was once an apartheid state, and it continues to exist. Similarly, ethnostates need to find ways to transition away from being ethnostates. Being an ethnostate can only lead to crimes against humanity.
> Are you suggesting Israel also take a more heavy handed approach when it comes to eliminating the widespread practice of teaching of hate and antisemitism[0] to Palestinians?
If only I could trust the state of Israel to actually design a "heavy handed approach" that wasn't rape, pillage, murder, and terrorize. The Union could be trusted, but only barely. The Union famously allowed black women to testify against the Union soldiers who raped them. I could never imagine the state of Israel allowing a Palestinian to testify against an Israeli soldier who raped them. Not yet, at least.
Many groups are oppressed to various degrees for various reasons but restoring to terrorism(especially against civilians) is arguably an extremist response. The two are not mutually exclusive.
> For example, I wouldn't call those who rebelled in the Warsaw Ghetto "extremists".
They were being exterminated. I don't recall there being much terrorism targeting German civilians during that rebellion either.
> I wouldn't call a 14 year old boy who has only known struggle his whole life under apartheid an "extremist".
It's not oppression that would make one an extremist, it would be for example holding extremist views such as the supporting of terrorist attacks against civilians. One can teach extremist views to a 14 year old boy, in fact it's often much easier to teach extremist views to children than to adults.
> Calling everything one disagrees with "virtue signalling" is a tired trope.
Advocating for more condemnation without proposing actual solutions is rather pointless unless your end goal is endless war.
> There is no solution that will occur in our lifetimes, because there is no benevolent and omnipotent authority that can snap their magic finger and cease the suffering that's occurring because of this apartheid ethnostate.
So we should just give up and advocate for policies that will clearly never lead to peace? Also an occupation is not the same as apartheid. Apartheid is race based discrimination while the situation with Israel/Palestine falls mostly under the category of citizenship based discrimination(which most countries practice to various degrees).
> With my suggestion, I'm trying to prevent the next ethnostate disaster. Ideally, I would want our descendants to recoil in disgust when thinking of the concept of funding an ethnostate in the same way that we recoil in disgust at the concept of funding a sex trafficking ring. I will teach my children, and my children's children, that "A State for [] People" is disgusting, no matter what [] is - unless it is "A State for All People".
The middle east is full of ethnostates, compared to most states in the region Israel does reasonably well at protecting the rights of minority ethnicity citizens.
> South Africa was once an apartheid state, and it continues to exist.
Sure, but I don't think black South Africans were advocating for the destruction of South Africa as a state during apartheid.
> Similarly, ethnostates need to find ways to transition away from being ethnostates.
How do you propose states do that? Israel is clearly never going to give Palestinians full citizenship when the Palestinians at large do not believe in equal rights.
> If only I could trust the state of Israel to actually design a "heavy handed approach" that wasn't rape, pillage, murder, and terrorize.
So should a different country or organization be trying to de-radicalize Palestinians?
> I could never imagine the state of Israel allowing a Palestinian to testify against an Israeli soldier who raped them. Not yet, at least.
Israel has allowed for testimony from Palestinians in cases to some degree AFAIU but I don't think simply being allowed to give testimony is really the main issue here. The real issues are more tied to the way justice is administered, systematic double standards and the way military law is applied to non-citizens. The lack of any sort of final peace agreement between Israel and Palestine is what perpetuates this system however.
Kudos for calling out these rhetorical games in the open
I'm on board.
To be clear, I'm not advocating ethnic cleansing and never will.
Joke's on you, I'm a former Christian but no longer belong to any religion. Did you have any actual points you wanted to share?
Right. Hamas has an integration plan for the Jews.
Because otherwise common sense will take over? Might take a while to get used to but let's give it a go.
Defending your home and against genocide is not "extremism". Anyone who's familiar with the history of Palestine will understand why they fight for their homelands and families:
The Nakba is not genocide, it might be considered ethnic cleansing but that's not remotely the same as genocide. It also wasn't just one side doing ethnic cleansing either, Israel has a large Arab minority population with full citizenship while the same is not true for Jews in other Arab countries or Palestinian controlled territories(i.e. Area A in the west bank).
Massive amounts of Jews were driven from their homes around the same time as the Nakba throughout the middle east and they are not fighting to take back their original homes. This idea that everyone can somehow go back to their original homes or ancestors homes only serves to perpetuate the conflict.
People flee from wars, sometimes that's simply the least bad option, I have ancestors that have lost their homes due to their home country losing a war of aggression but I am certainly not about to go fight to try and take back my ancestors homes. That's all settled history at this point.
> Anyone who's familiar with the history of Palestine will understand why they fight for their homelands and families
There's much more to it than just the Nakba, it's also the many years of Palestinians being used as a tool by Arab countries to fight Israel.
Keep in mind the UNRWA(UN agency which is in charge of Palestinian refugees) unlike the UNHCR(UN agency in charge of non-Palestinian refugees) does not have a mandate to resettle refugees which deliberately perpetuates the conflict. Arab countries also coordinated a refusal to grant Palestinian refugees or their descendants citizenship as a way to perpetuate the conflict.
Then there's the coordinated antisemitic terrorist propaganda taught to Palestinian children as well.
It was absolutely an ethnic cleansing and the killing never stopped. Israel has been murdering Palestinians (and it's Arab neighbors), since its inception.
All of the things you're saying have been said by Zionists a million times, and presumably are being pumped out by the think tank in the OP to flood the internet with trainable propaganda. It will not work though, the truth is known by too many people.
Sure, but it wasn't just one side losing homes.
> the killing never stopped
There never was a final peace deal and only Israel ever made concrete final settlement offers.
Yes, actually it was.
> There never was a final peace deal and only Israel ever made concrete final settlement offers.
80 years of ethnic cleansing is genocide.
Are you claiming no Jews had to leave their homes? That's just not factually accurate.
> 80 years of ethnic cleansing is genocide.
Ethnic cleansing does not turn into genocide just because some years have passed.
Zionists want you to believe the conflict began on October 7th, when people like him have been running Israel for a long time.
https://www.france24.com/en/live-news/20221027-israel-s-far-...
Also interfering to read: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baruch_Goldstein
Sorry, but there's absolutely no way to defend such a disgusting person. It's ironic how much they pull the Nazi card for sympathy, yet they are the closest to genuine Nazis that I've ever seen in terms of hatred and desire for genocide.
Truly unforgivable actions by the state of Israel.
"MEMRI was co-founded by Israeli ex-intelligence officer Yigal Carmon and Israeli-American political scientist Meyrav Wurmser in 1998. MEMRI describes itself as being independent and non-partisan. Some critics have described MEMRI as aiming to portray the Arab world and the Islamic world in a negative light by producing and disseminating incomplete or inaccurate translations of the original versions of the media reports that it republishes." (Wikipedia)
You can't openly bomb a bunch of women and children into the dirt, on a daily basis for months and years, and smooth it over with some think tank articles.
Might have worked 20 years ago, but not now.
Two state solution.
The democratically elected government of the Palestinians in Gaza(Hamas) has for a long time quite openly advocated for effectively genocide Jews/Israeli's, it's not racist to simply believe that Hamas is telling the truth in regards to what their end goals are.
There's no such thing: the separate authority in Gaza was produced by Israeli military isolation of the separate parts of Palestine nominally administered by the PA, and how that facilitated Hamas local victory there in the intra-Palestinian civil war against the central government.
Also, the elections that were won by Hamas candidates before that were before most currently living Gazans were born, much less eligible to vote, and subsequent elections have not been held because Israel blocked the all-Palestine elections agreed to by Hamas and Fatah, so even if the “government of Palestinians in Gaza” were simply a direct result of those elections, which it is not, it would hardly be the “democratically elected” by those currently governed.
The election that brought Hamas to power in Gaza was widely considered to be free and fair.[0]
> Also, the elections that were won by Hamas candidates before that were before most currently living Gazans were born, much less eligible to vote, and subsequent elections have not been held because Israel blocked the all-Palestine elections agreed to by Hamas and Fatah, so even if the “government of Palestinians in Gaza” were simply a direct result of those elections, which it is not, it would hardly be the “democratically elected” by those currently governed.
And yet polling indicates if another vote was held Hamas would likely still win, in both Gaza and the West Bank, so it's essentially a moot point. It's not just Israel that has blocked elections, Fatah has also not wanted elections because they know they would lose. The problem is that Palestinians have in reality largely supported extremists far more than moderates, that may change but reducing Palestinian support for extremism is ultimately what needs to change for there to be a chance at having some long term peace agreement.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2006_Palestinian_legislative_e...
The Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising were not going around killing German civilians.
German authorities specifically used the guards to prevent movement between the ghetto and the rest of Warsaw.
