As a New Yorker this doesn’t shock me too much. The level of “Mamdani is an anti-Semite” sentiment I saw online (Reddit particularly) felt truly hysterical. And wasn’t matched by any equivalent in the offline world.
I suspect that many people, like me, now hear "antisemitic" as "anti Israel" and assume it's a politically motivated slur without justification. This is not good. As racism and actual antisemitism continues to be very real, any conflating or exaggeration of a real problem diminishes people's willingness to address the real problems.
It's not like it's a swastika, it was a skull and crossbones that turns out to have been used by the SS (I think?). I had no idea that particular image was nazi-related and I don't think most other people would have either. As far as "mistakes made by marines on shore leave" go it's pretty mild. Honestly his more recent scandals are more concerning as far as character.
Platner's upside is being a senator that's not from the student senate -> Hill staffer -> party insider pipeline. We're all pretty much sick of that character, he sounds much more authentic by comparison.
It's an extremely well known nazi symbol. Probably second behind the swastika itself. There's even that famous "are we the baddies" meme, which uses that symbol as a central pillar of the gag.
I'm pretty online, I've seen that skit and I to this day don't really know what a totenkopf looks like. I'd never heard the word before this Platner business either. Surprising you're saying it's well-known. Am I in some kind of bubble?
If the bones are a little longer, it's a Jolly Roger. If the teeth were longer, it would be a punisher skull. If it weren't turned at that particular angle it would just be a generic skull. If it were 2 angular lightning bolts, it would obviously be SS but a skull is really common in a lot of contexts.
If you happened to clock this particular skull shape as a symbol from an SS division, then congrats, but 95% of people just would not and that's why it didn't land as a scandal. Everyone said "Huh. I didn't know either." and then accepted "Marine gets dumb skull tattoo while drunk on shore leave" as a fairly normal thing to have happened.
If I had wheels I’d be a bicycle. I don’t see your point? It’s very obvious what it is and just because you can alter an icon to make it look like something else doesn’t change what it is.
Ignorance of something doesn’t change what it is. “Oops I accidentally had a Nazi for nearly 20 years and only had it covered up 9 months ago when it became a political liability” isn’t a good look to say the least.
My point is that it's not very obvious what it is unless you are super studied in Nazi symbology. I thought I was clear but there it is in case I wasn't.
If this were a swastika, the SS lightning bolts or even the Iron Cross, yeah, that looks pretty Nazi. Instead it's a skull and crossbones just like every other one used all over the place, including the very cool jolly roger, except this one happens to be Nazi. I didn't know, most people didn't know, he can credibly say he didn't know, and we all think the jolly roger's cool. Dog's not gonna hunt.
“My point is that it's not very obvious what it is unless you are super studied in Nazi symbology”
Or if you ever played a WWII themed video game (Wolfenstein, Call of Duty), or if you’ve ever watched a WWII show like Band of Brothers or watched a major WWII movie like Schindlers List or Saving Private Ryan. I could go on, it’s prominent in nearly any WWII media.
Honestly, I don’t know if people toting the line saying it’s “obscure” are intentionally lying because he aligns with their political agenda or are completely oblivious to any level of detail in any media.
Not sure what to tell you--I like many others here it seems (and probably elsewhere) hadn't even heard of a totenkopf before this issue was raised. It's a non-issue. Honestly I think it's a bit strange that you think it's so recognizable.
Bro, I am not lying, there are skulls and crossbones from so many sources. I saw all those movies, I knew some Nazi units used skulls just like units of many militaries, pirates, motorcycle gangs etc. It's a cross-cultural symbol for "we fuck shit up".
If you examined so much Nazi symbology that you would immediately flag this as a particularly Nazi skull based on the angle and bone length, you are the unusual one. It's cool to have interests but understand that the rest of us just see a skull and don't have nearly the response we would to a swastika.
You do realize there are many people, especially younger folk, who will never have played or seen the media listed? And if they did not even noticed the symbol?
I’m older and have and I didn’t even know there was a special Nazi skull symbol while I do know about many of their other symbols.
Because it demonstrates it’s not some obscure piece of history that only WWII buffs would know.
A major film with one of the most acclaimed directors of all time that won the highest award you can win as a movie had the icon featured prominently on the main villain’s uniform throughout the nearly 4 hour movie. Come on my guy.
