[HN Gopher] The blackout Palestinians are facing on social media
___________________________________________________________________
The blackout Palestinians are facing on social media
Author : 2939223
Score : 165 points
Date : 2021-06-26 19:59 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (restofworld.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (restofworld.org)
| werber wrote:
| As an American Jew who grew up with a distorted and racist world
| view in regard to Palestine this just feels like history
| repeating itself. The troubles that face Israelis have always
| been amplified over those of Palestinians in my experience. That
| control of the narrative led me to be actively racist for most of
| my life while thinking I was not and also morally superior. This
| kind of censorship has a body count, and it lets war crimes
| happen in clear view while the on lookers think they are doing
| the right thing.
| YZF wrote:
| How do we measure this sort of amplification objectively? How
| do we account for context? I would say that it's exactly the
| opposite, that through most of the history of the Arab-Israeli
| conflict (of which the Palestinian issue has been a sub-
| conflict) the Arab voice has been amplified over the Israeli.
| Israel has faced many boycotts, many attempts to destroy it,
| and generally as less than favorable in world public opinion.
|
| It is maybe true that there's been a little shift with the
| collapse of the soviet union and the split in the Arab world. I
| would still say that Israel gets more negative coverage in
| comparison to other world events and even within the specific
| conflict.
|
| Just a recent example, at some point during the Covid crisis
| Israel was extensively criticized for not treating Palestinians
| in the West Bank and Gaza equitably with regard to vaccine
| distribution. Nobody even mentions that Israeli Palestinians
| are treated equitably in this regard. Nuances are lost.
| Recently when Israel did agree to provide Palestinians with
| vaccines the Palestinians rejected them:
| https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/israel-says-covid-...
| EDIT: And forgot to add my point, that this did not receive as
| wide of a coverage.
|
| Lack of "censorship" also has a body count. What about all the
| Covid conspiracy theories? Should we give those guys a free
| stage on social media? Incitement to commit real violence is
| also common in social platforms. To give an example from the
| "other" side some mobs that gathered to attack Israeli Arabs
| during the last conflicts organized on social media. Would you
| be critical if those voices were suppressed?
|
| I can be really critical of Israel for many things. But I'm
| really not buying that the balance is set the wrong way. Keep
| in mind a lot of us are consuming the kind of news that
| amplifies our world views anyways. Which brings me back to how
| do we measure this in a controlled way?
| wolverine876 wrote:
| Note that the Israeli right-wing's biggest supporters in the US
| are Christian Evangelicals, not Jews. Most Jewish Americans
| vote Democrat and are liberal.
|
| https://duckduckgo.com/?q=evangelical+support+for+israel+sit...
| Ozzie_osman wrote:
| The sad part is that you can get called an anti-Semite (or
| self-hating Jew) for expressing any sort of solidarity with
| Palestinians. The _sadder_ part is that actual anti-Semites
| then jump in and use that situation to further their agenda.
| tinyhouse wrote:
| The sad part is that many American jews are so worried about
| their image that they will automatically go against Israel no
| matter what.
| wolverine876 wrote:
| Who? When? That's a baseless, slanderous attack, usually
| used to silence Jewish people (and others too, I'm sure)
| saying unpopular things.
| tartoran wrote:
| Yes, labels are prepared for any type of criticism. The sad
| part is that there is some genuine anti-semitism out there
| (same is true for racism) and lumping this acusation with any
| criticism will weaken a real cause (again, same is true for
| racism).
| coryrc wrote:
| How many more wars do they need to start and lose before
| leaving Israel alone?
|
| The USA would flatten Tijuana in a hot minute if they were
| throwing rockets into San Diego and the Mexican military wasn't
| stopping them.
|
| Additionally, democracy doesn't always work. Two wolves and a
| lamb voting for dinner isn't fair or right.
| DoctorNick wrote:
| Americans are more prone to this kind of thing because they're
| already used to overriding settler-colonial propaganda
| influencing their mindset; Zionist propaganda is just another
| flavor.
| rayiner wrote:
| That's a hilarious assertion. One of the things we found
| puzzling when we moved here was why Americans spent so much
| time in school studying all the bad things the country did.
| Totally bizarre to us, coming from Asia.
| slipframe wrote:
| Lots of countries have similar sorts of histories I think;
| while I'm sure what you say is part of the equation, I think
| it doesn't fully explain why Americans are much more likely
| to support Israel than people in other countries (for
| instance, Australia.) I think another piece of this puzzle is
| the popularity of Evangelical Christianity in America,
| particularly Christian Zionism and the belief that the state
| of Israel is a necessary precondition for the return of their
| Messiah. That's the sort of rhetoric I was raised with
| anyway.
| Bayart wrote:
| It's rooted in British Israelism [1].