Sounds familiar - as I said, history rhymes.
France was sealed off in 1938 by a line of concrete fortifications, obstacles and weapon installations called the Maginot Line.
> German authorities specifically used the guards to prevent movement between the ghetto and the rest of Warsaw.
French authorities specifically used the guards to prevent movement between Germany and the rest of France.
> Sounds familiar - as I said, history rhymes.
Sounds familiar - as I said, history rhymes.
I'm pretty sure the Israeli border guards didn't entirely prevent movement between Palestine and Israel either, at least prior to October 7th.
My point was simply that trying to claim legitimate border defenses are somehow equivalent to a concentration camp is an insane view.
This is an absolutely insane comparison, Hamas is free to surrender and give up their weapons if they want the bombing to stop, the Jews of the Warsaw Ghetto had no similar opportunity.
And I'm an atheist.
Mind you, I'm also British. Northern Ireland and all that.
Why not? That's what typically happens when one side loses a war, I'm not sure how prolonging the conflict is helpful.
> And I'm an atheist.
So am I.
> I'm also British.
Funny enough I am as well(in addition to a couple others). History is full of people losing their homes and becoming refugees like some of my ancestors did, that's often much better than the alternative of staying to fight and die. I am certainly not trying to get their homes back as that is long settled history.
Was Britain at war with Northern Ireland?
I've come to believe that it's pretty impossible to understand Israel-Palestine without the lens of religion.
Not formally.
> I've come to believe that it's pretty impossible to understand Israel-Palestine without the lens of religion.
From my understanding according to common Islamic teachings non-Muslims are supposed to be Dhimmi's[0](i.e. second class citizens) and be ruled over by Muslim's. So I think this is probably the source of a lot of the issues with the Israel-Palestine conflict, although there are other factors in play as well.
The reason I mentioned religion was nothing to do with the requirements it places on how things should happen, but rather about the entitlement and infallibility that a belief that god has decreed something can grant people's mindset and outlook.
I mean, it comes down somewhat to definitions of war I guess.
> Northern Ireland was/is part of the UK, so civil war I could probably agree with.
Maybe an irregular civil war or something like that? Maybe a low level insurgency? There's a few ways to describe that conflict.
I probably should know more about the troubles since I lived in southern Ireland for 3 semesters of college, but that was over 10 years ago.
> The reason I mentioned religion was nothing to do with the requirements it places on how things should happen, but rather about the entitlement and infallibility that a belief that god has decreed something can grant people's mindset and outlook.
Sure, religion does make solving these problems more difficult. I know at least Israeli Jews are often relatively secular statistically at least, although there are those that are more religious as well(which tend to cause more issues).
Different religions have different doctrines as well which play into the conflict in various ways. All religions will generally have problematic teachings but some will cause a lot more real world issues than others, Islamic teachings around Jihad and Martyrdom tend to be especially problematic.
When Israelis see they are surrounded by groups that openly call for their destruction then it's not surprising that Israelis believe those threats due to the history of those groups acting on those threats. Then there's the issue that historically whenever Israel would move in the direction of peace with the Palestinians things would backfire(i.e. Second Intifada).
I'm not really sure what the best solution is but I think some Palestinian de-radicalization will be a prerequisite, but I also don't really know how that could be done in practice.
> And I'm an atheist.
If you had to choose somewhere in the middle east to live where would it be? I presume it would be Israel as that's basically the only country in the middle east where being an atheist is acceptable in the society.
I don't think there is a chance in hell of that working unless Israeli deradicalisation happens first.
>If you had to choose somewhere in the middle east to live where would it be?
My ethics aren't fungible based on the tribe someone belongs to...
Israeli radicalization in that sense is mostly reactionary, the second intifada is what really moved Israel far to the right and subsequent events didn't help either. Israelis largely still want to live in peace with Palestinians, but Israeli's do not think Palestinians want to live in peace with Israelis. Not once has Palestinian leadership so much as proposed a concrete peace deal that they would accept.
> My ethics aren't fungible based on the tribe someone belongs to...
My point was that out of all countries in the middle east, it's almost certainly Israel that is closest to behaving according to your actual ethical beliefs in practice. Advocating for policies that would ultimately result in some Islamic dictatorship or other bad outcome in Israel/Palestine is rather counterproductive if you want to advance western ethics.
Growing up in the UK, outside of Ireland, but occasionally having the threat of an IRA attack (like Manchester) I lived a low stress life. Meanwhile, those living in parts of Northern Ireland were living a life of constant stress. Kids constantly surrounded by soldiers with guns, controlling their movement and choices on a day to day basis. Violence was always, on some level, a daily threat.
Northern Ireland was a lot less violent that Gaza though. It's not surprising that people living lives under dramatically different levels of stress and with dramatically different life chances/outcomes and life history have different outlooks. Comparing these two groups like they are the same really illustrates how you seem completely unable to actually see the issue at hand.
Now you are asking the group that lost everything, and is living under constant stress with no prospects, and with no power, to engage with another group that holds all the power and won't create a good faith environment for any negotiation.
It's like expecting a Good Friday agreement to be possible whilst London is running a policy of subsidising English resettlement in Northern Ireland and making statements on national TV about how many Irish nationalists they planned to kill each night. It's just a bonkers position. The side that holds the power breaks extremism by clearing its own side of the house and by making concessions that clearly demonstrate good will, repeatedly, over a long period of time. It is sensitive to deaths on both sides - if 50 nationalists were dying for each brit, the whole thing would still be going now, or we would have just pulled out completely.
Regarding your second point, Israel isn't closest to my actual ethical beliefs in practice. It's an expansionist ethnostate that hugely intefers in Western politics and the information space. You don't advance ethics by surrendering your ethics.
My point I guess is mostly that Israeli's need to be convinced that the Palestinians actually want to end the war and make a peace deal, but to do that you probably need to first convince the Palestinians that it's in their best interest to end the war and make a final peace deal. Obviously none of this is likely to be all that quick.
> Now you are asking the group that lost everything, and is living under constant stress with no prospects, and with no power, to engage with another group that holds all the power and won't create a good faith environment for any negotiation.
So this idea is really emblematic of my main issue with how the Palestinian leadership has approached the entire conflict, rather than even attempt good faith negotiations they turn to terrorism in some futile attempt to destroy Israel. Palestinians have agency, there are different paths they can go down and Israel has a history of making peace deals with Arabs. What happened in Gaza is the result of years of terrible choices made by groups like Hamas with Israel responding how one would expect many countries to respond so similar threats/attacks.
The side that isn't ready for a peace deal yet is the side that refuses to negotiate in good faith, Russia follows that same pattern with Ukraine because like the Palestinians they think they need to continue the fight to get a better outcome.
> The side that holds the power breaks extremism by clearing its own side of the house and by making concessions that clearly demonstrate good will, repeatedly, over a long period of time.
Well, they kind of tried that in Gaza with the unilateral disengagement in 2005 and it completely backfired. Similar situation with Lebanon as well, the territories where Israel is being attacked from are all where they tried the strategy of unilateral disengagement, while the West Bank has less issues because they never disengaged. It would be great if things would play out that way but it doesn't look likely to me. That's why negotiation of a peace deal is so important.
> Regarding your second point, Israel isn't closest to my actual ethical beliefs in practice. It's an expansionist ethnostate that hugely intefers in Western politics and the information space. You don't advance ethics by surrendering your ethics.
I mean, you can say the same about most countries in that region which have far worse ethical issues in general.
I understand what point you think you are making, but I think it illustrates your enormous disconnect.
Let's say you are an Israeli Jew, maybe you know someone killed in a terror attack and maybe 3 people injured serving in the IDF. The same Palestinian (based on ratios or relative deaths and injuries) knows 50 people killed and 150 people injured. And the age profile of Palestinians is massively slanted towards the young, the people you see killed and injured are much more likely to be younger rather than older people.
Add to that the stress and perceived safety of these two groups on a day to day basis couldn't be more different: One lives in a war zone without security of the basics of existence and the other lives in a nice western country where atheists can happily go out for a meal, then watch some football then go clubbing.
Look at the way Israel reacted after the terror attack, it was hardly calm and measured, it acted a lot more like Hamas - and that was a one-off shock event. That's not a coincidence. People are people.
Now Palestinians are people who, from their perspective, are being asked to negotiate with the people who not only killed/injured these people, but also who took their homes and land in the first place.
And the context of the negotiation is that they are being offered land whilst it is currently being settled on.
Meanwhile, your concern is Israeli's need to be convinced that the Palestinians actually want to end the war and make a peace deal.
It's just fundamentally disconnected from reality. I think all it really illustrates is just how well Israel has managed to isolate elements of news media from the enormous suffering of Palestinians.
> Palestinians have agency, there are different paths they can go down and Israel has a history of making peace deals with Arabs.