Winning "best picture awards" is not a relevant history buff thing, it is just a made-up meaningless BS awarded on favors, politics, nepotism, cronyism, and fucking the right industry gatekeeping pedophiles and sexual harassers of Hollywood mafia (Philip Berk, Harvey Weinstein, Jeffrey Epstein, etc) that are also the ones responsible or part of the same in-group as those dishing out the movie awards, and who all happened share the same religion together as the original founders of hollywood's studios, which i'm sure is just one giant coincidence and not a long-running mob-like organized crime group that ensure preferential treatment and exposure for their in-group while gatekeeping whistle-blowing outsiders using these fake awards in order to ensure they can all cover up and get away with crimes and control of their political narratives that then get parroted as historical gospel by the clueless.
I'm still in awe how easy it is to get seemingly intellectual people who built careers on pattern recognition, to accept the programming without question and refuse to recognise the patterns that are right in their face.
Not an American here, but I too never knew the skull and bones symbol is somehow associated with the Nazis. So I would disagree that it is "extremely well known".
The ADL is not a trustworthy source about what is and isn't anti-Semitism. Maybe they do point out actual incidents of anti-Semitism and true anti-Semites (which still exist in large numbers.) but they're unflinching support for Israel (a leading world cause of anti-Semitism) calls all their messaging into question.
Whatever that performance was, it certainly was not a debunking. The guy made a Nazi salute at CPAC, I saw it, there wasn't any ambiguity or question of intent. To me and everyone I know it was an obvious overt Nazi salute made in a context where it was clear that's what he was doing, esp. to me and my Jewish family members. The fact that the ADL stooped to what they did doesn't change reality, it just shows what a bunch of ghouls the ADL have become. Other Jewish orgs have been clear that this was a Nazi salute.
I have not heard anybody who is assured that it was a nazi salute after "doing their own research on the internet" who did not already hate Musk and wish desperately for this to be a nazi salute. The evidence for this conclusion that I have seen boils down to "Musk is a nazi therefore this was a nazi salute", because somehow the exact same kind of actions can be deemed with certainty to not be nazi salutes when performed by figures these self-enlightened people like. So you will forgive me for not trusting frothing "internet researchers" at their word, over organizations like the ADL.
Well this has been a fascinating case study in how rapidly expert opinion is cast aside and to make way for conspiracy theories about the scheming Jews when it suits peoples biases, so let's just end the thread at that.
I'm sure he figured it out at some point and should have had it covered up sooner, but I doubt he knew what it was when he got it.
Honestly, I'd be more concerned with someone who knows too much Nazi minutiae rather than too little.
EDIT: reading the CNN story, I'm actually less convinced, this is all coming from a conservative activist ex-girlfriend. Its a really obscure symbol and then there's this quote:
"Platner argued that he had the tattoo for 17 years without anyone raising concerns about Nazi symbolism, noting that he received a State Department security clearance, reenlisted in the Army after being screened for gang and hate-related tattoos, and regularly appeared shirtless around family members, including Jewish relatives."
Sure, maybe. I'm doubtful. But that's irrelevant. He knew when he launched his campaign. He chose to keep it. Worse, there's a good chance his family and his staffers knew as well. This is Jill Biden covering up Joe Biden's dementia all over again, except this time for racism.
Platner is a rubbish candidate. But! There is a case to be made that he's better for America than Susan Collins.
Did you recognize that skull as a Nazi symbol without being told? Like, "Oh, that's the Totemkompf"?
Personally, like I said, I think the more recent sexting thing is way more damaging to his brand. "Got a dumb tattoo on shore leave and posted dumb reddit comments 10 years ago" are fine for an everyman candidate, recent infidelity is not.
Plenty of people recognize that as a nazi symbol. Its why he covers it up in photos but leaves other tats uncovered. We only found out because of a leaked video from a personal event and someone inside his life confirming.
> Did you recognize that skull as a Nazi symbol without being told?
Nope. But if you're sending your pics out, someone is going to come back to you with that feedback. In this case, we have someone who says they did that.
> the more recent sexting thing is way more damaging to his brand
Sure, why not. I don't think, at the end of the day, we have any evidence either is electorally relevant anymore.
For the record, and I hope this isn't too forward, I respect your honesty and understand it's gotta be tough being a liberal zionist with everything that's going on. I respect it so much more than just going full Stephen Miller which I've seen some friends do.
I think people are really past the point of caring. The limousine liberals of course make a fuss but sitting on the high horse has not really served democrats that well, just taking L after L. And the sitting president is Epstein-Mossad pedofile and huge number still stand behind him without any shame.
I would expect anybody who graduated with a 4 year degree in the US to be able to recognize a totenkopf. It's probably the third most well-known Nazi symbol, and is almost certainly present in any textbook or museum about WWII (besides being a symbol is fictional media about Nazi Germany).
