6 ms·

How the Media Cracks Down on Critics of Israel

62 points by k1m 6y ago

bpodgursky 6y ago
Let's not do this.
- throwingtheway 6y ago
  This is exactly what the article is talking about. Any criticism of israel immediately gets shut down. Whenever someone tries to open a valid dialogue I typically see either: * Claims its antisemetic * Shifting blame (other countries do it too) * They are forced to do _x_ cause of their neighbors * Only democracy in the middle east
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
rurban 6y ago
Easiest would be to answer with the Einstein and Hannah Arendt letter then, warning of the fascist Likud party. Nothing changed since, it even got worse. http://wilsonweb.physics.harvard.edu/HUMANRIGHTS/Einstein_Letter_Warning_Of_Zionist_Facism_In_Israel.html http://wilsonweb.physics.harvard.edu/HUMANRIGHTS/Einstein_Le...
ur-whale 6y ago
The US mainstream media is constantly being manipulated by many a special interest group and are also extremely sensitive to anything that may affect their bottom line (e.g. the massive display of cowardice most mainstream media outlet put on during the mohamed danish cartoon affair [1] [2]) The fact that pro-israel interest groups are playing this game as well is nothing special. They might be playing the game a little better than others, but in general: move along, nothing to see here. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jyllands-Posten_Muhammad_cartoons_controversy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jyllands-Posten_Muhammad_carto... [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C_OR3b-97Ds https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C_OR3b-97Ds
- jjgreen 6y ago
  This is all fine; I'm OK with the events that are unfolding currently.
- justwalt 6y ago
  Should we not criticize that this is taking place? Two bad things are happening, so let’s ignore them both?
  - ur-whale 6y ago
    All I'm saying is you're making a fuss about the symptoms and ignoring the actual disease. What you need to criticize is the root cause of the problem, of which pro-israel group media interference is but one manifestation.
- SpicyLemonZest 6y ago
  It's not an unprecedented situation, but I think it's important to keep ourselves aware of all the specific things which news outlets won't print. Otherwise you'll get a systematically biased view of the world. (And I don't want to get into the actual debate here, but I feel I could be misinterpreted if I don't note that I'm saying this as someone who's generally pretty friendly to Israel.)
saladgnu054 6y ago
Shut it down.
29athrowaway 6y ago
Disclaimer: before reading this and forming an opinion, please consider I am part Jewish myself. The current situation is that you have: 1) the Jewish faith, 2) Jewish ethnicities, 3) a Jewish state (Israel). Those 3 are connected: most practictioners of the Jewish faith belong to a Jewish ethnicity, the Jewish state was founded by Jews, and the Israeli law of return states that every Jew has the right to become an immigrant. Today, most people do not have a problem with 1 or 2. But 3 is a different story. There were ancient kingdoms in the Eretz Yisrael (land of Israel), such as the Kingdom of Israel and the Kingdom of Judah. Those kingdoms eventually stopped existing, and the Jewish people lost administrative control of that territory. Many Jews continued to inhabit Eretz Yisrael, but did not have administrative control over the territory. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bar_Kokhba_revolt#Aftermath https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bar_Kokhba_revolt#Aftermath About 1800 years later, the Zionist movement identifies a need for the creation of a Jewish state, and successfully creates a new Jewish state in Eretz Yisrael. A large portion of the first Israeli citizens are members of the Jewish diaspora, that is, peoples who already had left Eretz Yisrael for 1800 years. To my [limited] knowledge, there is no precedent for this in history, and that is how many people scratch their heads trying to understand the legitimacy of Zionism. Especially, the pre-Israel inhabitants of Eretz Yisrael.
- salawat 6y ago
  I always thought the question of Zionist legitimacy came more out out the fact that what became Israel was administered by the British after WWI and over the next 20 years, was so embroiled in tension between the Zionists and the ex-ottoman's as to what the final fate of the area should be? The Arab's had a civil war there around '39 but the Jewish population hit highest tensions about a decade later following WWII and a wave of sympathy for the survivors of the Holocaust. Palestine was thought to be the inevitable outcome by the Arabs of the region, but the atrocities levied upon the Jewish people galvanized the Jewish population of the state sufficiently they were able to hold the territory against those that challenged them. An outcome of that was the Palestinian exodus in light of Israel's successful defense of it's claimed Soverignty on the Day following the end of the British Mandate. Sovereignty, and the status quo has been... Eh... Tumultuous as usual ever since. Most of that tension arising out of the dissonant expectation that Israel should lawfully have been co-part of the overall State of Palestine by it's previous residents. Just talking in terms of following the paper trail. I know both sides have their own feelings on the matter, but in terms of what the International community agreed on, Zionist legitimacy officially is defined within the terms of the U.N. Partition plan. De facto state notwithstanding. Not passing any judgement either way. I just follow the paper trail.