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Israelism
| xupybd wrote:
| It is hard to say Israel has less right to the land it took
| over than say New Zealand. The main difference is how long
| ago the settling happened.
| 2939223 wrote:
| Except Pakeha aren't carpet-bombing Maori in droves.
| crooked-v wrote:
| New Zealand is a bad example to use, given that it's one of
| the few cases where settlement was based on a non-coerced
| treaty intended to actively integrate the native people as
| equal citizens with the settlers. While the NZ government
| later spent about a hundred years ignoring the treaty and
| treating the Maori badly, the treaty itself, the process
| that led to it, and the actions of the settler leaders at
| the time of its signing had a legitimacy that most other
| cases of colonization and settlement (including that of
| Israel) have generally lacked.
| let_me_ask_this wrote:
| In that case Israel should follow New Zealand's example and
| allow all Palestinians to become citizens, with full
| rights, stop being an ethnostate for Jews, stop with the
| racism and start behaving like the progressive country they
| pretend to be.
| wolverine876 wrote:
| > allow all Palestinians to become citizens, with full
| rights, stop being an ethnostate for Jews
|
| If that happened, then Palestinians would outnumber Jews
| and could dominate the country democratically. I can
| understand the potential for discrimination.
|
| That's why the two state solution is often considered the
| only just solution: Both groups each have a country in
| which they are the majority.
|
| The Israeli right rejects the two state solution, and
| clearly they reject being a minority, so that only leaves
| oppression of Palestinians (which is awful and unjust, to
| avoid any doubt).
|
| > the progressive country they pretend to be
|
| Israel hasn't pretended to be progressive in awhile.
| Netanyahu and some of his predecessors made no pretenses
| about it.
| Google234 wrote:
| If they did that then they would completely cease being a
| progressive country and would become an Islamist country.
| let_me_ask_this wrote:
| I just want to point out that this nonsense is
| Islamophobia and should not be tolerated. Muslims are no
| less people than anyone else. They are not the cartoonish
| evil character that you believe them to be.
| BeFlatXIII wrote:
| Perhaps they ought to set up their constitution to have a
| military pledged to the maintenance of a purely secular
| state that will overthrow any overtly religious
| government, no matter the electoral margins they earned
| when getting installed.
| let_me_ask_this wrote:
| Or they could do what Lebanon does and have some
| mandatory representation from all ethnic groups in all
| important public institutions. There are definitely ways
| to make this work, if there is a true willingness to live
| in peace.
| 2939223 wrote:
| Such behaviour conflicts with a core tenet of Judaism:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jews_as_the_chosen_people
| wizzwizz4 wrote:
| No it doesn't.
|
| > _In Judaism, "chosenness" is the belief that the Jews,
| via descent from the ancient Israelites, are the chosen
| people, i.e. selected to be in a covenant with God._
|
| > _This view, however, does not always preclude a belief
| that God has a relationship with other peoples--rather,
| Judaism held that God had entered into a covenant with
| all humankind, and that Jews and non-Jews alike have a
| relationship with God. Biblical references as well as
| rabbinic literature support this view: Moses refers to
| the "God of the spirits of all flesh",[4] and the Tanakh
| (Hebrew Bible) also identifies prophets outside the
| community of Israel. Based on these statements, some
| rabbis theorized that, in the words of Nethanel ibn
| Fayyumi, a Yemenite Jewish theologian of the 12th
| century, "God permitted to every people something he
| forbade to others...[and] God sends a prophet to every
| people according to their own language."(Levine,
| 1907/1966)_
|
| > _The Mishnah continues, and states that anyone who
| kills or saves a single human, not Jewish, life, has done
| the same (save or kill) to an entire world. The Tosefta,
| an important supplement to the Mishnah,[5] also states:
| "Righteous people of all nations have a share in the
| world to come" (Sanhedrin 105a)._
|
| Which part of this is about racial supremacy?
| 2939223 wrote:
| Chosenness by definition is divisive. From antiquity to
| the present, the idea of being divinely chosen has had
| powerful and often pernicious effects. If only one group
| has been divinely chosen then others have not been, and
| that justifies subjugating them and taking their land.
| Such rationalization has been used repeatedly, in the
| most virulent forms of anti-Semitism, in the enslavement
| and even extermination of aboriginal peoples, and in the
| confiscation of land by force from those not chosen--be
| they Canaanites, Jews, Muslims, Africans, Native
| Americans, Palestinians, and too many others.
| [deleted]
| DoctorNick wrote:
| Yes, that's correct.
| TX0098812 wrote:
| Maybe I just have the same distorted perspective... but isn't
| Palestine still denying Israels right to exist?
|
| There seems to be a major campaign right now by Palestinians
| and their supporters (and other people who don't like Jews
| which strongly correlates with Israelis) to portray them only
| as innocent victims, but that seems disingenuous if, assuming
| it's correct, wiping out Israel is still policy.
|
| Edit: Oh the irony, I've been both downvoted and flagged.
| Something something blackout. Hypocrites.
| rayiner wrote:
| As an American who moved here from a Muslim country let me
| assure you Muslims are socialized to feel the same way about
| Jews.
|
| Took me a long time to see it. In high school I obviously
| supported Palestine and thought Israel was a settler colony
| (all of it, not just Gaza). Then I realized: wait why do I even
| care? I'm from 3,000 miles away in Bangladesh. In Bangladesh,
| people don't even care about Bangladeshis being held in near-
| slavery conditions in Qatar. (More Bangladeshi workers have
| died in the Middle East since 2010 than Palestinians killed in
| the conflict with Israel since 1947.) They don't care about the
| Rohingya. They don't care what Saudi is doing in Yemen. They're
| very friendly with China and don't care about Uighurs. But
| everyone has an opinion on how Israel is oppressing Palestine.
| jedimind wrote:
| So you stop caring about something as soon as a specific
| number of other people don't care?
|
| "Yeah I used to care about homeless people, but then one day
| I was like 'wait why do I even care', `nobody` in LA seems to
| care"
|
| If you truly care about something, you care because of your
| values and you care regardless of what others say or do.
| dang wrote:
| Please don't cross into name-calling or personal attack.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| jedimind wrote:
| Sorry dang, which part is name calling tho?
