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The question is, what is so special about the Israeli/Palestine conflict that leads to these outsized protests? I do not recollect a similar response to the tre

The question is, what is so special about the Israeli/Palestine conflict that leads to these outsized protests? I do not recollect a similar response to the treatment of ISIS or the war in Yemen, even though both had the unconditional support of the US war machine. Even if the left could be absolved of antisemitism, the resistance groups it is aligning itself with clearly can not.

dml2135 3y ago
I certainly remember similar sized, if not larger, protests against the Iraq war.
- shmatt 3y ago
  Iraq never attacked anyone. A better comparison is the war in Afghanistan. If we compare # of people in each country. 10/07 for Israel was like 15 9/11s (this is a quote from a President Biden speech). So not only is it worth asking - how many Americans didnt want to fight Al Qaeda in Afghanistan. But how many would be against some sort of war like that, if tomorrow morning they woke up to a 9/11 sized attack in 15 of the biggest US cities, happening at the same time Not only did the US go far from home to destroy Afghanistan, but the whole world joined them to do it together
  - toyg 3y ago
    Yeah, and the war in Afghanistan resulted in nothing but temporary bloody vengeance. 20 years later, and we're all back to where we were before - minus millions of civilians dead or displaced.
  - oezi 3y ago
    The US didn't go to war to 'destroy Afghanistan'. They went to war to fight the Taliban. > Iraq never attacked anyone I am not sure Kuwait would agree.
    - givemeethekeys 3y ago
      Or Iran, for that matter. That said, the 2nd Gulf War was started by the US.
    - bnralt 3y ago
      It's also interesting that immediately after 9/11, the majority of American still had a positive view of the Afghan people[1]. [1] https://news.gallup.com/poll/9994/public-opinion-war-afghanistan.aspx https://news.gallup.com/poll/9994/public-opinion-war-afghani...
  - catlover76 3y ago
    I think your point is pretty cogent, the comparison is not bad. But it suffers from a pretty big flaw in that the US hadn't spent the preceding several decades subjugating Afghanis or encroaching upon their land; didn't have a government whose members and officials openly issued bigoted and racist statements against Afghanis (though I am sure there were a few Congressional Republicans who may have bucked that trend, I don't remember), etc. US foreign policy isn't nice or morally sound, but one thing it was not doing in the run-up to 9/11 and its subsequent invasion of Afghanistan was directly fucking up Afghani lives and killing Afghani children. Same can't be said for Israel in its relationship to the Palestinians.
    - zztop44 3y ago
      That’s perhaps not the best example because the US was deeply involved in Afghani politics from the early 1970s and at least indirectly responsible for fucking up countless of Afghani lives prior to 9/11. But that said, I agree with your general point: The relationship between the US and Afghanistan is and was very different to the relationship between Israel and Palestine.
      - catlover76 3y ago
        > That’s perhaps not the best example because the US was deeply involved in Afghani politics from the early 1970s and at least indirectly responsible for fucking up countless of Afghani lives prior to 9/11. Indirectly, perhaps, but yeah, not directly and not with basically the purpose of fucking them up.
  - xenospn 3y ago
    Iraq never attacked anyone? Have you heard of Kuwait, Iran and Israel?
- toyg 3y ago
  In the UK, the Iraq invasion provoked the biggest protests ever witnessed. The current stuff is small potatoes in comparison.
notaustinpowers 3y ago
The free flow of information and lack of government control over access to that information. Much of the early Iraq war and even, to an extent, conflicts with ISIS and Yemen had the benefit of those citizens not having access to the internet. So any information many American citizens were getting was filtered through what the military allowed to be known, then further filtered by the news. With Palestine and Israel, we were able to see it with our own eyes. I remember specifically watching TikToks of a teenage girl in Gaza posting about the evacuations, hearing the bombs in the background, etc. It felt "real" to us, which is a terrible way to put it, but I believe that is why the protests are much larger than other conflicts.
- mantas 3y ago
  I remember quite a lot of footage from ISIS around the internet. The difference was that mainstream media didn’t pick them up. Nor there was a widespread support to ISIS. Even though both ISIS was similar to Hamas and dealing with ISIS was as brutal as Gaza invasion with many collaterals.
  - notaustinpowers 3y ago
    There were lots of videos from ISIS, but there wasn't much, if any, coming from the citizens of Iraq or Syria. But we're seeing a lot of videos, photos, messages, etc coming from the citizens of Gaza. We, as a world, are seeing civilian life and casualties during a war in near real-time. This is something that many of us have never experienced before.
    - mantas 3y ago
      [flagged]
      - notaustinpowers 3y ago
        Are you asking that same question to everything coming out of Israel? Or everything coming out of Ukraine?
ajb 3y ago
Actions of Western democracies are usually subject to greater scrutiny. Indeed, the IHRA definition of anti-Semitism allowed for this: it says that it is antisemitism to hold Israel to a higher standard than other democracies - not than other nations altogether.
- incrudible 3y ago
  ISIS was defeated by a coalition including western democracies. Well over a thousand civilians died by US bombs alone.
  - sudosysgen 3y ago
    The fact that it wasn't Americans on the ground but other Iraqis is a gigantic difference.
    - incrudible 3y ago
      Oh, and there I thought the masses of dead civilians from air strikes were the point of contention. My bad.
      - sudosysgen 3y ago
        When you try to argue the point that it's to liberate them, it's more credible when it's people of the same ethnic group and country, not people who are also stealing your land and kidnapping your people at the same time.
thsksbd 3y ago