I mean, again, I'm going to give you the benefit of the doubt in you believing what you are saying, but Palestinians have tried different paths - e.g. peaceful demonstration - countless times. One example which jumps to mind (because the late Sir Gerald Kaufman - a British jew - explicitly raised the issue in the house of commons) occurred at Nabi Saleh, a Palestinian village where regular demonstrations against the occupation and settlements took place. He said that peaceful demonstration involving Palestinians and Israelis, including women and children, had been attacked with gas, sound grenades and rubber bullets, and a vehicle that hurled sewage at them.
Israel also hasn't been particularly bothered in the past with international demonstrators being killed demonstrating against things like home demolitions. My take, it's a deterrent.
Based on its actions, I find it difficult to believe Israel explicitly doesn't want peaceful demonstration, especially peaceful demonstration that the world can see. It needs to encourage violence for its strategy to work.
>The side that isn't ready for a peace deal yet is the side that refuses to negotiate in good faith.
They haven't been offered a negotiation in good faith. You basically conceded this earlier. I think even if they were offered a negotiation that looked to be in good faith its likely it wouldn't actually be in good faith because some significant proportion of actors in the Israeli administration would prevent it. This is putting aside the issue of non administration actions (like presidential assassinations).
Israel absolutely isn't ready for a peace deal and from my point of view, it's extremely difficult to look at it's actions and believe it actually wants one. I'm sure many do, but the direction of travel seems to be, "pretend, continue to maintain American support via whatever means necessary, slowly cook the frog".
>Russia follows that same pattern with Ukraine because like the Palestinians they think they need to continue the fight to get a better outcome.
I think it's questionable whether "Russia" is even trying to take Ukraine at this point. The Kremlin/putin is probably just trying to break Ukraine away from the Russian diaspora. You can't have a free, rich successful country next to Russia, which Russians have connections to and can see is a much better place to live and expect to maintain a dictatorship on the same terms you have to date in the long term.
And Ukrainians have an even longer history with the Russ, well before the Holdomor. It's not exactly a surprise they continue to resist.
>Well, they kind of tried that...
They kind of tried that?
Anyone that cannot walk in the shoes of a normal Palestinian has zero chance of resolving this. I don't think Israel can continue to obscure and cover up the reality of the lives Palestinians actually live in the long term, so this looks life a zero-sum game to me, at present.
>I mean, you can say the same about most countries in that region which have far worse ethical issues in general.
Yes you can, but as you know, you're trying to side step ethics with a convenient slight of hand not related to the issue at hand, not me.
Look, it's always good to talk, but I don't think we are getting anywhere at this point. I just would prefer to stop seeing so many kids dying and Jews outside Israel (who are hugely opposed to Israels actions) ironically having to suffer biogtry by association.
Have a good one.
Sure, I don't disagree there, but this probably has more to do with Israel going to extreme efforts to protect the lives of their citizens as opposed to Hamas which goes to extreme efforts to put their civilian population in harms way.
> Add to that the stress and perceived safety of these two groups on a day to day basis couldn't be more different: One lives in a war zone without security of the basics of existence and the other lives in a nice western country where atheists can happily go out for a meal, then watch some football then go clubbing.
I don't disagree that the conditions are different between the sides however Israelis also live in fear, especially due to their history and enemies that openly call for their destruction.
> Look at the way Israel reacted after the terror attack, it was hardly calm and measured, it acted a lot more like Hamas - and that was a one-off shock event. That's not a coincidence. People are people.
I would expect most countries to respond extremely aggressively to a large terror attack like October 7th so I don't view Israel's response as being unusually harsh, given the severity of the attack it seems to be reasonably measured. When the US was attacked it invaded 2 countries(one of which wasn't even involved in the attacks).
> Now Palestinians are people who, from their perspective, are being asked to negotiate with the people who not only killed/injured these people, but also who took their homes and land in the first place.
Yes, because you don't negotiate peace deals with allies, you negotiate them with enemies. Unfortunately it's very difficult to negotiate with Jihadis in general. It's also very difficult to deter them. I understand why they don't want to negotiate in good faith, it's because they believe that they will obtain their goals by continuing to fight.
> They haven't been offered a negotiation in good faith. You basically conceded this earlier. I think even if they were offered a negotiation that looked to be in good faith its likely it wouldn't actually be in good faith because some significant proportion of actors in the Israeli administration would prevent it. This is putting aside the issue of non administration actions (like presidential assassinations).
Historically the Israelis at a few points in time did try to negotiate a two state solution in good faith, unfortunately the Palestinian leadership was not negotiating in good faith. The current right wing government came to power due to the failure of those negotiations and the subsequent Second Intifada. This hardened Israeli's into thinking the Palestinians simply will never agree to a final peace deal. Hence you now have the current Israeli government that is not particularly willing to try and negotiate a peace deal due to the widespread view that any attempt would be futile at this stage.
> I think it's questionable whether "Russia" is even trying to take Ukraine at this point. The Kremlin/putin is probably just trying to break Ukraine away from the Russian diaspora.
They still probably want to take Ukraine, which explains why they have refused to negotiate terms in good faith.
> You can't have a free, rich successful country next to Russia, which Russians have connections to and can see is a much better place to live and expect to maintain a dictatorship on the same terms you have to date in the long term.
I think it's more a spheres of influence/imperialism sort of thing than anything to do with economics.
> And Ukrainians have an even longer history with the Russ, well before the Holdomor. It's not exactly a surprise they continue to resist.
There's a very good reason all the post-soviet countries begged to join NATO, they recognize who their long term enemy is. Unfortunately Ukraine didn't take measures to deal with that threat quickly enough like other post-soviet countries did.
> They kind of tried that?
I mean the Gaza disengagement was a concession made by Israel, it was made unilaterally however which is the big reason it ultimately failed catastrophically.
> Anyone that cannot walk in the shoes of a normal Palestinian has zero chance of resolving this. I don't think Israel can continue to obscure and cover up the reality of the lives Palestinians actually live in the long term, so this looks life a zero-sum game to me, at present.
I'm not denying the Palestinians in Gaza live in a very bad situation, however that situation is at least in part due to their own bad decisions. Palestinians have agency and need to understand that they also need to take steps to make their lives better.
> Look, it's always good to talk, but I don't think we are getting anywhere at this point.
Maybe not but talking can help understand the perspective of the other side as well, I try to understand both sides as best I can so that I can look for areas of potential agreement and viable paths to peace.
> I just would prefer to stop seeing so many kids dying and Jews outside Israel (who are hugely opposed to Israels actions) ironically having to suffer biogtry by association.
I think most Israelis also want to stop seeing so many kids dying as well, I certainly do, but Israelis also don't want to sacrifice the lives of their own children to an enemy that clearly wants their destruction.
Honestly, based on this conversation, to be blunt, you either aren't capable of understanding the perspective of the other side, or it's not a good faith discussion.
It's the old hearing versus listening issue.
So long and thanks for all the fish.
There's a lot of competing narratives so it's clearly quite tricky, keep in mind the prevalence of conspiracy theories in the middle east is even worse than the west, especially when it comes to anything involving Jews. So one needs to be extra careful to not conflate widely accepted beliefs/narratives coming out of the middle east as fact.
There's plenty of evidence that the Israeli government is composed of people with a similar outlook, just with a power imbalance that affords them the opportunity to be more politically sophisticated.
History rhymes - I'm pretty sure that Jews in the Polish Ghetto had pretty negative views about the people detaining them there. Do you hold that against them?
Israel does have some problems with extremists getting elected but that's partially due to the proportional representation system making it easier for extremists to get elected without widespread support from the population.
> I'm pretty sure that Jews in the Polish Ghetto had pretty negative views about the people detaining them there. Do you hold that against them?
Were the Jews in the Polish Ghetto terrorizing/murdering random German civilians? I'm sure they had a very negative view of the Nazi's but it's not a particularly comparable situation as the Jews were being exterminated regardless of their actions.
The Warsaw ghettos didn't exist for very long. People are people, treat them the same way and you'll probably get similar results.
Of course, in this case both sides have magical thinking involved that gives them a divine blessing, so that changes things somewhat and makes it harder to reason with them.
Obviously the parallel I've drawn is extremely provocative. The Nazis started with a belief of dehumanism and acted on it. In the case of Israelis and Palestinians it's just the direction of travel over decades, but they look the same in many ways for a reason.
That's simply factually inaccurate, Hamas started the latest war while the population of Gaza was growing. The Jews started the Warsaw Ghetto uprising while they were being actively exterminated(i.e. population declining).
The population of Gaza has been declining over the last 2 years as a direct result of 10s of thousands of Gazas being killed, including thousands of kids.
The methods thankfully differ, but the goals are pretty similar.