| dang wrote:
| "infantile reasoning at its finest"
| jedimind wrote:
| The reasoning is objectively infantile I doubt that
| anyone can argue against that. I didn't say that he is
| infantile, I criticised the reasoning not the person.
| Sorry if even that is considered 'name calling'. I can
| edit it and word it differently if you want.
| dang wrote:
| This feels like hair-splitting to me. Your comment
| obviously broke the site guidelines. If you'd please re-
| read them and do a more careful job of sticking to the
| rules, we'd appreciate it. Note this one, for example:
|
| " _Please respond to the strongest plausible
| interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one
| that 's easier to criticize. Assume good faith._"
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| jedimind wrote:
| There is a big difference between saying "your argument
| is terrible or infantile or whatever" and saying "you are
| such and such", I don't think that's hair splitting at
| all and I also don't think that the guideline you have
| referenced applies in this case either, but whatever you
| are the moderator so there is no point in even trying to
| argue. I edited the problematic part out.
| wizzwizz4 wrote:
| Criticising somebody's behaviour as "characteristic of an
| infant" is very easy to read as a personal attack; I
| think it's best to edit it.
| thera2 wrote:
| I'm a nobody but I didnt see anything wrong with the
| comment. Its pointing out the illogical idea of caring
| for a cause only because others cared. I'm sure this is a
| big problem today with social media. People (generally
| speaking) just want to fit in, they have no real
| motivation to support a good cause at their own expense.
| jedimind wrote:
| Thanks for the feedback. I specifically targeted the
| reasoning and not the person, I thought it was odd that
| it's still considered 'name calling'.
| Ozzie_osman wrote:
| It's almost like maybe you should care and speak out about
| Palestine _and_ Bengladeshis in Qatar _and_ Rohingya _and_
| Yemenis _and_ Uighurs.
| stefan_ wrote:
| Or maybe you start to question why you are being fed
| agitprop about X while your government is doing Y?
| Ozzie_osman wrote:
| Not mutually exclusive.
| BeFlatXIII wrote:
| There are only so many hours in a day. This should be true
| at the community level, but an individual passionately
| caring about all of those injustices at once will end up
| spamming social media with advocacy because there is not
| enough time to pick any one to do something with greater
| impact.
| slim wrote:
| He does not have to care about every injustice every
| time. But he should not be proud about not caring.
| bradleyjg wrote:
| Are we allowed to anything else---or just eat, sleep, and
| speak out about badness in the world?
| Ozzie_osman wrote:
| You're right. I had to quit my job and stop caring for my
| family because I was spending so much time occasionally
| speaking up about things I thought were bad in the world.
|
| I also occasionally donate small amounts to causes I
| believe in and so I better check my bank account because
| I'm probably broke.
|
| /s
| xupybd wrote:
| This is what war has done in almost every conflict. The enemy
| is a monster so attacking the monster justifies far too much.
| selimthegrim wrote:
| They don't seem to care much about the stranded Biharis on
| their doorstep either AFAIK.
| luffapi wrote:
| I'd urge people not to give up caring. There's a lot of
| crappy things happening in the world and it can be a lot to
| deal with, but just tossing your hands up isn't the answer.
|
| I'd also argue that tax paying Americans are obligated to
| care. Our money is funding Israel's crimes and we are morally
| culpable if we don't resist or try to change policy.
| tartoran wrote:
| Yes, I am aware of that and do care for justice but am
| afraid to talk abour it IRL to be honest. To be publically
| acused of antisemitism for being critical to Israel could
| be a real nightmare Im not ready to go through. I am no
| antisemitist, on the contrary, some of my favorite people
| are jewish. Am I a coward? I think so but I have a family
| and want to hold onto my job. Here on HN I am not afraid to
| comment because this account is not tied to my real
| identity.
|
| Ps There is one think I do which I know is directly
| connected to this. I boycot Israeli food products, mostly
| grown on occupied lands. The inpact is close to nil but
| it's the most I can do at the moment.
| YZF wrote:
| You should know that saying some of my favorite people
| are jewish is something that sounds pretty bad. The idea
| that you would be branded as an anti-semite and lose your
| job because you are critical of Israel also sounds bad.
|
| A lot of people are critical of Israel's policies,
| including many Israelis. There is absolutely no problem
| with that.
| luffapi wrote:
| I agree this is a real issue. Even if it's just voicing
| support under a pseudonym (such as I've done here), it's
| better than nothing. The younger generations are
| definitely more aware of the issues Palestinians are
| facing and more vocal about putting an end to it. That
| offers me some hope.
| [deleted]
| bkirkby wrote:
| Can you share with us the most egregious example of a war crime
| committed by Israel that caused you to change your view?
|
| Please be specific about the laws, actions, and outcomes that
| resulted in the crime.
| hoka-one-one wrote:
| Jews are not white so by definition they can't be racist.
| Racism has to do with systemic power structures. Most of the
| problems in the middle east have been caused by white
| colonialism.
|
| What's going on between Jews and Palestinians is warfare that
| sometimes gets out of hand. That's distinct from racism.
| dang wrote:
| We've banned this account for repeatedly breaking the site
| guidelines. Please don't create accounts to troll HN.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| [deleted]
| msisdead wrote:
| I hope your comment is not removed here but I want to ask you
| something- do you support 4 year kids being taught "death to
| Israel"?
|
| Let's see whose comment gets flagged first.
| dang wrote:
| Please don't take HN threads straight into nationalistic
| flamewar hell, regardless of what site of what battle you
| happen to be on. That is emphatically not what this site is
| for.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| ljasdas wrote:
| Doesn't the same apply to this [1] comment?