"what is so special about the Israeli/Palestine conflict that leads to these outsized protests?" Good question. 75 years of history those other two conflicts lack
- incrudible 3y ago
  Wahabism dates back over 200 years, the Sunni/Shia divide over a thousand years.
krapp 3y ago
It went viral on social media, the other conflicts didn't. That's really it. Many people's awareness of the world and the moral weight of what happens there comes directly from social media. A lot of people were upset about China and the Uyghurs as well, for a while, but not until after it became a thing influencers talked about. And then they stopped caring after social media moved on. Even on HN, where anti-China sentiment is rampant, people no longer seem to mention it.
proc0 3y ago
It's because on the surface it's an interracial conflict (it's not really, I guess, but that is the perception for most), and lots of people are obsessed over racial dynamics and analyzing history through that lens. There are so many other conflicts going on with many more dead, but if it's not interracial then somehow it is not talked about.
- aprilthird2021 3y ago
  [flagged]
  - proc0 3y ago
    Yeah it's a silly take, tbh. To clarify I just mean that's the reason people pay attention. That's why there's the colonizer narrative going on that fuels a lot of teh protests. But yeah it's more complicated than just that.
rcpt 3y ago
There is something particularly grating about how Israel acts with impunity on the world stage yet continues to receive unfaltering support from the US government. They secretly introduced nuclear weapons into the Middle East and refused to sign any of the treaties which are responsible for humanities current existence. According to Snowden the NSA provides them with whatever data they'd like, even that on Americans, without any filtering whatsoever. Bibi clowned all over Obama for years and yet he still had to agree with nearly every policy he pushed. Biden has been practically begging them to cut back on West Bank settlements. They won't even meet us there and still we send over money for them to do whatever they please. As an American it's embarrassing.
- givemeethekeys 3y ago
  What would you do if you were running the show in Israel? You’re responsible for a group of people that none of your neighbors want, even if they are the same race, ethnicity and religion, and those people have an ongoing campaign to push you out, which has been unsuccessful for as long as it has been going on. Oh yeah, their population is now many multiples higher than when all this started.
  - pphysch 3y ago
    Yitzhak Rabin had some good ideas, but extremist factions in Israel (now led by Netanyahu) killed him off.
    - givemeethekeys 3y ago
      So, what would you do?
      - throw310822 3y ago
        Withdraw all the Israeli population within the 1967 borders. Build a few hundred metres wide separation zone between the two and ask the UN to guard it. Go to the UN and ask for the creation of a State of Palestine. Meet with ANP and Hamas representatives and tell them that you want peace, that their side of the land is theirs, and that you're going to help. Seek to arrange some land swap to create a viable territorial continuity between the West Bank and Gaza.
nitwit005 3y ago
One answer is these media efforts. Isreal works hard to draw attention to its conflicts, and to try to turn that attention into support. I'd note the Ukranians worked very hard to draw attention to their war as well, and they were quite successful at that.
- qvrjuec 3y ago
  Think of it the other way around - the only real weapon Hamas has against the much stronger Israel is shifting public opinion, so it's in their incentive to bring as much negative attention as possible to Israel in the conflict
- underdeserver 3y ago
  No. Israel would like nothing more than to not be the center of attention every time it's attacked and tries to defend itself.
  - nitwit005 3y ago
    As mentioned in the article, they are paying for social media ad campaigns. That is not the behavior of people wanting to avoid attention.
    - underdeserver 3y ago
      That's a bit naïve. The other side is going full throttle, including through ivy league presidents, the New York Times, and the BBC. Of course they're going to try to fight back.
anigbrowl 3y ago
Religion, hundreds of millions of people feel spiritually invested in that part of the world.
skitout 3y ago
" The question is, what is so special about the Israeli/Palestine conflict that leads to these outsized protests? " - Jerusalem (and more globally Israel and Palestine) is holly for Jews, Muslims and Christians ; more than half of the word population and more than 90% of US population - Israel is a key ally of the USA, and this is a topic important in US politics for long time - including for some evangelical voters for religious question - Westerners have colonized (or inflicted violence to) most of the non western countries on this planet in "recent" history... Israel is seen by some as a Western country colonizing just another developing country, with support of other western countries... echoing recent history for many. It is as such a symbol for a long time. - USA, France... have had some big Islamist attack, what happened in Israel echoed to this for some people... and echoes to the clash of civilization western word vs Muslim which is central in the ideology of a growing number of westerners - It is easier to understand, more divisive, with more people or causes we can identify with, than in Syria (everybody hates ISIS) or Yemen (arabs fighting arabs fighting other arabs in a desert ?)... And we have more images
throwaway936162 3y ago
My slightly-informed opinion? Two cooperating factors. 1. The extraordinary effective Hamas organization. Hamas has set itself up to benefit from atrocities committed upon the people of Gaza. Every civilian death is a point for Hamas, the more so the better publicized it is. A point for Hamas is obviously not a point for regular people in Gaza. And Hamas provoked Israel as much as it could manage, and continues to provoke Israel by engaging in military operations from civilian sites, leading to: 2. Israel doesn’t understand this, and is entirely willing to play right into Hamas’ hands, in the name of its own security. And it looks really, really bad.