mkolodny 6y ago
Noam Chomsky has some excellent books and talks on YouTube about how dissident voices are silenced in mainstream media exactly like this. You'll only get hired as a journalist if you seem to agree with the political views of owners and advertisers. And if you publish a political view that owners or advertisers have a problem with, you get fired. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/12617.Manufacturing_Consent https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/12617.Manufacturing_Cons... https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/194805.Understanding_Power https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/194805.Understanding_Pow...
- WesolyKubeczek 6y ago
  "But they are private companies and free speech doesn't apply to them, they can ban any kind of speech they don't like!" — typical Hackernews in any other thread about speech being suppressed.
  - tim333 6y ago
    I think it's more that free speech laws mean private companies can say/output what they like within reason. Even if that includes supporting Israel or dropping Donald or whatever.
password321 6y ago
Why was this flagged? It is hardly controversial to anyone who just cares about the facts.
- johnthealy3 6y ago
  Yep came in here to see if this was flagged and it was. Reinforces the author's point, and of course HN is part of the problem.
- jbob2000 6y ago
  Israel identifies itself as the Nation State of the Jewish People and have carved out special rights in their constitution for Jewish citizens. Any criticism of Israel is therefore seen by some a criticism of Judaism itself. This is a power that the Israeli government knows it has and they deploy it as needed.
  - WesolyKubeczek 6y ago
    Ever tried criticising any country where Islam is their state religion, on their home turf? Or for that matter, any country where there is an official state religion?
    - jjgreen 6y ago
      The Church of England blows goats!
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
- contingencies 6y ago
  <also-descendant-of-escapees> Censorship here is part of exactly the same greater pattern of suppressing dissent, where dissent includes the discussion of actual levers of power. This is done on various grounds but frankly the technological apparatus created by HN members collectively is deeply responsible for the rapid growth of authoritarianism that these sorts of discussions would draw in to question if they were not so aggressively muted. It's why I originally left HN and why I owe it to myself to leave again. FYI the reply I was writing before refreshing the post before posting was this: So the allegation, likely well founded, is that state-affiliated apparatus actually bothered to dedicate resources to monitor twitter, pull him up, and execute such a maneuver. Personally I wonder what the forebears of Israelis who experienced the Stasi would think if they woke up in modern Israel. On the question of the moral position of Israel, who do you believe: Jewish intellectual greats such as Einstein + Chomsky, the latter who as early as 1992 summarized that he was subject to the endless lies of the Anti-Defamation League and its friends, or a chilling silence still being actively promoted murky behind-the-scenes power structures of centralist media owners in 2021? You be the judge. ... now of course, that silence has reached HN. </also-descendant-of-escapees> Bye, HN. PS. Here is a recent quality article by the same author https://www.currentaffairs.org/2021/01/lets-remember-how-authoritarianism-takes-hold https://www.currentaffairs.org/2021/01/lets-remember-how-aut...
yamrzou 6y ago
This does not only affect traditional media outlets like The Guardian, but also social media giants. Recently, Facebook is being pressured by the Israeli government to adopt the IHRA's (International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance) definition of anti-semitism to include the term “Zionism”, and therefore ban it as hate speech. Which caused a backlash. See [1], [2] and [3]. [1] https://facebookweneedtotalk.org/ https://facebookweneedtotalk.org/ [2] https://www.theverge.com/2021/1/31/22256949/facebook-zionist-moderation-policy-hate-speech-israel https://www.theverge.com/2021/1/31/22256949/facebook-zionist... [3] https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2021/02/facebooks-latest-proposed-policy-change-exemplifies-trouble-moderating-speech-0 https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2021/02/facebooks-latest-propo...