|
| [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27645772
| msisdead wrote:
| Except it's easy for you to do a cliched "omg it is
| Nationalist flamewar" but essentially end up proving my
| point. Palestinians have no high ground here. You have
| silenced me for saying what is a fact. Dang you are a tool.
| azifali wrote:
| As a progressive Muslim - I believe both Israel and Palestine
| have the right to exist, and thrive.
|
| Unfortunately, it looks like the state of Israel has now become a
| needless oppressor and are content building an apartheid state
| without learning from the past.
| rayiner wrote:
| As a conservative former Muslim: As long as Palestinians chant
| "from the river to the sea" and tolerate Hamas any talk about a
| two state solution is a joke. By not rejecting Hamas,
| Palestinians make themselves a military problem rather than a
| civil rights issue. You don't give civil rights to people who
| are military threat.
|
| This isn't a point about morality, but the simple reality of
| nations protecting themselves. If you don't have military
| superiority then scrupulous non-violence is the only
| alternative.
| Udik wrote:
| > the simple reality of nations protecting themselves
|
| Israel is stealing from others (this is an established fact),
| its victims react, so Israel "protects itself" against that
| reaction. Are you ok with this? Do you think that robbers
| have a right to protect themselves from their victims?
| crooked-v wrote:
| Unchecked illegal settlement makes anti-Israeli sentiment
| inevitable. If the obvious outcome of playing by the rules is
| losing all their land and livelihood anyway, people won't
| play by the rules.
| let_me_ask_this wrote:
| The problem with peaceful protest is that it can only work if
| there is very strong international pressure to stop Israel,
| because they most definitely won't stop by themselves. The
| problem with expecting any international pressure, is that
| America vetos any such event, and Israel work really hard to
| make sure they always have the backing of all the countries
| that matter.
|
| In any case, Hamas's existence is completely orthogonal to
| the reason for Israel's aggression. They want more land and
| less Palestinians on it.
| notsureaboutpg wrote:
| What does being a "progressive" Muslim have to do with it?
|
| Also, do you mean you are affiliated with Muslims for
| Progressive Values? Otherwise I don't know what makes you
| "progressive". Do you not believe the Quran is the word of God
| or something?
| [deleted]
| buran77 wrote:
| > One of the charges brought against them was that "their
| nationalistic sentiment" posed a threat to "state security."
|
| Reprehensible. But when you have powerful enough friends it turns
| out it's perfectly acceptable. There will always be someone else
| out there to serve as the "greater evil" cover and this is a
| great disservice to the world, as crimes against humanity are
| just swept under the rug.
|
| > Social media, our last remaining avenue for exposing the
| violence, was aiding and abetting Israeli crimes against us. Our
| documentation and testimonies of the violence we faced from
| Israeli settlers were shut down by tech companies far from
| Palestine. This included videos of mobs chasing Palestinians
| while screaming "Death to Arabs;" Israeli police firing live
| ammunition at unarmed Palestinians; the carpet bombing of Gaza;
|
| As long as western social media is almost entirely under US
| control one has to accept that everything there will dance to the
| tune made by and for the US and their closest interests. That
| much touted freedom of speech extends only as far as it isn't an
| inconvenience or embarrassment for those with the strings and
| levers. Carpet bombing civilians doesn't send a good message to
| be associated with the US by alliance.
| OnlySlightly wrote:
| This is objectively a terrible piece, filled with lies and
| misinformation, with "sources" that more often than not don't
| have nothing to do with the author's allegations. I'm saddened
| that many people reading it will likely believe it at face value,
| without any attempt to fact check the claims being made. The
| author fails to present any convincing evidence in support of the
| claim that Palestinians on social media are unfairly silences by
| Israel, but instead presents a collection of lies, lies by
| omission, baseless allegations, and ridiculous hyperboles.
|
| Some examples:
|
| > For months, the 23-year-old el-Kurd twins had become the faces
| of Palestinian resistance in Sheikh Jarrah, broadcasting on
| Twitter and Instagram how they and seven other families refused
| to be forcibly expelled from their homes by Israeli settlers.
|
| Nobody tried to expel anyone from Sheikh Jarrah in the last two
| month, because the legal case was awaiting a decision by the
| Supreme Court, and is still is.
|
| In practice Mohammad el-Kurd's social media accounts are indeed a
| source of incitement, and routinely contain complete
| fabrications.
|
| > This practice is by no means new. In 2015, I recall receiving
| updates from Palestinians on Twitter when Israel detained
| Palestinian poet Dareen Tatour over a poem she posted on Facebook
| and YouTube. The poem had a line that repeated: "Resist, my
| people, resist them."
|
| This is incorrect. Dareen Tatour was directly calling for an
| intifada within the green line, in order to "defend Al Aqsa".
|
| > During the settler-violence at Sheikh Jarrah earlier this
| month, for the first time in recent memory, Palestinians were
| able to use social media -- namely Twitter and Instagram -- to
| freely show the images, sounds, videos, and words that are
| largely censored, diluted, or decontextualized under the media's
| illusion of objective reporting.
|
| Quite a ridiculous statement given the amount of completely fake
| news those Palestinians on social media have produced, via the
| method of attaching fake titles to videos presented out of
| context (i.e. an arrest of an Israeli Arab rioter in Haifa posted
| with titles such as "Israeli police evicting a Palestinian family
| to give their home to settlers").
|
| > This included videos of mobs chasing Palestinians while
| screaming "Death to Arabs"
|
| Those events were extensively covered in Israel and
| internationally. The author presents zero evidence of censorship.
