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People used to quip that Prussia is an army with a country rather than the other way around, it seems like if you add the modern intelligence sector that descri

People used to quip that Prussia is an army with a country rather than the other way around, it seems like if you add the modern intelligence sector that describes Israel. With all the concerns about 'Military-civil fusion ' as it's called in China or Russia I always found it funny that Israel might as well be the country that has merged both spheres most successfully but nobody really seems to care at all.

samstave 5y ago
The venn diag of israel seems to be: Military -- Government -- Corporate/tech -- Religions <-- All encapsulated under the intel umbrella. All seem to be seamlessly aligned within Israel.. -- I mean this is basically what all governments strive for, just that Israel has turned it into an art+science. The amount of amazing technical innovation that comes from israel is quite stunning.
- eli_gottlieb 5y ago
  Nah, you need to modify the diagram to take Religions out. The religious establishment considers the military, corporate sector, and non-parliamentary government agencies to be captive to "the seculars", which they basically consider to be evil and devoted to destroying religion. We seculars, in contrast, think we mostly just don't want to give the religious big heaps of free money.
mateo1 5y ago
A lot of people voice their concerns, including a lot of Israelis, but what can you do? Israel is a democracy and the majority votes for far right militaristic candidates and parties. Whether or not you hear about these concerns in public discourse in your country's media depends on your current foreign policy.
- saiya-jin 5y ago
  Its a bit easier for Israel - if you are an outsider (99.9% of mankind) and dare criticize it anyhow, you are quickly marked either a) antisemitic or b) supporting islamic terrorism, or some mix of those. Nobody wants to touch that with 10 foot pole in woke era.
  - woodruffw 5y ago
    It's a bad situation: we don't currently have a good litmus test for good-faith criticisms of Israel (of which there are an overwhelming number) versus treatments of Israel as coextensive with and the mouthpiece of the Jewish diaspora (which it certainly isn't). The former is righteous criticism; the latter is gussied up antisemitism. Edit: and, to be absolutely clear, it is in Israel's continued interest for us to not have a good litmus test for the two. I believe that most international messaging and the intentional obfuscation of Israeli foreign policy behind Jewish identity demonstrates that keeping the two murky is a continued policy goal of Israel's leadership.
    - eli_gottlieb 5y ago
      IMHO, it's hard to come up with a litmus test because both sides of the debate kinda like the standard motte-and-bailey structure of "criticisms of Israel". In fact, not only are the arguments often motte-and-baileys, there's often a super-bailey, a bailey for the bailey that basically invokes some kind of "I win either way" gotcha. For example: Motte: Israel's use of Palestinian "guest workers" who have no opportunity to participate in either a robust Palestinian economy or a neighboring Arab economy, even when those workers receive the Israeli minimum wage or higher, does fit into an analogy to the treatment of black South Africans under apartheid as captive cheap labor. If Israel wants to avoid being subjected to this analogy, it should simply stop exploiting Palestinian labor this way. Bailey: Israel is an apartheid state, and not exploiting Palestinian labor would just be covering it up. The only way for Israel to stop being an apartheid state is to stop being Jewish-Israeli: dissolve itself into a single state of Palestine ruled by its natural Arab majority. Super-bailey: Israel is so apartheid, white-supremacist, and settler-colonial that not exploiting Palestinian labor, were it possible or even implemented at some point in existing history, would only make it more racist (see: https://www.jacobinmag.com/2016/10/kibbutz-labor-zionism-bernie-sanders-ben-gurion/ https://www.jacobinmag.com/2016/10/kibbutz-labor-zionism-ber...). Israel owes these jobs to the Palestinians, as a precursor to the genocide reparations it will pay when it dissolves itself into a single state of Palestine ruled by its natural Arab majority. So yeah. The people who could just lay down the motte as a serious moral charge don't want to. They want the bailey, or preferably the super-bailey. Likewise, the people who could just admit to the motte and fix the problem are assured that, were they to actually do so, the goalposts would only be moved to the bailey. Then the bailey will be moved to the super-bailey.
- james-redwood 5y ago
  I fail to see how Bennett is far right in any sense of the word. Conservative yes, but the far right is inhabited by nut jobs like Smotrich and Ben Gvir. Whether you define support for an active military as militaristic versus actually taking aggressive military action is also another issue - they cannot be militaristic if you accept the second definition.
  - tsimionescu 5y ago
    There are few countries on Earth that have (a) directly officially threatened military action against another state, or (b) routinely bomb another state they are not officially at war with, the way Israel has. How are they not "taking aggressive military action"?
    - eli_gottlieb 5y ago
      > (b) routinely bomb another state they are not officially at war with In what sense are we not officially at war with Palestine? Nobody ever signed an armistice, ceasefire, or peace deal to end the War of 1948. Nobody even wants to. The official policies of both the PLO and Hamas remain "struggle until victory". There are internal political reasons for this that any knowledgeable person can describe, but as far as anyone who lacks inside influence is concerned, that's their policy and they're sticking to it.
      - tsimionescu 5y ago
        > In what sense are we not officially at war with Palestine? In the literal sense. The territories that form Palestine and the West Bank today were part of Egypt and Jordan before the six-day war. Israel occupied these territories during the war, then signed peace treaties with the countries it defeated. The three Arab countries (including Syria) attempted to recapture their territories again in 1973, but failed, and peace treaties were again signed between all four countries involved. In the meantime, people living in the territories occupied by the Israeli military forces continued their fight for freedom, as all occupied people do. They made some strides in this direction with the Oslo accords, where they gained official recognition as a separate country under their own authority. While open hostility existed on both sides since the beginning, there has never been an official war declaration between the PLO and Israel. Both have been routinely attacking and killing civilians and destroying infrastructure in each other's country forma long time - though Israel now has a vast upper hand and the killing and destruction has become more and more one sided against the people of Palestine.