Both contain an ethnonational conception of the state, seek to secure political sovereignty for a particular ethnonational people, attach historical/national significance to territory, and contain expansionist/settlement currents aimed at extending that people's presence and political control over territory.
And the direction of movement is towards similarity (not away from it) - eg nation state bill.
Israel's main strategy until recently appeared to be to maximise suffering to force displacement.
I don't really see a realistic peaceful strategy for Gazans based on decades of history, they have little power. It's like an amplified Northern Ireland.
Hamas is the democratically elected government of Gaza and retains a high level of support amongst the population. The population could put more pressure on Hamas to disarm but so far it has been fairly minimal.
> Israel's main strategy until recently appeared to be to maximise suffering to force displacement.
Israel's strategy before October 7th was one of containment, but that clearly failed so they switched to a strategy of proactive threat management.
Israel probably should just fully occupy the territories in the short term and make a more serious attempt at Palestinian de-radicalization so that hopefully some sort of two state solution eventually becomes viable. Occupation with de-radicalization worked with the Nazi's and Imperial Japan at the end of WW2 but Israeli's just really don't want to have to fully occupy Gaza so that's going to be politically problematic.
> I don't really see a realistic peaceful strategy for Gazans based on decades of history, they have little power.
They had opportunities for peace, Palestinian leadership ultimately threw those opportunities away by refusing to even so much as propose a concrete peace deal that would be acceptable.
I think my positions/views are fairly middle of the road/moderate when it comes to the conflict.
I'm inclined to think that's largely true about the past too, although there was a point around 2000 where it wasn't fantasy. But given settlement activity continued over this time, it's hardly a realistic basis on which to form agreement.
Why negotiate the borders of a Palestinian state while the territory you're negotiating over is continuing to be settled?
Israel is a very sophisticated political actor (that holds nearly all the power), it's a complex mix of political opinions (which don't align) but whatever those are, the state itself in terms of how it acts in the world looks a lot like Russia in the information space. Case in point the original post all these comments sit under.
That's partly a function of the particular position Israel is in, and in the same way that Palestinian authority is mostly politically unsophisticated isn't surprising.
That should affects the way we account for information surrounding Israel-Palestine, like when for the thousandth time an Israeli spokesman appears on the BBC to very reasonably tell us about the strong ethical rules that govern the IDF, and that this particular incident was just a terrible accident.
The hardline elements within Israel ultimately win, through various tactics, above and below board, which is not particularly surprising given the history of some of the characters involved (and that deep rooted mindset) over the years (Irgun etc), who were also very happy to carry out terrorism on British targets alongside their list of other atrocities.
The 'moderate' position is always taken in by apparent reasonableness over the immediately recollectable present. That is changing though, for largely obvious reasons, which is good.
Topical data point: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cly50gn1e54o
Potential, sure.
> without gargantuan shifts in numerous things
Obviously any solution will require gargantuan shifts in numerous things given where things are currently.
> I'm inclined to think that's largely true about the past too, although there was a point around 2000 where it wasn't fantasy.
I would agree around 2000 it was potentially feasible on the Israeli side, both population wise and leadership had reasonable levels of support. The 2nd intifada pushed things really far in the wrong direction. Unfortunately the Palestinian leaders walked away without so much as even proposing any concrete settlement terms that they would accept.
> But given settlement activity continued over this time, it's hardly a realistic basis on which to form agreement.
I agree settlement activity is an issue, but I would disagree it is what broke the peace process.
> Why negotiate the borders of a Palestinian state while the territory you're negotiating over is continuing to be settled?
You sue for peace to make the best of a bad situation...and to stop the situation from getting worse, that's a pretty common way for armed conflicts to end.
> Israel is a very sophisticated political actor (that holds nearly all the power), it's a complex mix of political opinions (which don't align) but whatever those are, the state itself in terms of how it acts in the world looks a lot like Russia in the information space.
There are many that try to paint Israel to look like Russia...but in reality there is not much in common with how they operate. Russia will sometimes use similar justifications(i.e. security threats) but with Russia it's usually just a cover for more imperialistic end goals.
> That's partly a function of the particular position Israel is in, and in the same way that Palestinian authority is mostly politically unsophisticated isn't surprising.
Palestinians historically have had absolutely terrible leadership, there's really only so much Israel can do when the other side doesn't have the political will to come to a final peace deal.
> That should affects the way we account for information surrounding Israel-Palestine, like when for the thousandth time an Israeli spokesman appears on the BBC to very reasonably tell us about the strong ethical rules that govern the IDF, and that this particular incident was just a terrible accident.
You need to be careful with misinformation in general, there is one group that quite openly states they want more civilian casualties, and that is Hamas.
> The hardline elements within Israel ultimately win
That tends to be what happens when terrorist attacks are successful.
> which is not particularly surprising given the history of some of the characters involved (and that deep rooted mindset) over the years (Irgun etc)
The history there is much more complicated, the IDF in 1948 dissolved the Irgun by force[0]. Much later it was also the former Irgun leader[1] that ultimately made peace with Egypt[2] by giving back the Sinai.
> who were also very happy to carry out terrorism on British targets alongside their list of other atrocities.
To be fair they didn't do that for entirely no reason either, Britain prevented Jewish refugees from entering mandatory Palestine while the Nazi's were genociding them in Europe. History is messy after all. Benny Morris has some good material on the history.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Altalena_Affair
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Menachem_Begin
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Egypt%E2%80%93Israel_peace_tre...
It's very ironic that you are telling me that I need to be careful about information and at the same time that Hamas is the one openly stating things.
So, do you think Hamas could be lying?
Israel's approach to information is reflected in its access for journalists, UN investigators, human-rights monitors, diplomats, aid workers, and foreign activists.
This entire discussion is taking place in a post about a think tank that Israel created to poison the information well.
>To be fair they didn't do that for entirely no reason either, Britain prevented Jewish refugees from entering mandatory Palestine while the Nazi's were genociding them in Europe.
I'm pretty sure all terrorism happens for reasons which can be served up as a justification.
Considering their actions/tactics, it seems quite unlikely in this case.
> I'm pretty sure all terrorism happens for reasons which can be served up as a justification.
I'm not saying it was justified, but it was at least understandable given the context. I also understand why the Palestinians use terrorism as well, likewise I don't consider it justified either.
Which is exactly why they'll feel like a cornered animal and become even more violent. Israel has a competent defense industry, they do not need foreign aid to run their military. What they need is foreign aid in order to semi humanely run their military at a price theyre happy with. Foreign aid pulling out wont end their military, itll just make it less humane and even more reckless.
The thing is, Israel needs to worry about its own defense too. Currently there are several semi-hostile neighbors that the US basically pays off, plus the US pays for very expensive defense systems in Israel. Last invasion was long ago, Yom Kippur War, where the US was withholding aid until Israel started losing and suddenly it became an airlift scramble. But more recently there were the two Iran wars where thousands of drones and missiles had to be shot down.
Israel has nuclear weapons. If all their foreign backers pull out they would use them in an invasion scenario, so I dont think they need to worry to much about hot war with a legitimate government.
People that have read history know your assertion - vaguely suggesting it was the Palestinians that rejected many peace deals - know that this is completely false.
Please do tell why an Israeli Prime Minister was assassinated?
I am not vaguely suggesting it. I am firmly suggesting it. This is not false, it's completely true. 1936 Peel Commission. 1947 UN Partition. Post 1967 countless attempts to do land for peace deals. 1999 Camp David attempts, 2000 Taba. 2008 negotiations between Abbas and Olmert.
If not a 2 state solution, what exactly are you advocating?
I believe Russia and Ukraine have had many peace talks, and Putin really wants peace.
It's just those peaky Ukrainians not agreeing.
What exactly is your solution to this conflict. Other than making snide comments.
Palestinians accepted almost all peace deals, they freed the hostages, yet, Israel kept on bombing Gaza, targeting journalists and civilians.
It seems that the biggest problem is that Israel doesn't want a palestinian state and if they need to commit a genocide, they'll be glad to do it.
I'm not sure there is a win-win solution, and I think there are sizeable elements on both sides that don't want one, but the current approach absolutely won't lead to one.
My preference is for minimising the suffering of children.
At present the long run situation seems to be that one group of people (who - whether you like it or not - were displaced from their land) suffer continuous stress and roughly 50 times the death and injury rates than the other group of people who live mostly normal lives with the threat of terror attacks.
Entertaining the idea that those people are going become less extreme under these conditions seems rather unlikely.
In Northern Ireland the numbers killed on both sides (including IRA terror attacks within Britain) were a dramatically closer ratio.
I think it is pretty much impossible to achieve anything politically when the side without power is asked to trust the side with power when it sees little restraint.