62 points by k1m 6y ago

bpodgursky 6y ago

Let's not do this.

throwingtheway 6y ago
This is exactly what the article is talking about. Any criticism of israel immediately gets shut down. Whenever someone tries to open a valid dialogue I typically see either: * Claims its antisemetic * Shifting blame (other countries do it too) * They are forced to do _x_ cause of their neighbors * Only democracy in the middle east
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]

rurban 6y ago

Easiest would be to answer with the Einstein and Hannah Arendt letter then, warning of the fascist Likud party. Nothing changed since, it even got worse. http://wilsonweb.physics.harvard.edu/HUMANRIGHTS/Einstein_Letter_Warning_Of_Zionist_Facism_In_Israel.html http://wilsonweb.physics.harvard.edu/HUMANRIGHTS/Einstein_Le...

ur-whale 6y ago

The US mainstream media is constantly being manipulated by many a special interest group and are also extremely sensitive to anything that may affect their bottom line (e.g. the massive display of cowardice most mainstream media outlet put on during the mohamed danish cartoon affair [1] [2]) The fact that pro-israel interest groups are playing this game as well is nothing special. They might be playing the game a little better than others, but in general: move along, nothing to see here. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jyllands-Posten_Muhammad_cartoons_controversy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jyllands-Posten_Muhammad_carto... [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C_OR3b-97Ds https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C_OR3b-97Ds

jjgreen 6y ago
This is all fine; I'm OK with the events that are unfolding currently.
justwalt 6y ago
Should we not criticize that this is taking place? Two bad things are happening, so let’s ignore them both?
- ur-whale 6y ago
  All I'm saying is you're making a fuss about the symptoms and ignoring the actual disease. What you need to criticize is the root cause of the problem, of which pro-israel group media interference is but one manifestation.
SpicyLemonZest 6y ago
It's not an unprecedented situation, but I think it's important to keep ourselves aware of all the specific things which news outlets won't print. Otherwise you'll get a systematically biased view of the world. (And I don't want to get into the actual debate here, but I feel I could be misinterpreted if I don't note that I'm saying this as someone who's generally pretty friendly to Israel.)

saladgnu054 6y ago

Shut it down.

29athrowaway 6y ago

Disclaimer: before reading this and forming an opinion, please consider I am part Jewish myself. The current situation is that you have: 1) the Jewish faith, 2) Jewish ethnicities, 3) a Jewish state (Israel). Those 3 are connected: most practictioners of the Jewish faith belong to a Jewish ethnicity, the Jewish state was founded by Jews, and the Israeli law of return states that every Jew has the right to become an immigrant. Today, most people do not have a problem with 1 or 2. But 3 is a different story. There were ancient kingdoms in the Eretz Yisrael (land of Israel), such as the Kingdom of Israel and the Kingdom of Judah. Those kingdoms eventually stopped existing, and the Jewish people lost administrative control of that territory. Many Jews continued to inhabit Eretz Yisrael, but did not have administrative control over the territory. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bar_Kokhba_revolt#Aftermath https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bar_Kokhba_revolt#Aftermath About 1800 years later, the Zionist movement identifies a need for the creation of a Jewish state, and successfully creates a new Jewish state in Eretz Yisrael. A large portion of the first Israeli citizens are members of the Jewish diaspora, that is, peoples who already had left Eretz Yisrael for 1800 years. To my [limited] knowledge, there is no precedent for this in history, and that is how many people scratch their heads trying to understand the legitimacy of Zionism. Especially, the pre-Israel inhabitants of Eretz Yisrael.

salawat 6y ago
I always thought the question of Zionist legitimacy came more out out the fact that what became Israel was administered by the British after WWI and over the next 20 years, was so embroiled in tension between the Zionists and the ex-ottoman's as to what the final fate of the area should be? The Arab's had a civil war there around '39 but the Jewish population hit highest tensions about a decade later following WWII and a wave of sympathy for the survivors of the Holocaust. Palestine was thought to be the inevitable outcome by the Arabs of the region, but the atrocities levied upon the Jewish people galvanized the Jewish population of the state sufficiently they were able to hold the territory against those that challenged them. An outcome of that was the Palestinian exodus in light of Israel's successful defense of it's claimed Soverignty on the Day following the end of the British Mandate. Sovereignty, and the status quo has been... Eh... Tumultuous as usual ever since. Most of that tension arising out of the dissonant expectation that Israel should lawfully have been co-part of the overall State of Palestine by it's previous residents. Just talking in terms of following the paper trail. I know both sides have their own feelings on the matter, but in terms of what the International community agreed on, Zionist legitimacy officially is defined within the terms of the U.N. Partition plan. De facto state notwithstanding. Not passing any judgement either way. I just follow the paper trail.