- terr-dav 5y ago
  It's a democracy of the first-class citizens only. Don't forget it's an apartheid state!
  - voz_ 5y ago
    This is not grounded in reality. Arab citizens can vote and participate, and there are Arab parties in Israeli government. If you want to see an apartheid, go look at any other country in the middle east. Let's see how Jewish representation looks there...?
    - gambiting 5y ago
      If I can quote someone else for putting it much better than I would: https://www.reddit.com/r/worldnews/comments/ndik83/south_african_government_calls_for_israel_to_be/gyb7a90/ https://www.reddit.com/r/worldnews/comments/ndik83/south_afr... "Israel is the nation state of Jews alone" Netanyahu responds to TV star saying Arabs are equal citizens (2019): source: https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium-israel-is-the-nation-state-of-jews-alone-netanyahu-responds-to-tv-star-who-said-arabs-are-equal-citizens-1.7003348 https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium-israel-is-the-n...
      - DSingularity 5y ago
        If it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck then it’s Apartheid?
    - tsimionescu 5y ago
      Many countries in the Middle East are islamic theocracies, so they limit religious freedom by their very constitution. However, even in Iran, a person of Jewish heritage who converts to Islam should not have any (official legal) barriers to entry in political life. In a country ruled by a church, that seems relatively reasonable.
      - bhelkey 5y ago
        I believe the comment was referring to 'a person of Jewish heritage' who do not convert to Islam.
- eli_gottlieb 5y ago
  Maybe if they let us call it left-wing to have literally any politics other than unilateral surrender to the people still at war with us (even as we achieve normalization with more and more countries!), we'd vote more left-wing.
- JamesAdir 5y ago
  You're statement is incorrect. In the last elections that were held in March 2021 the results were as follows: Likud - Center right - 24% Yesh Atid - Center Left 14% Shas - Religious - 7% Kahol Lavan - Center left - 6% Yamina - Center right - 6% (They've made a coalition with the Arab parties and formed a government eventually, and the leader became the prime minister) Avoda - Social left -6% Yahadot Tora - Religious - 6% Israel Beytenu - right - 5% Zionot Datit - Far right - 5% Meshutefet - Joined Arab party - Far left - 4% Tikva Hadash - Center Left - 4% Merez - Far left -4% Mehuedet- Joined Arab party - Far Left - 3% And all the other didn't make it.
  - edanm 5y ago
    I don't know if I'd consider Yesh Atid or Kahol Lavan to be center left. Nor would I necessarily describe Yamina as cetner right, though that's a bit more fair.
- denton-scratch 5y ago
  > depends on your current foreign policy. "depends on the media". FTFY.
jonny_eh 5y ago
Did you mean "Prussia was an army with a country" or "Russia is an army with a country"?
- Seattle3503 5y ago
  Prussia. There was a period of time in history when Prussia was known for its very militaristic culture.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - jonny_eh 5y ago
    Got it. I was confused because I didn't catch that they were talking about the past.
    - AdrianB1 5y ago
      In most of Europe this sentence is considered basic education (European history is part of basic education). It is in the same category as the French revolution, Napoleonic wars, etc.
underdeserver 5y ago
I think you are grossly overestimating the interconnectedness of it all. Yes the defense sector is large. NSO employs what, 300 people? The Israeli tech sector as a whole employs about a million, including tens of thousands working for Microsoft, Nvidia, Intel, Google, Apple, Amazon, IBM, Oracle, Facebook, Dropbox among others. The cloak and dagger people are a drop in the bucket.
- myth_drannon 5y ago
  Yes, like Rafael and Elbit are x100 bigger and are more high-tech but all eyes are on bottom of the barrel 0 day exploits company.
MichaelMoser123 5y ago
This is ignoring some minor details, like that Israel had to fight some real frigging wars over its bare existence, and is still facing a regional power that calls for its extinction. Looks like Israel isn't getting too much love, at least not here at HN. I maintain that we in Israel are still a very normal, western type society, if you take all these rather extreme circumstances into consideration (and, in addition, we are getting quite a lot of tech done ;-) )
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- Starlevel001 5y ago
- hunterb123 5y ago
  If it's any consolation, these comments here do not reflect a general opinion and liberal leaning places seem to have this anti-Israel agenda, and it seems to be more prominent recently. Maybe I'm just paying more attention. That's not to say everything is perfect, no country is. But in perspective of everyone's actions in the region I support Israel overall. I don't want to get into a political flamewar, just wanted to offer my support. I disagree with the premise of many opinions here about Israel. Note that I'm not talking about people that are talking objectively about this specific event, I'm talking about the comments calling Israel an apartheid state, marriage, etc.
  - hidudeurcool 5y ago
  - FridayoLeary 5y ago
    Thank you.
  - hkt 5y ago
    RE the apartheid point, this isn't western liberals, it is Israeli human rights organisations: https://www.btselem.org/apartheid https://www.btselem.org/apartheid
tgsovlerkhgsel 5y ago
The mandatory military service is likely a big part of it. Young people get trained in the intelligence units for ~1-2 years, some stay, some join the industry with high-level experience.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
erezsh 5y ago
This is breaking news, and not yet confirmed. And yet everyone even slightly tech-related in Israel is currently talking about this. It even sparked intense arguments in some security related forums that I shall not name. To say "nobody really seems to care at all" is just ignorant.