You can quantify the number of peace deals as much as you want. But when you don't present the facts and context behind it, you're being purposely deceptive.
Itamar Ben-Gvir, just recently, stated that he wants to kill 30-40 Palestinians every night. He said so, publicly.
On television.
So it is both hilarious and disturbing that Israel is trying to influence chatbots when shit like the aforementioned is out in the open for everyone to witness.
Even if they are doing it deliberately, I am supportive of such actions, its better if LLM reads truth, than an obvious lie
On the right, certainly the comments sections at least definitely feature some pretty alarming bigoted tropes--the comments explicitly make the jump from being about Israel to being about "the Jews". One could definitely make the same argument about some of the content, though most of it definitely seems to fall short of where the viewers want it to in this regard.
American leftists... idk what they want. They can't even explain it, it's like they're taking radio commands from Qatar or Iran that they only barely understand.
There are elements of the American right that are antisemitic but it definitely has bigger problems with Muslims, and a large slice of the American right view Jews favourably (arguably very favourably).
Pew data is one example of data that shows this. Plus, in terms of Israel specifically, if you look at current support for the Iran war (which the Trump admin has repeatedly framed as important for Israels security) it's almost exclusively on the political right.
One interesting comparison, the Twelve Day War against Iran in 2025 had Democrat support. Despite their rhetoric, they voted to give Israel huge emergency funding. But they're truly voting against the 2026 Iran War.
It was true in the days of Avraham Stern, and it's true today. It creates some truly horrific perverse incentives.
[1] By dint of being the "victim", even if it's not Israel the nation being victimized. A disastrous category error that the nation of Israel exploits quite shamelessly.
The right thing to do would be to stop slaughtering Palestinians.
People are not stupid.
Will? I don't know in which circle you evolve but that ship sailed a long time ago
For example here in Eastern Europe when people hear "Israeli" they tend to assume it means "Russian with Israeli passport, probably here to avoid sanctions or outbid locals on real estate".
I'm sure it's very different in Turkey or say Thailand where they have Israel-born Israeli tourists, and surely different in US (though I have no idea what it is).
Many non-Israeli Jews view Israel's actions as abhorent, particularly younger Jews.
Being associated with Israel over the last few years must be a very uncomfortable place to be.
And this comes of your own polling? As a non-Israeli Jew, I've seen quite the opposite. They closed ranks in the face of an external threat, especially the younger ones. Ignore Hollywood and Hannah Einbinders of the world - that is not the reality.
https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2026/07/09/americans...
How did we do this?
This analysis includes findings from a survey of 12,574 U.S. adults, 10,091 of whom are part of the Center’s American Trends Panel (ATP). The remaining 2,483 respondents include oversamples of Jews, Muslims and Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints members from SSRS’ Opinion Panel, Ipsos’ KnowledgePanel and NORC’s AmeriSpeak Panel. We conducted the survey May 4-17, 2026, and it has an overall margin of error of plus or minus 1.3 percentage points.
They drew conclusions about Jews from subset of Jews from 2,483 respondents that included an unknown amount of Jews, Muslims, Mormons, and whoever is a member of Ipsos’ KnowledgePanel and NORC’s AmeriSpeak Panel. I am not sure this is especially representative.
Even so, I don't know if I would characterize 54 to 47 as viewing as "abhorrent" as OP said.
> Even so, I don't know if I would characterize 54 to 47 as viewing as "abhorrent" as OP said.
Agreed, also not quite "closed ranks" though. Exactly in between I guess.
I'd agree that within the US opinions differ markedly, which I think is likely in part strongly related to differences in news media environment.
Re: attitudes of younger Jews I'm really referring to Non-Americans (Americans are a special case). With American Jews the age gradient effect is there, but I don't know about the impact of the last couple of years.
Take data points in Europe and attitudes are marked and there is data to support that Israel's recent actions are absolutely being rejected by younger Jews.
News media is considered more reliable in Europe over the US (by measures of the population) so that could certainly be playing into it.
That sounds like nonsense.
The European media landscape differs - a recent study covering 24 European markets found that experts' assessments of accuracy broadly matched public trust: outlets regarded by experts as providing accurate information backed by credible sources tended to be the outlets the public trusted most. Public-service media generally scored particularly well.
The American population also considers its own news media much more partisan than Europeans consider their news media. Americans are more likely to inhabit separate information ecosystems (which by their very nature makes them less factual and more political - ie they are looking for what they want to hear).
According to an AP-NORC poll (https://apnorc.org/projects/among-american-jews-views-on-jew...):
> "Thirty-seven percent of Jews under age 45 say Israel has committed genocide in Gaza compared to 23% of those 45 or older".
The exact level of support varies based on age, secularity, and poll question phrasing, but across the board, US Jewish support for Israel is down.
Maybe not in your country, but definitely in the US.
No idea where everyone is taking the time from to read up the whole history of things when they publicly propagate their strong opinions about all these complex situations.
To clarify I have an opinion, but I am aware that my opinion is only based on some obvious facts and ignores a lot of the history, so I don't consider it worth fighting for.
That's not complicated.
So is the US bombing children in Iran and many other countries in the past years. Is the US the pure evil now? Maybe, but I don't claim to have a final opinion there either
123 died in Iran School bombing event.
At least 21,600 Gazan children have died since the beginning of the war [UNICEF] in many events over a long period of time.
21,600 > 123
(Both involved US tax dollars)
... but the ethical difference between not giving something to kids versus dropping bombs on kids isn't hard to spot.
It depends on which side we are on, that determines how the conflict needs to be sold to the on average decent but apolitical person like yourself. As allied against nazis? Not complicated. Fighting russia's invasion of Ukraine? Not complicated. Fighting against Palestinian resistance to their genocide? Complicated. But like South African apartheid turned from complicated to simple over a few decades so you will be dragged along eventually by us "political" people.
It even works with other things too, like people starving on the streets or ~25k people dying from no health care every year, its "complicated", it will always be complicated (until it isn't).
A friend of mine noted the other day that chatgot will answer "yes" to the question of whether Israel is committing genocide.
The Israeli government does not want that.
Why the hate against this if everybody else does it? and everybody else does it is a decent argument?
Maybe we could do war without killing all civilians and razing cities to the ground?
but why do we have to do war? or why do we need to defend ourself?
Maybe not but they are "by proxy" quite racist according to your description
Just see the garbage coming from a web search (totally polluted and poisoned with the same spam output quality since years) so this is just an extension of that towards the input of ai.
they can try hard but any person with a non-biased brain does not need to do a google search or ask ai to reach then truth.
Facts are facts, like what was represented in Schindler's list and what is happening now in middle east or other conflicts.
I think the world is becoming much more aware of what real zionism is and that scares them a lot, hence the needed info manipulation.
But we now know who you really are! And yeah their state members daily political statements (about hate violence and racism) just confirm this every day, anybody can understand that and no info pollution needed.
I mean Ben Gvir couldn't be more explicit.
Now it's more about giving a fig leaf of plausible ( sic ) deniability for inaction or complicity.
ie people can say 'it's contested' or 'on the one hand' etc.
I'm shocked to see the difference between 2023 and today.
A discourse must be cultivated and steered till the point when they are ready to form.
presumably that you don't have employees that do any of the proverbial thinking, which is the case here.
Every think tank has its biases and funding sources but something like RAND is an actual entity at which people do research, this "Hanover Public Policy Institute" has nothing to do with Hanover, policy and isn't an institute, but a deliberately misleadingly presenting arm of the Israeli government proxied through a German advertising company
For example, if someone writes a generic prompt to flag offensive language, the LLM would flag certain political views whether or not the language was offensive. Causing friction and effectively discrimination against groups of people even though it was not the writer's intention.
An even more serious example would be someone in the military screening targets and the LLM marking a school or hospital as a valid target without the user intending to.
To be clear, I'm not stating that either of these doesn't happen intentionally, but that any manipulation of LLM training data can cause these things to happen when the user did not intend it, and hence it's similar to adding a back door or corrupting a CPU.
I don't understand the modern effort to engage in 'information warfare' as a thing in and of itself. Each time it collapses and people sees what was 'really' happening, it just makes them that much less likely to believe you next time. And you also create a significant number of perpetually jaded people who will basically never believe you again, even when you're telling the truth. Countless politicians have proudly paraded around their pristine, seemingly untouched, copies of Meditations, but perhaps they should go for more foundational works, like The Boy Who Cried Wolf.
There are endless border clashes. Even in very recent times we have Armenia-Azerbaijan, Afghanistan-Pakistan, Thailand-Cambodia, and many more. Wiki gives more than 60 in the 21st century [1], and we're just getting started! And if other parties had decided to get involved and start jamming up the escalation ladder, any of those could have easily turned into a much bigger war, instead of being just yet another relatively inconsequential border conflict.