dml2135 3y ago

I certainly remember similar sized, if not larger, protests against the Iraq war.

shmatt 3y ago
Iraq never attacked anyone. A better comparison is the war in Afghanistan. If we compare # of people in each country. 10/07 for Israel was like 15 9/11s (this is a quote from a President Biden speech). So not only is it worth asking - how many Americans didnt want to fight Al Qaeda in Afghanistan. But how many would be against some sort of war like that, if tomorrow morning they woke up to a 9/11 sized attack in 15 of the biggest US cities, happening at the same time Not only did the US go far from home to destroy Afghanistan, but the whole world joined them to do it together
- toyg 3y ago
  Yeah, and the war in Afghanistan resulted in nothing but temporary bloody vengeance. 20 years later, and we're all back to where we were before - minus millions of civilians dead or displaced.
- oezi 3y ago
  The US didn't go to war to 'destroy Afghanistan'. They went to war to fight the Taliban. > Iraq never attacked anyone I am not sure Kuwait would agree.
  - givemeethekeys 3y ago
    Or Iran, for that matter. That said, the 2nd Gulf War was started by the US.
  - bnralt 3y ago
    It's also interesting that immediately after 9/11, the majority of American still had a positive view of the Afghan people[1]. [1] https://news.gallup.com/poll/9994/public-opinion-war-afghanistan.aspx https://news.gallup.com/poll/9994/public-opinion-war-afghani...
- catlover76 3y ago
  I think your point is pretty cogent, the comparison is not bad. But it suffers from a pretty big flaw in that the US hadn't spent the preceding several decades subjugating Afghanis or encroaching upon their land; didn't have a government whose members and officials openly issued bigoted and racist statements against Afghanis (though I am sure there were a few Congressional Republicans who may have bucked that trend, I don't remember), etc. US foreign policy isn't nice or morally sound, but one thing it was not doing in the run-up to 9/11 and its subsequent invasion of Afghanistan was directly fucking up Afghani lives and killing Afghani children. Same can't be said for Israel in its relationship to the Palestinians.
  - zztop44 3y ago
    That’s perhaps not the best example because the US was deeply involved in Afghani politics from the early 1970s and at least indirectly responsible for fucking up countless of Afghani lives prior to 9/11. But that said, I agree with your general point: The relationship between the US and Afghanistan is and was very different to the relationship between Israel and Palestine.
    - catlover76 3y ago
      > That’s perhaps not the best example because the US was deeply involved in Afghani politics from the early 1970s and at least indirectly responsible for fucking up countless of Afghani lives prior to 9/11. Indirectly, perhaps, but yeah, not directly and not with basically the purpose of fucking them up.
- xenospn 3y ago
  Iraq never attacked anyone? Have you heard of Kuwait, Iran and Israel?
toyg 3y ago
In the UK, the Iraq invasion provoked the biggest protests ever witnessed. The current stuff is small potatoes in comparison.