However, I think this is beside the point. The more relevant questions are (1) whether Platner knew what it was, and (2) whether an informed voter should want someone who doesn't know the meaning of the things they get tattooed on their body. Authentic or not, (2) demonstrates a lack of good judgement to me.
(Separately, having been to that part of part of Slavic southern Europe, it is inconceivable that any tattoo parlor that would give you a totenkopf tattoo is not plastered in other Nazi and far-right iconography. You would need to actively look past all of the other Nazi stuff and assume that the skull is the one thing that doesn't have some additional meaning.)
Plathner is authentic and able to see and correct his mistakes (tattoo), two important properties that candidates from the una-party lack. He is certainly not perfect, but apparently better than the rest.
Not being MAGA. I have some respect for Susan Collins. But this nonsense where a tattoo and infidelity should be disqualifying on one side while the President, popularly elected this time, sleeps with porn stars and endorses anti-Semites and KKK adjacents, is unsustainable. If we need a dude with a Nazi tattoo to win Maine, I guess I prefer to be pissed off and winning.
Yes, but that should be baseline for the Democrat candidate? Are there really no better candidates in Maine? This sort of thing would be regarded as disqualifiing in the UK even for local councilors from the far right. https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2026/may/27/calls-barns...
Fear not: “As you can all probably tell, I got a lot of criticisms about the way this government functions. But in order for us to make it functional, we’re gonna have to do stuff,” Platner said. “And you can’t just go down there and be John Fetterman and ... just sort of be an a*hole.”
Manchin was against Build Back Better, expanding voting rights legislation and codifying abortion rights.
Yes, he was better than a Republican. But he was a big reason why Democrats are seen as the do-nothing party who never achieve things. Because he stood in the way of it.
Not to mention, Fetterman isn’t Manchin. Manchin at least voted to impeach Trump, Fetterman is skeptical of even doing that.
Doesn’t confirm Pam Bondi and Pete Hegseth. Doesn’t confirm a new numpty to SCOTUS. Doesn’t blow the budget on a fake deportation push and tax breaks for the rich.
I agree Democrats have no agenda. But Republicans don’t seem to either right now. They have talking points. But the policy passed bears no resemblance to those in the slightest.
>"Democrats are seen as the do nothing party".
Quite a few people I know [eu based] used to consider themselves 'democrats' ie not republicans.
But, more and more are co.ing to the conclusion that the dems are pretty darn useless.
As if that has ever overcome the American media and political classes' fixation with bipartisanship (which is how the American system inoculates itself against left-wing policy)
That's unfortunate. Choosing a leader who lies constantly and boasts of enjoying killing people seems like an unnecessary mistake. He is attacked by people who have defended far worse and are quite cynical. That doesn't mean he should be defended. He should be attacked by a left comfortable enough in its future vision as to not compromise on basic principles.
The attacks against Mamdani were disingenuous. This suspicion has heightened when the other candidates being artificially propped up had such huge flaws. I hope we can learn to see when that dynamic pops up in other places.
As a newyorker who was raised a modern orthdox jew, but left that world for the world arts, the last few years have been weird.
On the one hand, it's been the first time I've no longer been able to take for granted that everyone in a room agrees with my political views and doesn't pre-judge me based on my background. On the other hand, I've gone back home to the suburbs and heard some really ridiculous hyperbole about what it's like in NYC.
Then there's the fact that while I support Isreal, I don't support all its actions. Nor do a lot of people in the [Orthodox] Jewish community, but they are afraid to speakup too much.
Modern orthdoox jews are kind of like Mitt Romney is for Mormons. Observant of all the rules, but also raised with a full secular education, encouraged to go to college, and expected to participate in society rather than isolate in thier community.
I like and have come to, on certain policies and candidates, ally with Mamdani. But I’m struggling to find the relevance to New York City in this article beyond supposition. I went in ready to find a foreign attack on our homeland and come away grasping at straws.
French foreign services said they discovered this, but they haven't made all material they know public. They say the contacted the NY/US authorities with what they know.
I want more than this! There is a lot of room between lying and fucking up. And if you're going to present a half-baked case on first impression, it's going to be a lot harder to regain everyone's attention when you get your shit together.
Maybe I'm just annoyed with this issue. But I came into this thread looking for anything actionable. I'm not finding it. Just the same old nonsese being flung across the same aisle.
(The whole Wired for war series on RT is interesting - https://www.rt.com/trends/wired-for-war/ - as it also describes AI techs evolving role in politics and the military).