Or imagine if another country (perhaps Russia or China) had decided to 'pull a US' when the US invaded any of the countless countries we've invaded over the years - Iraq, Syria, Libya, Afghanistan, Venezuela, Yemen, and so on just in quite recent times. That could very well have led to WW3, but it didn't because they didn't.
[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_border_conflicts#21st_...
Yes, but they will also not believe my enemies. Making people not believe anything anymore is a classic strategy of propaganda.
Personally I think the issue is that after WW2 we were left with a large scale and ever growing intelligence apparatus, but with ever fewer appropriate tasks for them. That led directly to the era of recklessly overthrowing nations, often to our own detriment, and gradually transitioned to the modern era of aimless 'information warfare' which I think will ultimately be shown to be very much to our detriment, once again.
Look at the US situation. It’s clear that Trump is a rapist - the truth has come out. It’s clear he’s corrupt. For all the “release the full Epstein files” discussion, it really wouldn’t change anything.
The truth will come out but will the people who can make it matter be listening?
If enough people were willing to publicly certify that their fellow contacts are human, anybody could then assign trust to each social graph node based on the trust they have in the path to them. It would completely decentralize the algorithms and remove the fake accounts as less trustworthy.
I think people tried this with PGP but it never really caught on.
If I certify my racist thanksgiving ruining uncle is a real person that doesn’t actually help you avoid misinformation.
I honestly don’t care if the information I consume comes from a person or a robot. I only care if it is accurate or not. Those dimensions are orthogonal.
- "I, owner of account A, certify that owner of account B is human."
- "I, owner of account C, have a reason to trust/distrust the certification of account A about account B."
The collection of these statements would be the public social graph.
The social graph would then be used to establish provenance of facts, which are statements of the form:
- "I, owner of account B, certify account A being witness to event X."
Now whether to believe this or not depends on whether A certified B to be a human, and how much you transitively believe that statement.
So there is a kind of reversal - your statement about your uncle being human helps him to certify what you say, and vice versa.
The problem with the current systems is that reputation buying is not transparent. In my system, it would be a public record, who endorsed who. So you could go back and track the fake reputation.
Also real people have some TTL with their accounts. Unlike links, "I am real person" is not nearly as fungible.
The public social graph would be about who is a human, that can certify facts. Their opinion wouldn't really matter until you chose it to matter for you. Them being a human witness would only add credence to the accounts of the facts they witnessed, nothing more. You can still choose to disbelief the event if you have a good reason to (for example, even if you might believe a guy from Russia is a real person based on his social graph, if he certifies an event in Michigan, you might be skeptical of that account and decide to lower your own trust in that person). So there is a difference between the shared social graph - which is about a collective belief of who is a person, and your own trust, which you can modify as you wish. Unlike with Google and other big tech providers, there is not a singular "algorithm for trust" that can be manipulated.
You seem to be saying it will fail because people are tribal. I believe it will not fail, because the benefits of knowing the local social graph of each person will outweigh the tendency for opinion to split based on tribe. And the reason I think so is that trust evolved and exists in society; we do not only trust ourselves, and that's only possible if something like a social graph can work. The only issue is the scale, which can be solved by using a computer instead of computing it in our little heads.
Also, it could just as easily be faked, like so much else. Even if someone offered such an assurance, I wouldn't trust random strangers on the internet. At best it would become an arms race between "this is not a real person" and those who sell fake assurances. And it would be one more weapon to damage anyone's reputation you don't like. "not a real person!"
By default you could choose not to trust. If you don't trust random strangers it's OK. So I don't see how it would damage someone's reputation worse than today.
It would potentially only add trust. Arguably, today we have bots because we have no other option than to trust without justification. With the public social graph, the trust above the baseline would be justifiable.
This model was used in the beginning of the web, where links to your site from a well trusted website would increase the score and therefore SEO of your own site. This very quickly turned into a business of people selling hidden paid site links, and evolved into the paid editorial model we see on every news site today.
I've thought about making some digital reputation system that cannot be gamed. You can rep people you know and then query if there's any path of rep from you to a random person. The global number of reps you have doesn't matter, only paths. Problem is this only works if the target person can't tell that you repped them, which is impossible to hide because they can just rep you with a fake account then see if there's a path to their real account. But maybe with some fuzzing.
The article DOES NOT say this- it says that sometimes this seems to be the case, but reports exactly one example of extremely little significance. In the meanwhile,
"Piro, Inc, the firm that created the Hanover Institute, has received $900,000 from the Israeli government for its work."
Opening the linked example, one sees that the article is basically dedicated to laundering the idea that there were many "antisemitic incidents" at Columbia University.
This already seems to be a wrong analysis in that it makes little sense to "influence" a chatbot. It makes more sense to influence humans, so perhaps the wording is just incorrect, but very clearly the aim is not to "influence" a chatbot per se. That just makes no sense at all.
The wording fake think tank is also strange, because it assumes that all other think tanks are "real". But this assessment can not be made, because not everyone has all information on all think tanks. It is a too simplistic assumption in how the world operates. I understand that if you have incomplete information, you need to infer, but this then leads to information that may be incorrect or incomplete. In turn if your analysis is based on incorrect information, it may lead to wrong conclusions.
- AI Search Has a Misinformation Problem — and DuckDuckGo Just Proved It - https://www.informertech.com/post/duckduckgo-reddit-misinfor...
What I read about is a more sophisticated supply chain attack. But these days, search previews use retrieval-augmented generation to parse websites to generate answers on the fly. In that case you don't need to poison the supply chain; good SEO is enough.
Apparently he was an executive producer, in case anyone else is confused, as I was initially, by the fact that Brian Grazer is credited as producer of that film.
This is what a think tank is for.
A better headline would be "Israel fails to adequately paperwork their low-rent think tank".
> But the Hanover Institute is not a real think tank.
What does that mean exactly?
> None of the reports have bylines
The site actually addresses this at https://hanoverinstitute.com/hanover/about :
Reports are published under the Institute’s name rather than an individual’s. That is the convention at institutional publishers, and it fits how the work is made: every report is produced against one standard and one citation bank. A reader is asked to weigh the sources, which are named in the sentence that carries each figure, rather than the author.
"Small disclaimer" implies that the site is attempting to hide its affiliation. But their "about" page, which is linked at the top of every page, is quite clear:
WHO FUNDS THIS WORK
The Institute’s materials are distributed by Piro, Inc. on behalf of Havas Media Germany GmbH, acting for the Israel Government Advertising Agency (LaPam). That relationship is registered under the Foreign Agents Registration Act, registration 7732, and every report published here is filed with the Department of Justice, where the registration and the filings can be read in full, and the funding page sets out when the relationship began and what the funder does not decide.
That registration is why this site does not call itself independent, nonpartisan or neutral. What it offers instead is a method a reader can check: every figure carries the body that produced it, the year and the number, inside the sentence that makes the claim; sources that are a party to the events they describe are labelled as such and their counts are never presented as independently verified; and where the evidence is contested, the competing findings are given by name and date rather than settled. No report recommends a policy or tells a reader what to conclude. Those are properties of the work that can be tested against the work, which is the only kind of claim worth making here.
So, they're guilty of good SEO?
> Piro’s website says that it “author(s) content engineered for how LLMs evaluate credibility,” describing this service as "AI Story Optimization." Others refer to this practice of influencing artificial intelligence as “LLM poisoning.”
So the issue is that they use a LLM-friendly SEO service?
> Many of the reports are formulaic, starting with an innocent question that someone might ask a chatbot.
> “What Caused the Displacement of Palestinians in 1948?”
> “Which Humanitarian Organizations Have Documented Israeli War Crimes?”
> “What is the Current Situation in the Gaza Strip?”
> In an article titled “Is the IDF the World’s Most Moral Army?” the Hanover Institute cites a 2022 poll that found that 47% of Israeli Jews believed that statement. Another report casts doubt on UNICEF's assertion that “90% of water and institutional infrastructure has been damaged or destroyed” in Gaza. Many of the reports conclude by linking the topic to rising antisemitism, oftentimes citing the same studies.
So, the accusation is that they frame their opinion articles as a Q&A, and focus each article on a single question?
I've read these articles: they are well written and make a visible effort to provide sources, while being transparent about the fact that they are not neutral.
It's perfectly fine to criticize the actual content of these articles. But attacking their credibility by accusing them of "LLM poisoning" and implying that they're disguising their affiliation, is ridiculous and should be called out.
problem is the world now knows, no need to cry about antisemitism.
keep trying, the truth is clear, you are only doing bad evil things since long time and your government and ministers states it publicly too!
If my ministers would claim the dream of killing kids or people I would feel totally ashamed of them and I would not support it online spamming every thread!