notaustinpowers 3y ago

The free flow of information and lack of government control over access to that information. Much of the early Iraq war and even, to an extent, conflicts with ISIS and Yemen had the benefit of those citizens not having access to the internet. So any information many American citizens were getting was filtered through what the military allowed to be known, then further filtered by the news. With Palestine and Israel, we were able to see it with our own eyes. I remember specifically watching TikToks of a teenage girl in Gaza posting about the evacuations, hearing the bombs in the background, etc. It felt "real" to us, which is a terrible way to put it, but I believe that is why the protests are much larger than other conflicts.

mantas 3y ago
I remember quite a lot of footage from ISIS around the internet. The difference was that mainstream media didn’t pick them up. Nor there was a widespread support to ISIS. Even though both ISIS was similar to Hamas and dealing with ISIS was as brutal as Gaza invasion with many collaterals.
- notaustinpowers 3y ago
  There were lots of videos from ISIS, but there wasn't much, if any, coming from the citizens of Iraq or Syria. But we're seeing a lot of videos, photos, messages, etc coming from the citizens of Gaza. We, as a world, are seeing civilian life and casualties during a war in near real-time. This is something that many of us have never experienced before.
  - mantas 3y ago
    [flagged]
    - notaustinpowers 3y ago
      Are you asking that same question to everything coming out of Israel? Or everything coming out of Ukraine?

ajb 3y ago

Actions of Western democracies are usually subject to greater scrutiny. Indeed, the IHRA definition of anti-Semitism allowed for this: it says that it is antisemitism to hold Israel to a higher standard than other democracies - not than other nations altogether.

incrudible 3y ago
ISIS was defeated by a coalition including western democracies. Well over a thousand civilians died by US bombs alone.
- sudosysgen 3y ago
  The fact that it wasn't Americans on the ground but other Iraqis is a gigantic difference.
  - incrudible 3y ago
    Oh, and there I thought the masses of dead civilians from air strikes were the point of contention. My bad.
    - sudosysgen 3y ago
      When you try to argue the point that it's to liberate them, it's more credible when it's people of the same ethnic group and country, not people who are also stealing your land and kidnapping your people at the same time.

thsksbd 3y ago

"what is so special about the Israeli/Palestine conflict that leads to these outsized protests?" Good question. 75 years of history those other two conflicts lack

incrudible 3y ago
Wahabism dates back over 200 years, the Sunni/Shia divide over a thousand years.

krapp 3y ago

It went viral on social media, the other conflicts didn't. That's really it. Many people's awareness of the world and the moral weight of what happens there comes directly from social media. A lot of people were upset about China and the Uyghurs as well, for a while, but not until after it became a thing influencers talked about. And then they stopped caring after social media moved on. Even on HN, where anti-China sentiment is rampant, people no longer seem to mention it.

proc0 3y ago

It's because on the surface it's an interracial conflict (it's not really, I guess, but that is the perception for most), and lots of people are obsessed over racial dynamics and analyzing history through that lens. There are so many other conflicts going on with many more dead, but if it's not interracial then somehow it is not talked about.