samstave 5y ago

The venn diag of israel seems to be: Military -- Government -- Corporate/tech -- Religions <-- All encapsulated under the intel umbrella. All seem to be seamlessly aligned within Israel.. -- I mean this is basically what all governments strive for, just that Israel has turned it into an art+science. The amount of amazing technical innovation that comes from israel is quite stunning.

eli_gottlieb 5y ago
Nah, you need to modify the diagram to take Religions out. The religious establishment considers the military, corporate sector, and non-parliamentary government agencies to be captive to "the seculars", which they basically consider to be evil and devoted to destroying religion. We seculars, in contrast, think we mostly just don't want to give the religious big heaps of free money.

mateo1 5y ago

A lot of people voice their concerns, including a lot of Israelis, but what can you do? Israel is a democracy and the majority votes for far right militaristic candidates and parties. Whether or not you hear about these concerns in public discourse in your country's media depends on your current foreign policy.

saiya-jin 5y ago
Its a bit easier for Israel - if you are an outsider (99.9% of mankind) and dare criticize it anyhow, you are quickly marked either a) antisemitic or b) supporting islamic terrorism, or some mix of those. Nobody wants to touch that with 10 foot pole in woke era.
- woodruffw 5y ago
  It's a bad situation: we don't currently have a good litmus test for good-faith criticisms of Israel (of which there are an overwhelming number) versus treatments of Israel as coextensive with and the mouthpiece of the Jewish diaspora (which it certainly isn't). The former is righteous criticism; the latter is gussied up antisemitism. Edit: and, to be absolutely clear, it is in Israel's continued interest for us to not have a good litmus test for the two. I believe that most international messaging and the intentional obfuscation of Israeli foreign policy behind Jewish identity demonstrates that keeping the two murky is a continued policy goal of Israel's leadership.
  - eli_gottlieb 5y ago
    IMHO, it's hard to come up with a litmus test because both sides of the debate kinda like the standard motte-and-bailey structure of "criticisms of Israel". In fact, not only are the arguments often motte-and-baileys, there's often a super-bailey, a bailey for the bailey that basically invokes some kind of "I win either way" gotcha. For example: Motte: Israel's use of Palestinian "guest workers" who have no opportunity to participate in either a robust Palestinian economy or a neighboring Arab economy, even when those workers receive the Israeli minimum wage or higher, does fit into an analogy to the treatment of black South Africans under apartheid as captive cheap labor. If Israel wants to avoid being subjected to this analogy, it should simply stop exploiting Palestinian labor this way. Bailey: Israel is an apartheid state, and not exploiting Palestinian labor would just be covering it up. The only way for Israel to stop being an apartheid state is to stop being Jewish-Israeli: dissolve itself into a single state of Palestine ruled by its natural Arab majority. Super-bailey: Israel is so apartheid, white-supremacist, and settler-colonial that not exploiting Palestinian labor, were it possible or even implemented at some point in existing history, would only make it more racist (see: https://www.jacobinmag.com/2016/10/kibbutz-labor-zionism-bernie-sanders-ben-gurion/ https://www.jacobinmag.com/2016/10/kibbutz-labor-zionism-ber...). Israel owes these jobs to the Palestinians, as a precursor to the genocide reparations it will pay when it dissolves itself into a single state of Palestine ruled by its natural Arab majority. So yeah. The people who could just lay down the motte as a serious moral charge don't want to. They want the bailey, or preferably the super-bailey. Likewise, the people who could just admit to the motte and fix the problem are assured that, were they to actually do so, the goalposts would only be moved to the bailey. Then the bailey will be moved to the super-bailey.
james-redwood 5y ago
I fail to see how Bennett is far right in any sense of the word. Conservative yes, but the far right is inhabited by nut jobs like Smotrich and Ben Gvir. Whether you define support for an active military as militaristic versus actually taking aggressive military action is also another issue - they cannot be militaristic if you accept the second definition.
- tsimionescu 5y ago
  There are few countries on Earth that have (a) directly officially threatened military action against another state, or (b) routinely bomb another state they are not officially at war with, the way Israel has. How are they not "taking aggressive military action"?
