Comment by nir | Hacker News Reader

Comment by nir | Hacker News Reader

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"The Israeli authorities took George Orwell’s book, Ninteen Eighty Four, and made it in to a master plan."

OMG! The author expands:

"Israeli nationals are always subjected to espionage and surveillance: employers read your email, the state sets up traffic cameras, parking cameras, security cameras and protection cameras"

This, my friends, is the level of hyperbole/ignorance we have to suffer from our media here in Israel.

I'm Israeli. Employers do not read my email. I have no information on whether traffic/security cameras are more prevalent than the average here (traffic, probably so), but I doubt that makes for a "1984" scenario. In fact I seriously doubt the author actually read "1984".

Unfortunately, clowns like him now learned that instead of being seen as a joke by people who actually live here, they can publish in English and get to the front page of news sites worldwide, where people don't know what's going on in Israel and are willing to believe anything.

Your response reeks of privilege and ignorance.

If we put aside the ad-hominem attack on the author, which has a record that speaks for itself, you really should look up cases in the past that perfectly exemplify a surveillance society that is prevalent in Israel - most of you which you can find on said author's blog which you are attempting to discredit.

> the ad-hominem attack on the author

It's not an ad-hominem attack. He stated that the author is a clown because his article is a joke (which he argued for in the paragraph above it), and not that his article is a joke because he is a clown. The more correct term you should have used is 'rude'.

The logic police never sleep.

If I'm ignorant, feel free to enlighten me.

"Clown" was not a good choice for word, but the author's claim that Israel is comparable to 1984 is a joke and his referrals to traffic cameras etc are ridiculous. I'm not trying to discredit him personally, his own writing does that.

What particularly irks me is that he took the opportunist route of posting it in English, knowing there's always an eager audience for any hyperbole on Israel.

(Edit: I can see why my original comment was taken as ad hominem, and apologize. Also I want to thank you for your post on setting up Heroku with Flask/pgSql which helped me a few months ago. It sucks that the first time we have any interaction is this argument. Sorry.)

If it wasn't in English, its unlikely there would be much discussion here. I could be wrong however...

Well, it looks to me as though internal Israeli politics has spilled out to the pages of Hacker News. It's okay, happens to internal American politics all the time.

Yes :) And it seems that, not so surprisingly, there is a disproportionate number of Israelis here (to the population size)

Someone called us "Startup Nation", if that is even partially correct, then, it will explain the numbers.

You're aware that Shin Bet listens to a very significant % of phone calls originating in the West Bank, right? I've had friends who had access to intel and they described it as quote "just like 1984" (1984 reference unsolicited).

It turns out that you don't need advanced computer systems if you've got a lot of phone taps and an endless source of conscripted, arabic-conversational labor in the form of the IDF draft.

Why should they stop at Palestinian nationals? Meretz and B'Tselem are awfully anti-occupation, what if they're aiding terrorists? There's an easy way to find out..

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How is the US further? I mean, not to defend the horrible state of affairs here but at least it's a minor outrage to find out 100% of phone calls might be listened to.

I really think it's more of a problem of familiarity with foreign press (which is to be expected). Americans know how to read, say, a NY Post article, which is probably filled with exaggerations, as opposed to, say, a NYTimes article.

In Israel, as in all countries, different media outlets, and sometimes different sections, or even different authors within the same organization, speak in different registers. It's hard for a foreigner to fully grasp an article without prior familiarity with the writer, that provides the necessary context.

>Employers do not read my email.

In most jurisdictions your work e-mail belongs to the employer and not the employee and can be read and monitored by the employer. Is Israel an exception?

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