aprilthird2021 3y ago
[flagged]
- proc0 3y ago
  Yeah it's a silly take, tbh. To clarify I just mean that's the reason people pay attention. That's why there's the colonizer narrative going on that fuels a lot of teh protests. But yeah it's more complicated than just that.

rcpt 3y ago

There is something particularly grating about how Israel acts with impunity on the world stage yet continues to receive unfaltering support from the US government. They secretly introduced nuclear weapons into the Middle East and refused to sign any of the treaties which are responsible for humanities current existence. According to Snowden the NSA provides them with whatever data they'd like, even that on Americans, without any filtering whatsoever. Bibi clowned all over Obama for years and yet he still had to agree with nearly every policy he pushed. Biden has been practically begging them to cut back on West Bank settlements. They won't even meet us there and still we send over money for them to do whatever they please. As an American it's embarrassing.

givemeethekeys 3y ago
What would you do if you were running the show in Israel? You’re responsible for a group of people that none of your neighbors want, even if they are the same race, ethnicity and religion, and those people have an ongoing campaign to push you out, which has been unsuccessful for as long as it has been going on. Oh yeah, their population is now many multiples higher than when all this started.
- pphysch 3y ago
  Yitzhak Rabin had some good ideas, but extremist factions in Israel (now led by Netanyahu) killed him off.
  - givemeethekeys 3y ago
    So, what would you do?
    - throw310822 3y ago
      Withdraw all the Israeli population within the 1967 borders. Build a few hundred metres wide separation zone between the two and ask the UN to guard it. Go to the UN and ask for the creation of a State of Palestine. Meet with ANP and Hamas representatives and tell them that you want peace, that their side of the land is theirs, and that you're going to help. Seek to arrange some land swap to create a viable territorial continuity between the West Bank and Gaza.

nitwit005 3y ago

One answer is these media efforts. Isreal works hard to draw attention to its conflicts, and to try to turn that attention into support. I'd note the Ukranians worked very hard to draw attention to their war as well, and they were quite successful at that.

qvrjuec 3y ago
Think of it the other way around - the only real weapon Hamas has against the much stronger Israel is shifting public opinion, so it's in their incentive to bring as much negative attention as possible to Israel in the conflict
underdeserver 3y ago
No. Israel would like nothing more than to not be the center of attention every time it's attacked and tries to defend itself.
- nitwit005 3y ago
  As mentioned in the article, they are paying for social media ad campaigns. That is not the behavior of people wanting to avoid attention.
  - underdeserver 3y ago
    That's a bit naïve. The other side is going full throttle, including through ivy league presidents, the New York Times, and the BBC. Of course they're going to try to fight back.

anigbrowl 3y ago

Religion, hundreds of millions of people feel spiritually invested in that part of the world.

skitout 3y ago

" The question is, what is so special about the Israeli/Palestine conflict that leads to these outsized protests? " - Jerusalem (and more globally Israel and Palestine) is holly for Jews, Muslims and Christians ; more than half of the word population and more than 90% of US population - Israel is a key ally of the USA, and this is a topic important in US politics for long time - including for some evangelical voters for religious question - Westerners have colonized (or inflicted violence to) most of the non western countries on this planet in "recent" history... Israel is seen by some as a Western country colonizing just another developing country, with support of other western countries... echoing recent history for many. It is as such a symbol for a long time. - USA, France... have had some big Islamist attack, what happened in Israel echoed to this for some people... and echoes to the clash of civilization western word vs Muslim which is central in the ideology of a growing number of westerners - It is easier to understand, more divisive, with more people or causes we can identify with, than in Syria (everybody hates ISIS) or Yemen (arabs fighting arabs fighting other arabs in a desert ?)... And we have more images

throwaway936162 3y ago

My slightly-informed opinion? Two cooperating factors. 1. The extraordinary effective Hamas organization. Hamas has set itself up to benefit from atrocities committed upon the people of Gaza. Every civilian death is a point for Hamas, the more so the better publicized it is. A point for Hamas is obviously not a point for regular people in Gaza. And Hamas provoked Israel as much as it could manage, and continues to provoke Israel by engaging in military operations from civilian sites, leading to: 2. Israel doesn’t understand this, and is entirely willing to play right into Hamas’ hands, in the name of its own security. And it looks really, really bad.