|
| > Israeli police firing live ammunition at unarmed Palestinians
|
| I'm not sure what event the author is referring to. She doesn't
| elaborate further. We are just supposed to assume that it
| happened because she wrote so.
|
| > the carpet bombing of Gaza
|
| There was no "carpet bombing of Gaza", by any definition of the
| term "carpet bombing.
|
| > Israeli journalist Ben Caspit wrote of the Tamimi case: "In the
| case of the girls, we should exact a price at some other
| opportunity, in the dark, without witnesses and cameras."
|
| The phrase "exact a price" is never used. The word "arrest" is
| used. The journalist supported the soldiers for their restraint,
| wrote that if he was the one slapping the soldiers, he would've
| have been arrested immediately, and wrote that in this case it's
| better to arrest the Tamimi girls at some other time.
|
| > to remove Palestinian content on the vague basis of
| "incitement."
|
| Why is it a "vague" basis? The author doesn't explain. In
| practice Palestinian incitement is extremely prominent and
| directly leads to terrorist attacks. See for example the entire
| completely fabricated "Israel is trying to take over Al-Aqsa"
| plot.
|
| > administrative detention -- a policy from the British Mandate
| in which Israel imprisons Palestinians without charge or trial
|
| Administrative detention is used on Israeli Jews as well,
| specifically in cases where they participate in terrorist
| activities against Palestinians.
|
| > there are the actual soldiers flattening the strip
|
| The Gaza Strip wasn't "flattened" by any reasonable
| interoperation of that word.
|
| > There are the settlers not only chanting "Death to Arabs," but
| actually killing Palestinians in cold blood.
|
| When? Where? Again, referring to some unknown event with zero
| elaboration.
|
| And so on and so forth...
| valparaiso wrote:
| Some questions from non-american from Eastern Europe:
|
| 1. Why Palestinians celebrated 9/11 attacks on civilians
|
| 2. Why Palestinians teach to kill Israelis from the kindergarten
|
| 3. Why Palestinians support ISIS and generally jihadists who
| behead kids/women/elderly people
| dang wrote:
| Please don't take HN threads directly into
| nationalistic/religious/racial flamewar hell. That's exactly
| the opposite of what this site is for--regardless of how
| difficult the topic is. A topic being difficult just not
| justify setting it immediately on fire.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
|
| Edit: please stop posting ideological/etc. flamewar comments to
| HN generally. You've done it repeatedly, and we ban that sort
| of account.
| aaronchall wrote:
| He raises fair points on this highly controversial subject.
| If we're to give this matter a fair hearing, we need to put
| all the relevant facts on the table. Maybe there was a nicer
| way for him to put these facts, but that doesn't invalidate
| them.
| dang wrote:
| Those aren't "fair points", they're garden-variety flamewar
| talking points that cross directly into slurs. This is not
| a hard call.
| golergka wrote:
| Even this comment section very clearly shows who and what is
| really being silenced.
| cupofcoffee wrote:
| shhhh stop crying
| mcguire wrote:
| Please notice: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Act.IL
| Udik wrote:
| > Act.IL is a Social networking service launched in June 2017
| that can be used via a mobile app on mobile devices running iOS
| or Android.[1] It is used by supporters of Israel to oppose
| "anti-Israel content" such as boycott, divestment and sanctions
| movement (BDS).[2][3][4]
| Animats wrote:
| A few years ago, criticism of Israel's policies started being
| called anti-antisemitism.[1] That made it OK to censor criticism
| of Israel. Israel's policies got more divisive under 12 years of
| Netanyahu, and there's more reason to be critical of them. Those
| two trends are in collision.
|
| [1] https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/criticism-of-israel-is-
| anti-...
| TX0098812 wrote:
| > A few years ago, criticism of Israel's policies started being
| called anti-antisemitism
|
| It is often the case. Take a peek anywhere neo-nazis gather. As
| far as I can tell, they've realized that while they're getting
| nowhere attacking Jews, they are able to effectively attack the
| Jewish state.
|
| It works, I think, because it's a David and Goliath type story
| and everyone tends to root for the underdog (even when it's
| trying its best to murder random civilians).
| slibhb wrote:
| > A few years ago, criticism of Israel's policies started being
| called anti-antisemitism
|
| I'm not sure if that's new. And while it's certainly true that
| you can criticize Israel without being an antisemite, it's also
| true that a lot of people can't seem to thread that particular
| needle.
| tiku wrote:
| "For months, the 23-year-old el-Kurd twins had become the faces
| of Palestinian resistance in Sheikh Jarrah, broadcasting on
| Twitter and Instagram how they and seven other families refused
| to be forcibly expelled from their homes by Israeli settlers. "
|
| So there was not really a problem with social media then.
|
| I am hearing that recordings of violence got silenced, thats not
| weird. If i post a violent video of something, changes are that
| they are muted also.
| slipframe wrote:
| > _I am hearing that recordings of violence got silenced, thats
| not weird. If i post a violent video of something, changes are
| that they are muted also._
|
| This is a good reason to mourn the demise of liveleaks. For as
| gross as much of that content was, I think our society still
| needs a way to publish videos that make advertisers
| uncomfortable.
| ComputerGuru wrote:
| > So there was not really a problem then.
|
| There wasn't a problem until there was. Just because they
| weren't silenced until the issue gained global notoriety
| outside of the social media bubble doesn't mean there is no
| problem.