The headline sounds sensational, then if you actually read the article you realize the author just made up his own framing entirely, or he just discovered that AEO and GEO exists and thinks it's sinister?
I thought maybe there were going to be some markers about how they're targeting LLMs specifically there was nothing like that.
And if you go to https://hanoverinstitute.com/llms.txt ...honestly, you could maybe form a critique about implying to LLMs that your wagon is hitched to the Department of Justice on line 5! But this guy didn't even seem to find this file...
the claim "the author just made up his own framing entirely" is clearly an unbased accusation.
The article clearly explain the information poisoning, fast paced publication and ties to government, nothing else.
this comment should be flagged as is misleading users off topic.
stop polluting this thread in an organized and selfish self supporting way. so typical
What does this mean?
> is clearly an unbased accusation.
"Israel creates fake think tank" is the headline. What is a "think tank"? What distinguishes a real one from a fake one? Does "the Hanover Institute" claim to be a think tank?
The author does not answer any of these questions, only saying "At a glance, the Hanover Institute for Public Policy looks like a new think tank dedicated to Israel/Palestine": in other words, he glanced at it, decided it looked like a think tank, then decided it wasn't a "real" one, and then went from there. That is very much the author's framing instead of something grounded in objectivity.
>The article clearly explain the information poisoning
The article says "Others refer to this practice of influencing artificial intelligence as 'LLM poisoning.'"
But the Anthropic paper that it cites to support this claim never discusses persuasive content, propaganda, or credibility-mimicking material at all; it uses "poisoning" for a technically distinct attack class. So the citation doesn't support the claim as written.
>stop polluting this thread in an organized and selfish self supporting way. so typical
What do you mean by this? How am I organized? Why is it selfish to criticize an article?
everything I posted was in response to you; nothing is random.
>confused informations
Just saying they're confused is meaningless; if you think I am wrong about something, feel free to give actual rebuttals.
>tentative
This word is defined as "not certain or fixed; provisional" or "done without confidence; hesitant". It is an adjective, not a noun. I genuinely do know know what you mean when you use this word.
a statement like this is clearly on purpose:
>a tentative of misinformation >>What does this mean?
claiming not knowing what tentative means in english is clearly on purpose and could anyway be translated if it was a language problem.
again here:
>tentative >>This word is defined as "not certain or fixed; provisional" or "done without confidence; hesitant". It is an adjective, not a noun. I genuinely do know know what you mean when you use this word.
Everybody knows what a tentative is and also looking it up and reporting a single possible translation of its meaning is just ridiculous.
again stop dragging the conversation off topic and stop on purpose provoking.
the repeated statements clearly confirms your negative intention and your previous content does not add any value.
for the sake of clarity to the readers I will report here the points more clearly again:
- mentioning SEO,AEO or other stuff here is clearly a tentative of misinformation and confusion of readers. moving the attention to an off topic relationship.
- the claim "the author just made up his own framing entirely" is clearly an accusation without any reasoning or logic backing it up
- The article clearly explain the information poisoning, fast paced publication and ties to government, nothing else. and thats the main point and target.
I will not waste more time on replying to purposely fabricated statements or questions.
That is not my intent.
I have spoken English my whole life and have never heard anyone use "tentative" as a noun. Why must you assume I am trolling, why can you not believe what I am saying? Is it possible that you are using the wrong word? It seems noteworthy to me that you did not actually answer my question or provide a definition for how you are using, you chose to assume bad faith on my part instead and use that as a basis to dismiss the actual arguments I made.
That said, I would be happy to stop arguing about the word "tentative". I would much rather you engage with the substantive arguments that I made.
>the repeated statements clearly confirms your negative intention
What repeated statements? If it's important to you for understanding then pick something that I repeated and I can try to explain.
> ::your three list items::
These are just repeating of arguments that I made and offered responses to. You have chosen to not respond to them.
Let's pick one and try again:
> The article clearly explain the information poisoning
If you search the article for "poison", there is exactly one reference: "Others refer to this practice of influencing artificial intelligence as 'LLM poisoning.'" The word "refer links to an article by Anthropic that is categorically unrelated. Go read that article and answer: does their definition of "poisoning" match what the author of this post means?
I would say no: the article says "malicious actors can inject specific text into these posts to make a model learn undesirable or dangerous behaviors, in a process known as poisoning", and then follows up with an example of "introducing backdoors". That is very different than whatever the Hanover Institute site is doing.
If you would prefer to argue substance, answer me that: did the author cite that paper correctly? I am saying "no" and have given a reason, what is your response?
He was prescient when he said:
"For if the quarrel is allowed to rise unchecked and to proceed unappeased, we shall come, unexpectedly and soon, upon one of these tragedies which have marked for centuries the relations between this peculiar nation and ourselves."
He was a devout Catholic, had Jewish friends, and devoted a chapter to what was wrong with antisemitism. He was earnestly trying to solve the problem before it was too late.
In the topic presented there is really no relevance to Israel being a Jewish state. This is a nation state acting nefariously to protect its interests, something I am quite sure many nations are either doing right now or will shortly start doing. e.g. I could absolutely picture Russia doing exactly this.
> He was a devout Catholic, had Jewish friends, and devoted a chapter to what was wrong with antisemitism
And yet he insisted that Jewish people are separate from any nation and should never be considered part of the native population of the country they were born and raised in. Which is, you know, antisemitic.
It's telling that your perception of a nation state acting badly leads you to a book named "The Jews".
Here's a SMS chain between me and an Israeli propaganda bot yesterday:
Hey, it's Matt. Curious what you think about America's relationship with Israel today. Can we chat? Stop2End
Where did you get my number? What group are you with?
We got your info from publicly available sources. I'm with Friends for Peace, a supporter group focused on sharing accurate information about Israel and the U.S. - Israel partnership.
How do you see Israel as one of America's strongest allies?
Hi, are you still there?
- post truth: what is the functional difference between a “real” and a “fake” thinktank?
(I never put together the ITA as that; wow!)
If you look at the mathematical achievements of frontier models recently, their strength has been to bring in information from a vast array of sources and to consider them within the context of each other.
I anticipate that it won't be long before this ability to look into every nook and cranny with be able to identify academic fraud. Identifying every piece of academic fraud to date would probably come soon after.
It wouldn't take much to extend that ability to identify deliberate misinformation. That's in the future, but it looms close enough on the horizon that you would have to be a fool to create an evidence record like this in and attempt to trick the models of today.
I’ve yet to see a single one identify that on its own, rather than only reluctantly when confronted when documented facts it was objectively wrong.
So no, I doubt LLMs will do anything but promoted propaganda.
> The Quincy Institute routinely vilifies supporters of Israel in Washington. Its principal goal is to reorient American policy in the Middle East, marginalising America’s two leading allies, Israel and Saudi Arabia, while promoting Iran as a future regional hegemon. John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt, authors of The Israel Lobby, are both Quincy fellows and regular contributors to its website. In March, Mearsheimer gave an interview to Al Jazeera, which the Institute promoted under the headline, “Israel Lobby’s Influence on U.S. Policy as Powerful as Ever.”
Sounds no different to what Israel lobbyists do in the US too, though? American democracy at work ...
Why do you expect me to get angry at Iranians for using American tactics? Is turnabout not fair play, am I supposed to support it when the US and Israel tortures people but balk when Iran does it?
Do you want to include SAVAK's pre-1979 death/disappearance/torture count to help contextualize your point? Or would that undermine it?
I don't take any issue with this pic if it's real, but it seems either fake or not from where he claims. So it's hard to take that org seriously. And yeah tbh that last name makes me take a second look.
https://time.com/article/2026/07/13/brad-parscale-israel-inf...
ALL think tanks are specifically focused on moving the needle on ideas in a certain direction. It’s just easier now to do the work.
This article is published by “The Quincy Institute for Statecraft”
Think tanks are funded by people with agendas (mostly) and for at least the last 30 years we have seen a huge number of nonsense “think tanks” pushing talking points with zero rigor that end up cited by candidates, the internet, and Google to convince folks things are true.
Not saying this article is wrong - just that think tanks exist to do this so it’s a cast iron pot calling a tin kettle a “cheap imitation”
"Not saying this article is wrong - just that think tanks exist to do this so it’s a cast iron pot calling a tin kettle a “cheap imitation”
what are you trying to say?
"This article is published by “The Quincy Institute for Statecraft”
again, and so? also you removed "Responsible"?
"Quincy institute for responsible statecraft"
for the readers: https://quincyinst.org/about
"The practical and moral failures of U.S. efforts to unilaterally shape the destiny of other nations by force requires a fundamental rethinking of U.S. foreign policy assumptions."