  - eli_gottlieb 5y ago
    > (b) routinely bomb another state they are not officially at war with In what sense are we not officially at war with Palestine? Nobody ever signed an armistice, ceasefire, or peace deal to end the War of 1948. Nobody even wants to. The official policies of both the PLO and Hamas remain "struggle until victory". There are internal political reasons for this that any knowledgeable person can describe, but as far as anyone who lacks inside influence is concerned, that's their policy and they're sticking to it.
    - tsimionescu 5y ago
      > In what sense are we not officially at war with Palestine? In the literal sense. The territories that form Palestine and the West Bank today were part of Egypt and Jordan before the six-day war. Israel occupied these territories during the war, then signed peace treaties with the countries it defeated. The three Arab countries (including Syria) attempted to recapture their territories again in 1973, but failed, and peace treaties were again signed between all four countries involved. In the meantime, people living in the territories occupied by the Israeli military forces continued their fight for freedom, as all occupied people do. They made some strides in this direction with the Oslo accords, where they gained official recognition as a separate country under their own authority. While open hostility existed on both sides since the beginning, there has never been an official war declaration between the PLO and Israel. Both have been routinely attacking and killing civilians and destroying infrastructure in each other's country forma long time - though Israel now has a vast upper hand and the killing and destruction has become more and more one sided against the people of Palestine.
terr-dav 5y ago
It's a democracy of the first-class citizens only. Don't forget it's an apartheid state!
- voz_ 5y ago
  This is not grounded in reality. Arab citizens can vote and participate, and there are Arab parties in Israeli government. If you want to see an apartheid, go look at any other country in the middle east. Let's see how Jewish representation looks there...?
  - gambiting 5y ago
    If I can quote someone else for putting it much better than I would: https://www.reddit.com/r/worldnews/comments/ndik83/south_african_government_calls_for_israel_to_be/gyb7a90/ https://www.reddit.com/r/worldnews/comments/ndik83/south_afr... "Israel is the nation state of Jews alone" Netanyahu responds to TV star saying Arabs are equal citizens (2019): source: https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium-israel-is-the-nation-state-of-jews-alone-netanyahu-responds-to-tv-star-who-said-arabs-are-equal-citizens-1.7003348 https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium-israel-is-the-n...
    - DSingularity 5y ago
      If it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck then it’s Apartheid?
  - tsimionescu 5y ago
    Many countries in the Middle East are islamic theocracies, so they limit religious freedom by their very constitution. However, even in Iran, a person of Jewish heritage who converts to Islam should not have any (official legal) barriers to entry in political life. In a country ruled by a church, that seems relatively reasonable.
    - bhelkey 5y ago
      I believe the comment was referring to 'a person of Jewish heritage' who do not convert to Islam.
eli_gottlieb 5y ago
Maybe if they let us call it left-wing to have literally any politics other than unilateral surrender to the people still at war with us (even as we achieve normalization with more and more countries!), we'd vote more left-wing.
JamesAdir 5y ago
You're statement is incorrect. In the last elections that were held in March 2021 the results were as follows: Likud - Center right - 24% Yesh Atid - Center Left 14% Shas - Religious - 7% Kahol Lavan - Center left - 6% Yamina - Center right - 6% (They've made a coalition with the Arab parties and formed a government eventually, and the leader became the prime minister) Avoda - Social left -6% Yahadot Tora - Religious - 6% Israel Beytenu - right - 5% Zionot Datit - Far right - 5% Meshutefet - Joined Arab party - Far left - 4% Tikva Hadash - Center Left - 4% Merez - Far left -4% Mehuedet- Joined Arab party - Far Left - 3% And all the other didn't make it.
- edanm 5y ago
  I don't know if I'd consider Yesh Atid or Kahol Lavan to be center left. Nor would I necessarily describe Yamina as cetner right, though that's a bit more fair.
denton-scratch 5y ago
> depends on your current foreign policy. "depends on the media". FTFY.