| ljasdas wrote:
| The issue is that the social media platforms specifically
| target silencing Palestinian content. Both Twitter and Facebook
| attributed it to technical bugs [1] [2] while they kept hiding
| the content.
|
| [1] https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/palestinian-
| facebook-...
|
| [2] https://soyacincau.com/2021/05/17/instagram-twitter-
| palestin...
| mikevm wrote:
| Why are you posting from newly generated anonymous accounts
| you cowards?
| tiku wrote:
| Well they say automated systems did it, could be. Especially
| if the social media teams or other supports from Israel are
| constantly reporting (violent) content, then that content
| would be flagged/deleted etc.
| ljasdas wrote:
| Strangely, only Palestinian voices get silenced...
| mcguire wrote:
| " _One of the charges brought against them was that "their
| nationalistic sentiment" posed a threat to "state security."_ "
| tiku wrote:
| Funny to see how a lot of comments get silenced/flagged here. In
| a topic about social media silencing. The irony.
|
| This is how it works on all social media, people are offended and
| they report it.
| [deleted]
| ardit33 wrote:
| Wow... this comment section is proving the point of the article.
| This was posted last night as well and got flagged right away.
|
| The discussion is important as it is about Tech platforms
| deciding to side with Israel and silencing Palestinians in social
| media and they have no recourse. We have had plenty of
| discussions here about social media censorship (especially during
| covid and trump era). This is a valid discussion as well as it is
| about human rights. If we can talk and about Indian and Nigerian,
| or Chinese censorship against the Uyghurs and the Tiananmen
| square masacre, then we can talk about Israeli censorship war
| against the Palestinians as well.
|
| Also Computer Ethics is part of the Computer Science curriculum
| in most colleges, and part of technology. We are not going to
| solve this conflict here, but we should know where censorship in
| tech is being used to suppress the voice of a whole population. I
| was born in a former communist country (1980, Albania), and
| censorship and media control was used to suppress the voice of
| the people in order to prop up a brutal regime.
|
| "In addition to using social media to incriminate Palestinians,
| Israel has also used it to muzzle us. In 2016, Israel's then-
| Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked boasted that, in the previous
| four-month period, Facebook had complied with 95% of Israel's
| requests to remove Palestinian content on the vague basis of
| "incitement." A year later, Israel tried to push the "Facebook
| Bill" through the Knesset, legislation which would force Facebook
| to remove any content designated as "incitement." "
| yuvalr1 wrote:
| This comment section really proves what is being silenced. Just
| look for the voices that are not being represented here.
| nextstep wrote:
| Jillian C. York's book "Silicon Values" has a chapter about this
| "electronic apartheid". For all of the big social media
| companies, the content moderation for both Israel and the
| occupied Palestinian territories is handled by the Israeli
| office.
|
| https://www.versobooks.com/books/3772-silicon-values
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| bsd44 wrote:
| People seem to believe that if you bury your head in the sand,
| nobody can see you. Just because you don't talk about something
| openly it does not imply that the discussion doesn't happen at
| all. It happens in closed circles which just fuels the hatred
| towards the censorship and those who enforce it. You can't forbid
| people to think and have opinions. What is the point of flagging
| this entry? You either introduce a policy that forbids posting
| political issues on HN entirely or you don't, selection makes you
| a hypocrite.
| dang wrote:
| I'm not sure I follow this comment, but this bit is definitely
| wrong:
|
| > _You either introduce a policy that forbids posting political
| issues on HN entirely or you don 't_
|
| I've explained at length why neither of those approaches is
| viable on HN. Here are some of those past explanations:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21607844
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22902490
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17014869
|
| https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so...
| .
|
| If anyone has a question that hasn't been answered there, I'd
| like to know what it is, and if you know a better way for HN to
| relate to political topics while fulfilling its mandate, I'd
| definitely like to know what it is. Just please familiarize
| yourself with the past explanations first, because if it's
| something simple like "just ban politics" or "just allow
| everything", I've answered many times already why it won't
| work.
| bronzeage wrote:
| It's not apartheid because Palestinians are not the majority.
| Sheikh Jarrah was bought by Jews before the 48s war and judges
| simply enforce the owners right to their own properties. There's
| no rule saying if you happen to build on someone else's land you
| get to keep it.
|
| Jerusalem Arabs get Israeli citizenship and all the rights
| derived from it. They just don't get the right to incite for
| violence as they have shown again and again it leads to
| terrorism.
|
| These Arabs who cry about being a victim have more rights than
| any Arabs in neighboring countries, where they aren't even
| allowed to walk outside as a woman without head covering, and
| speaking up against the regime is a capital offense.
| cupofcoffee wrote:
| shhhhhhh
| deadite wrote:
| >Facebook, Twitter, and TikTok, among others, have more control
| over our voices than we did.
|
| What's the story here? These platforms and most social media/news
| outlets are either owned by Jews or have deep financially vested
| interests from Jewish VCs (yes, including TikTok). Of course
| you're going to be silenced on their platforms. Anyone getting in
| a kerfuffle that this is a topic point that can't be brought up
| isn't doing themselves any favors.
| dang wrote:
| You can't do this here. I've banned this account.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| crooked-v wrote:
| Please don't conflate "Jews in general" with "Israeli Jews" or
| "the Israeli government". These three things are not inherently
| the same.
| deadite wrote:
| I never said they were inherently the same. I said the
| websites are owned or financially backed by Jews (meaning,
| they are owned by them) and no one should be surprised that
| they end up being against Palestine, or pro-Israel.