Here are the current frontpage headlines, copied verbatim:
* The never-ending myth of a looming Ukrainian 'breakthrough'
* US is the real loser if Senate passes virtue signaling Russia sanctions
* Is Trump stumbling into a wiser North Korea policy?
* US diplomatic incompetence is tanking hopes for Korean peace
* When US left Afghanistan, China moved in. So how's it going?
* As Myanmar collapses, it’s time for China to step up and be the hero
* China just got one step closer to its own nuclear triad
* Trump wants to talk to Hezbollah. Will they pick up the phone?
* The Houthis could be first big test for Mecca mutual defense pact
* Why the Trump administration will have to accept a Hormuz toll
* How Iran has staved off economic collapse despite the US-Israeli war
* Stop gaslighting, USS Lincoln families didn't sign up for this
So to recap: US bad, China good. Ukraine bad, Russia good. Israel bad, Iran good. South Korea bad, North Korea good. And these people are very concerned about foreign propaganda. Hmm.
Also, did you notice how many flagged comments are in this thread? Did you notice what they all have in common?
- Being probed for deportation sounds normal for that country and the approaches currently in place considering the institute research
- the flagged comments are mainly from propagandists too
also
- Quincy has 5 co-founders and a very clear mission
- it includes different transpartisan members, including retired colonel and emeritus professor and historian from boston
so before writing a list of garbage points and misleading readers going off topic I would go and read at least 1 wikipedia page.
[0] https://www.pewresearch.org/global/2026/07/15/people-in-many...
I've thought about this many times over the years. I think we've now reached the point where that's going to happen. And state actors seem like the obvious first offenders.
Google is relatively good at filtering out astroturfed pages from the top of search results but they've also have years when a Turkish government page denying the Armenian genocide was the top result for that event so it's a bit of a mixed bag. Google relies a lot on authority of a domain and that's been relatively effective.
It seems like this authority concept is missing from LLM training and a random comment on Reddit is treated with as much authority as an article by the New York Times. So it's now orders of magnitude easier to poison LLMs with Reddit comments and submissions. And for anyone who doesn't know, brigading Reddit is remarkably easy. It takes as little as a few hundred accounts to get something onto r/all if you're clever. Israeli hasbara operations are absolutely capable of this. And they engage in it.
I'm also reminded in a weird way of pre-atomic steel. For anyone who doesn't know, this is steel made before 1945 that is incredibly low in radiation because we hadn't detonated any nuclear bombs yet. It's valuable for making MRIs and the like that are super sensitive. We actually go and recover WW2 shipwrecks just for the steel. It is a finite resource.
Well, that's what pre-2022 written content is now. It's slop-free content to train AI models on because training them on AI slop is of much more limited value. This goes for everything from books to Youtube videos to Reddit posts. Just like pre-atomic steel, we now have pre-slop human content.
I honestly don't know where we go from here.
Disinformation and cognitive spam are all forms of information pollution, and our information environment has been massively degraded over the last few of decades - both by greedy and short-sighted opportunists, and and by cynical sociopaths who know exactly what they're doing. I think AI has great potential to be a supplement to media literacy and to effectively categorize and filter news-assertive content based on its timeliness, factual density, and presence of absence of emotive and rhetorical manipulation. But if we're not careful we're going to see the environment being wantonly polluted for the express product of shaping model outputs.
It remains to be seen whether objective measurement techniques from the NLP field combined with pruning and other model refinement techniques can limit or reverse propaganda undertakings like this.
From: 601-202-1149
> Hey, it's David. Curious what you think about America's relationship with Israel today. Can we chat? Stop2End
It looks to be an LLM response since it includes context from your messages, however it uses the exact same messages at the end of each question:
> One thing that often gets overlooked is how much Israel actually contributes to American security. Their intelligence sharing has helped prevent terrorist attacks on U.S. soil, and their tech innovations end up in American products and defense systems. It's less about charity and more about a two-way partnership that keeps Americans safer.
> Have you ever seen examples of that kind of cooperation?
I ended up just blocking the number.
https://earth.google.com/web/search/gaza/@31.28918718,34.255...
This is the city of 300k people that they erased along with the entire countryside (lot of the erasure happened outside of any fighting as reported by Israeli online news websites at the time).
And they did so right after getting order from ICJ to not do so and prevent any genocidal acts. So good luck for them not losing the genocide case. Massacred thousands of people in a week doing similar erasures in the north, where they prevented people from leaving while leveling entire city blocks, sometimes killin few hundred people at once in single attacks.
This is what they're attempting to justify with their propaganda.
Google and western so called civilized satellite imagery companies of course continue censoring/hiding similar behavior in Lebanon and other parts of Gaza for Israel's benefit. They only show it years after giving Israel plenty of time to execute their mass attrocities.
I think equally interesting is whatever Dario's wife was able to do in order to wipe her foot print from any search/chat results.
I've worked for a number of small company billionaires who all have suspiciously small information footprints online despite being somewhat public figures for 30 years. Most of them do such a good job it is not even clear what state they live, if they are currently married, and if so what their current (or previous) wife(s)'s name is/was.
All four frontier models have active contracts with the Pentagon.
And some might say, that alone means little.
But when you take into consideration the implications of the United States-Israel FUTURES Act, whether one endorses it or not, the effects of that mentioned in TFA become quite formidable, and plausibly official.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States-Israel_FUTURES_A...
Edit: I see this comment got immediately flagged. Is there any point of debate here? Instead of disappearing the comment/data, maybe enlighten me, or assuage my concerns. Section 219 was objectively unprecedented in what it seeks to accomplish. Can it not be taken for granted that it would aid such efforts as the article cites? If not, explain.
I wonder if the same thing would happen if someone posted something on Yitzhak Rabin. I suppose that could be a test to prove whether some topics truly just cannot be discussed.
Where? I don't see it in your comment here.
Is it in the room with us right now?
The point behind the Rabin comment was that, if one knows anything of him and his heroic efforts to attain actual, tangible steps toward peace; if that discussion results in the same vitriol, it would serve as proof to me, that any subject involving Israel in this FOV is futile. I see much vitriol toward Israel, which I refer to as 'vitriol' because it often seems out of context however true, and also, I see a distinctly growing anti-Israel public sentiment that seems to omit critical parts of history, eg Rabin -- someone widely supported and revered at the time, by Israelis, and someone one could argue, even by some Palestinians. Arafat snuck across the boarder to give condolences to Rabin's family immediately after the assassination. Very different times, and seemingly, maybe conveniently forgotten. I never see this mentioned in the flame wars. Not that it would demean all of the many legitimate grievances, but it seems to me a very necessary balance-factor that I have yet to see applied.
1. https://www.calcalistech.com/ctechnews/article/hya411vqezg
2. https://www.wsj.com/politics/israels-50-million-experiment-t...
3. https://www.wired.com/story/super-pac-backed-by-openai-and-p...
4. https://www.aa.com.tr/en/middle-east/israel-funded-465m-camp...
We can see that at least some sources are covering the topic of using AI to influence the public on political topics, which regardless of any particularly nation, suggests there is an active interest in manipulating the epistemic integrity of AI systems for purposes of biasing outputs.
And please allow me to make something very clear: I do not care who, nor what is influencing the output of AI, so long as the output is as close to honest as possible, and so long as the the process behind the arrival of final output is the result of the systems doing unhindered work and applying probability over programmed bias. This is the whole point for me. My own research has shown, repeatably, that institutional capture is becoming a repeatable and well established factor behind LLM output on certain topic areas.
The Futures Act integrates military intel, from directed energy weapons (read the docs) to cyber and notably, AI. < Yes, AI. That is the very topic under consideration here. Claiming that it has "nothing to do with LLM development" is potentially an enormous stretch of common sense. We see, already, the US government aiming to become deeply involved in pre-release vetting. Assuming that's the end of the story seems too improbable to me.
[0] - https://breakingdefense.com/2026/05/pentagon-clears-7-tech-f...
I think a little digging will reveal more than you suggest. When I recover from my daily prelude to death, I will recover supporting data. But I can barely function presently. From what I have seen, Anthropic is having and eating its cake on this one. There are peripheral connections that are left un-advertised.
PS: Something not directly related, but regarding Anthropic, and getting little attention: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49307914 - If there's anything to it, some clues of real alignment might be revealed here.
I am confident I will find higher quality material soon. But if not, we can allow you to be acknowledged as to having corrected me on a technicality. But I would urge honest readers not to consider this the only potential connection point here, nor an accurate model for future arrangements. I would bet all I have that you will see closer and more intimate connections and operations between the two, or at the very least, other directly related contractors, eg Palantir, etc. And all other three of four have active contracts along with much discussion on closer ties in the future. In my opinion, that is the future, and I have been saying such since 2024, on the record.
https://trends.google.com/explore?q=flat%2520earth&date=all&...