mkolodny 6y ago

Noam Chomsky has some excellent books and talks on YouTube about how dissident voices are silenced in mainstream media exactly like this. You'll only get hired as a journalist if you seem to agree with the political views of owners and advertisers. And if you publish a political view that owners or advertisers have a problem with, you get fired. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/12617.Manufacturing_Consent https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/12617.Manufacturing_Cons... https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/194805.Understanding_Power https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/194805.Understanding_Pow...

WesolyKubeczek 6y ago
"But they are private companies and free speech doesn't apply to them, they can ban any kind of speech they don't like!" — typical Hackernews in any other thread about speech being suppressed.
- tim333 6y ago
  I think it's more that free speech laws mean private companies can say/output what they like within reason. Even if that includes supporting Israel or dropping Donald or whatever.

password321 6y ago

Why was this flagged? It is hardly controversial to anyone who just cares about the facts.

johnthealy3 6y ago
Yep came in here to see if this was flagged and it was. Reinforces the author's point, and of course HN is part of the problem.
jbob2000 6y ago
Israel identifies itself as the Nation State of the Jewish People and have carved out special rights in their constitution for Jewish citizens. Any criticism of Israel is therefore seen by some a criticism of Judaism itself. This is a power that the Israeli government knows it has and they deploy it as needed.
- WesolyKubeczek 6y ago
  Ever tried criticising any country where Islam is their state religion, on their home turf? Or for that matter, any country where there is an official state religion?
  - jjgreen 6y ago
    The Church of England blows goats!
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
contingencies 6y ago
<also-descendant-of-escapees> Censorship here is part of exactly the same greater pattern of suppressing dissent, where dissent includes the discussion of actual levers of power. This is done on various grounds but frankly the technological apparatus created by HN members collectively is deeply responsible for the rapid growth of authoritarianism that these sorts of discussions would draw in to question if they were not so aggressively muted. It's why I originally left HN and why I owe it to myself to leave again. FYI the reply I was writing before refreshing the post before posting was this: So the allegation, likely well founded, is that state-affiliated apparatus actually bothered to dedicate resources to monitor twitter, pull him up, and execute such a maneuver. Personally I wonder what the forebears of Israelis who experienced the Stasi would think if they woke up in modern Israel. On the question of the moral position of Israel, who do you believe: Jewish intellectual greats such as Einstein + Chomsky, the latter who as early as 1992 summarized that he was subject to the endless lies of the Anti-Defamation League and its friends, or a chilling silence still being actively promoted murky behind-the-scenes power structures of centralist media owners in 2021? You be the judge. ... now of course, that silence has reached HN. </also-descendant-of-escapees> Bye, HN. PS. Here is a recent quality article by the same author https://www.currentaffairs.org/2021/01/lets-remember-how-authoritarianism-takes-hold https://www.currentaffairs.org/2021/01/lets-remember-how-aut...

yamrzou 6y ago

This does not only affect traditional media outlets like The Guardian, but also social media giants. Recently, Facebook is being pressured by the Israeli government to adopt the IHRA's (International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance) definition of anti-semitism to include the term “Zionism”, and therefore ban it as hate speech. Which caused a backlash. See [1], [2] and [3]. [1] https://facebookweneedtotalk.org/ https://facebookweneedtotalk.org/ [2] https://www.theverge.com/2021/1/31/22256949/facebook-zionist-moderation-policy-hate-speech-israel https://www.theverge.com/2021/1/31/22256949/facebook-zionist... [3] https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2021/02/facebooks-latest-proposed-policy-change-exemplifies-trouble-moderating-speech-0 https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2021/02/facebooks-latest-propo...