| dang wrote:
| " _Don 't feed egregious comments by replying; flag them
| instead._"
|
| a.k.a. please don't feed the trolls
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| ljasdas wrote:
| Not sure why HN moderation changed the original title, which was
| "I am Palestinian. Here's how Israel silences us on social
| media." to its current form.
| 2939223 wrote:
| Demonisation of Israel cannot be tolerated. Very telling.
| dang wrote:
| > very telling
|
| This is the sort of internet cheap shot that passionate
| partisans come up with. If you multiply all the moderation
| actions you agree with by 0% and all the ones you disagree
| with by 100%, yes, you're going to end up with quite a
| picture of bias. But it's a picture you've generated yourself
| by weighting the variables that way.
|
| https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que.
| ..
|
| https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que.
| ..
|
| For example, I specifically turned off the flags on this
| submission. That's a moderation action you presumably
| support, since you submitted it. But you overlook that, while
| a title edit is "very telling". Meanwhile there's someone on
| the opposite side of the question who's weighting the same
| two actions in the opposite way and coming up with the
| opposite conclusion, which they no doubt also consider "very
| telling".
|
| More here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27646015.
| dang wrote:
| I changed it the same way we change every such title which
| relies on linkbait tropes (which is what "I am $X. Here's how
| $Y" is). Linkbait tropes make HN threads significantly worse.
| Editing them is standard moderation practice here (https://hn.a
| lgolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...), and is
| also in the site guidelines (" _Please use the original title,
| unless it is misleading or linkbait; don 't editorialize._" -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html).
|
| I also took care to use representative language from the
| article itself, describing what it is about. That's also
| standard moderation practice: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange
| =all&page=0&prefix=true&que....
|
| Whenever we do any moderation on any divisive topic there's a
| strong tendency to leap to the conclusion that it signifies
| some political agenda, secret opposition to one side, secret
| support for the other, and so on. I understand that that's how
| the internet works. But it's deeply untrue. We're simply doing
| what we always do, in as even-handed a way as we possibly can.
| Unfortunately, that means that passionate partisans on every
| side of every divisive topic end up feeling like the mods are
| secretly against them--but there doesn't seem to be any way
| around that, much as I wish there were.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| ljasdas wrote:
| After taking a few minutes to think about it I agree with you
| and I can see your point.
| mikevm wrote:
| dang, why are such posts even allowed? It's posted by an
| anonymous user who's just created his account, and the
| content his highly one-sided and prone to create political
| flame wars.
| luffapi wrote:
| You're calling on a platform moderator to silence
| Palestinian voices. It's the exact problem the OP is
| talking about.
|
| Censorship in social media is definitely on topic for HN.
| dang wrote:
| Some posts with political overlap are on-topic for HN.
| Exactly how we handle that is a complex question, but also
| one that has been well-worked-out over the years. Here are
| some detailed explanations:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21607844
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22902490
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17014869
|
| https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&s
| o....
|
| The current post was obviously submitted because
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27638871 got flagged.
| I'm currently trying to decide whether to restore the
| earlier submission instead of this one, which is what we'd
| normally do, or whether that thread is unsalvageable. Not
| clear. Edit: that thread looks pretty unsalvageable.
| underdeserver wrote:
| If anyone ever thought your job was easy, well...
|
| Thank you (again), dang. I really appreciate your work.
| wizzwizz4 wrote:
| Not every _source_ has to be "balanced". A balanced
| perspective comes from listening to lots of voices, not one
| neutral-sounding summary.
| underseacables wrote:
| I do hope the rockets stop falling on Israel so there can be
| peace.
| tiku wrote:
| If only they used all that money to build up instead of down..
| luffapi wrote:
| Peace is not possible on occupied land or in an apartheid
| state.
| mikevm wrote:
| Please prove that Israel is an Apartheid state, having
| Israeli Arabs serving in Parliament, as chief justices,
| chiefs of Police and more? I guess you Leftists can now
| pretty much just change the meaning of any word to mean
| whatever fits your narrative.
| wizzwizz4 wrote:
| Technically, it is (in some circumstances): https://en.wikipe
| dia.org/wiki/Indian_independence_movement#F...
| crooked-v wrote:
| Those circumstances are pretty unlike these ones, though,
| in that they involved (among other things) the UK being
| badly over-strained in every possible way in the aftermath
| of WW2, India being large enough and relatively untouched
| enough from WW2 to be increasingly ungovernable, and an
| independent India being little to no threat to the UK
| despite those first two factors.
| crooked-v wrote:
| Peace is unlikely as long as settlers continue to claim
| Palestinean land and force them out of their own homes,
| considering what an obvious mockery this makes of any kind of
| negotiations even for those Palestineans who do actively want
| peace.
| [deleted]
| crooked-v wrote:
| What are you talking about?
| TX0098812 wrote:
| And similarly peace isn't possible while the wall is there.
| Although the reason it was built was because there wasn't
| peace. And so on about a thousand years back.
| crooked-v wrote:
| The most obvious thing that motivates Palestineans to
| actively be violent rather than living in misery (and
| people can take a lot of misery) is that ongoing settlement
| and similar measures make it clear that the Israeli
| government wouldn't actually let them live in peace even if
| they wanted it.
|
| Or, in other words, I believe that Hamas would have much
| less pull if it was _just_ walls and not all the other
| stuff too.
| tiku wrote:
| As my original comment was immediatly flagged:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sheikh_Jarrah_property_dispute
|
| There was a court case that ruled that they have to be
| evicted because of not paying rent.