jonny_eh 5y ago

Did you mean "Prussia was an army with a country" or "Russia is an army with a country"?

Seattle3503 5y ago
Prussia. There was a period of time in history when Prussia was known for its very militaristic culture.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- jonny_eh 5y ago
  Got it. I was confused because I didn't catch that they were talking about the past.
  - AdrianB1 5y ago
    In most of Europe this sentence is considered basic education (European history is part of basic education). It is in the same category as the French revolution, Napoleonic wars, etc.

underdeserver 5y ago

I think you are grossly overestimating the interconnectedness of it all. Yes the defense sector is large. NSO employs what, 300 people? The Israeli tech sector as a whole employs about a million, including tens of thousands working for Microsoft, Nvidia, Intel, Google, Apple, Amazon, IBM, Oracle, Facebook, Dropbox among others. The cloak and dagger people are a drop in the bucket.

myth_drannon 5y ago
Yes, like Rafael and Elbit are x100 bigger and are more high-tech but all eyes are on bottom of the barrel 0 day exploits company.

MichaelMoser123 5y ago

This is ignoring some minor details, like that Israel had to fight some real frigging wars over its bare existence, and is still facing a regional power that calls for its extinction. Looks like Israel isn't getting too much love, at least not here at HN. I maintain that we in Israel are still a very normal, western type society, if you take all these rather extreme circumstances into consideration (and, in addition, we are getting quite a lot of tech done ;-) )

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
Starlevel001 5y ago
hunterb123 5y ago
If it's any consolation, these comments here do not reflect a general opinion and liberal leaning places seem to have this anti-Israel agenda, and it seems to be more prominent recently. Maybe I'm just paying more attention. That's not to say everything is perfect, no country is. But in perspective of everyone's actions in the region I support Israel overall. I don't want to get into a political flamewar, just wanted to offer my support. I disagree with the premise of many opinions here about Israel. Note that I'm not talking about people that are talking objectively about this specific event, I'm talking about the comments calling Israel an apartheid state, marriage, etc.
- hidudeurcool 5y ago
- FridayoLeary 5y ago
  Thank you.
- hkt 5y ago
  RE the apartheid point, this isn't western liberals, it is Israeli human rights organisations: https://www.btselem.org/apartheid https://www.btselem.org/apartheid

tgsovlerkhgsel 5y ago

The mandatory military service is likely a big part of it. Young people get trained in the intelligence units for ~1-2 years, some stay, some join the industry with high-level experience.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

erezsh 5y ago

This is breaking news, and not yet confirmed. And yet everyone even slightly tech-related in Israel is currently talking about this. It even sparked intense arguments in some security related forums that I shall not name. To say "nobody really seems to care at all" is just ignorant.