|
| "In response, the owners of the property (a private Israeli
| NGO, Nahalat Shimon), claim they have the legal title to the
| property in question and that, in the absence of rent being
| paid by the tenants, the tenants ought to be evicted for
| breaching the law."
|
| So it's not some hayfork/violent spur of the moment thing.
| Ownership is somewhat regulated and can be fought in court.
| mcguire wrote:
| Quite a good article about the issue.
|
| " _The Sheikh Jarrah property dispute (as described by the
| Israeli government and their supporters) or the Expulsion
| of Palestinians from Sheikh Jarrah (as described by
| Palestinians and their supporters) is a long-running legal
| and political dispute between Palestinian refugees and
| Israeli Jews over the ownership of certain properties and
| housing units in Sheikh Jarrah, East Jerusalem that has
| been called a microcosm of the Israeli-Palestinian disputes
| over land since 1948. Israel 's laws allow Jews to file
| claims over property in East Jerusalem which they owned
| prior to 1948, but reject Palestinian claims over property
| in Israel proper which they owned. In this specific case,
| the Palestinian residents of Sheikh Jarrah were refugees
| who got plots, previously owned by Jews, in UNRWA lottery,
| relinquishing in return their refugee documents and
| accompanying rights. They have no right under Israeli law
| to repossess their pre-1948 homes in Haifa, Sarafand and
| Jaffa._"
| crooked-v wrote:
| This specific case has little to do with most illegal
| settlements, which have no dispute over ownership and are
| generally acknowledged as illegal by the Israeli government
| (but are de facto tolerated and sometimes even actively
| protected by the army from angry Palestineans).
| OnlySlightly wrote:
| This is objectively a terrible piece, filled with lies and
| misinformation, with "sources" that more often than not don't
| have nothing to do with the author's allegations. I'm saddened
| that many people reading it will likely believe it at face value,
| without any attempt to fact check the claims being made.
|
| The author fails to present any convincing evidence in support of
| the claim that Palestinians on social media are unfairly silences
| by Israel, but instead presents a collection of lies, lies by
| omission, baseless allegations, and ridiculous hyperboles.
|
| Some examples:
|
| > For months, the 23-year-old el-Kurd twins had become the faces
| of Palestinian resistance in Sheikh Jarrah, broadcasting on
| Twitter and Instagram how they and seven other families refused
| to be forcibly expelled from their homes by Israeli settlers.
|
| Nobody tried to expel anyone from Sheikh Jarrah in the last two
| month, because the legal case was awaiting a decision by the
| Supreme Court, and is still is.
|
| In practice Mohammad el-Kurd's social media accounts are indeed a
| source of incitement, and routinely contain complete
| fabrications.
|
| > This practice is by no means new. In 2015, I recall receiving
| updates from Palestinians on Twitter when Israel detained
| Palestinian poet Dareen Tatour over a poem she posted on Facebook
| and YouTube. The poem had a line that repeated: "Resist, my
| people, resist them."
|
| This is incorrect. Dareen Tatour was directly calling for an
| intifada within the green line, in order to "defend Al Aqsa".
|
| > During the settler-violence at Sheikh Jarrah earlier this
| month, for the first time in recent memory, Palestinians were
| able to use social media -- namely Twitter and Instagram -- to
| freely show the images, sounds, videos, and words that are
| largely censored, diluted, or decontextualized under the media's
| illusion of objective reporting.
|
| Quite a ridiculous statement given the amount of completely fake
| news those Palestinians on social media have produced, via the
| method of attaching fake titles to videos presented out of
| context (i.e. an arrest of an Israeli Arab rioter in Haifa posted
| with titles such as "Israeli police evicting a Palestinian family
| to give their home to settlers").
|
| > This included videos of mobs chasing Palestinians while
| screaming "Death to Arabs"
|
| Those events were extensively covered in Israel and
| internationally. The author presents zero evidence of censorship.
|
| > Israeli police firing live ammunition at unarmed Palestinians
|
| I'm not sure what event the author is referring to. She doesn't
| elaborate further. We are just supposed to assume that it
| happened because she wrote so.
|
| > the carpet bombing of Gaza
|
| There was no "carpet bombing of Gaza", by any definition of the
| term "carpet bombing.
|
| > Israeli journalist Ben Caspit wrote of the Tamimi case: "In the
| case of the girls, we should exact a price at some other
| opportunity, in the dark, without witnesses and cameras."
|
| The phrase "exact a price" is never used. The word "arrest" is
| used. The journalist supported the soldiers for their restraint,
| wrote that if he was the one slapping the soldiers, he would've
| have been arrested immediately, and wrote that in this case it's
| better to arrest the Tamimi girls at some other time.
|
| > to remove Palestinian content on the vague basis of
| "incitement."
|
| Why is it a "vague" basis? The author doesn't explain. In
| practice Palestinian incitement is extremely prominent and
| directly leads to terrorist attacks. See for example the entire
| completely fabricated "Israel is trying to take over Al-Aqsa"
| plot.
|
| > administrative detention -- a policy from the British Mandate
| in which Israel imprisons Palestinians without charge or trial
|
| Administrative detention is used on Israeli Jews as well,
| specifically in cases where they participate in terrorist
| activities against Palestinians.
|
| > there are the actual soldiers flattening the strip
|
| The Gaza Strip wasn't "flattened" by any reasonable
| interoperation of that word.
|
| > There are the settlers not only chanting "Death to Arabs," but
| actually killing Palestinians in cold blood.
|
| When? Where? Again, referring to some unknown event with zero
| elaboration.
|
| And so on and so forth...
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2021-06-26 23:01 UTC)