The NY Times coverage of him is abhorrently biased. Every time I see an article about him, the headline, summary, and article itself feel like the editors were desperate to paint him in as negative a light as possible.
The man has almost overnight gotten the city to start doing things that benefit the general public, nto just the wealthy. Actions on bike lane projects that were stalled and actually taking action against slumlords.
All that barely gets a mention, but they seem obsessed with trying to find fault with everything he does.
During the NBA finals, he paid for his own ticket but they still took him to task for its expense ($1000) and the ticket coming from the "VIP ticket pool" like this was some abuse of his position or unethical of him.
Of course the mayor gets access to the VIP pool of tickets? And he didn't abuse the privilege to get tickets for anyone else - not staff, not family, not friends. Just him.
He's showing that government can be efficient. It can help people. People can actually like their local governments. And that is completely counter to the politics of these rags and their funders.
They want to talk about how government can't work, will always be inefficient, and how it must be cut.
The people who own these papers know that the obvious solution to a lot of societal problems is "tax the rich, build out social programs" and they desperately don't want that message to get out. It makes it a lot harder to setup gig and gambling economies.
They are racist, and unfortunately hard core israel supporter, which makes anybody that doesn't go with that agenda as a target.
The moment that Mandani said he will stay home and serve the people of NYC, what asked 'where are you going to make your first visit when elected' it made him a target. He showed he wasn't willing to bow down to a foreign power.
NYT still tries to put a veneer of modicum. NY Post is the one that is unbashingly always negative against Mamdani, full on attacks all the time.
I think people had enough of it, and saw through it and voted for him just in spite.
I know all the members of my soccer team voted for him. I had no clue who he was, but all the attacks backfired and made him even more famous.
Murdoch's News Corp, owner of the NY Post, has always hated political figures cut from the same "for the people" cloth as Mandani.
It's a pattern going back to humble origins in Australia, continued forward in the UK when they shredded Fleet Street norms, and exuberantly applied throughout their decades in the USofA.
I confused BlackCore with Black Cube, a different Israeli private oppo research and dirty tricks group of former intelligence agents. They gained attention for their dirty campaigns against Harvey Weinstein's accusers, NSOs critics and Hungarian opposition.
"Lecornu said the French government had asked Israel for explanations of BlackCore's actions, and also for help in trying to find out who may have been behind the smear campaign."
Here in Scotland it seems the desinfo campaign targeted mostly the SNP and Swinney. I guess it's hard to know how effective it was but his party lost 6 seats in last month's elections.
At least the French demonstrated they hold other governments accountable. Israel is shrugging off the killing of some 70k civilians, for sure they will shrug off this one too, to no one's surprise (including the French government).
Rogue states will attack Western democracy. It's a tale as old as... Well, actually, in the past few years, this one has done more on that front than all the others combined.
I'm surprised that they dare to target NYC. I think NSO Group restricted Pegasus so that no US adversary would be retained as a client and the US would not be targeted.
The current US administration would have likely been in favor of it. Long term it’s a bad idea but it wouldn’t be the first time we saw groups like this only thinking about the short term.
Quite revealing when this comment has been getting downvoted. I guess some people support the fact that some people dishonestly raise money for a humanitarian cause and then steal that money.
Another entry in the 'Black' villain line, along with BlackStone, BlackRock, BlackWater etc ... really makes you think the world is run by a thinly veiled cult of evil comic style villains.
If our press was honest, every story you heard about Russia would have been about Israel instead. Israel is overwhelmingly America's worst enemy and they distract from that by pretending Russia/Iran/China/Qatar is. No other country blackmails our politicians or steals so much of our money, military resources, soldier lives as much as Israel. There's no close competitor even.
Yet we're never told that explicitly and it's never framed as the abusive relationship that it is.
Last time I suggested on a similar story that there's a disproportionate number of firms in Israel with an explicit focus on subversion, manipulation, spying and malware, seemingly because a large portion of the Israeli population gain a certain expertise in these fields as part of serving in the IDF and working to suppress Palestinians, I got accused of bias because apparently there's many more Israeli startups working on medical research, green technology and world peace.
If there are, they certainly would do no harm in being more vocal, firms like BlackCore is unfortunately what Israel is becoming known for around the world.
Israeli here - I'll try to write this the least political as I can since I on one hand disagree strongly with the government and on the other my experience has been getting antisemstic (yes, not anti-zionist) comments whenever this gets discussed a lot (and likely downvotes but who cares I've been here 10 years and have more fake points than is important anyway).
Israel has several "cores" of technology. The military stuff is shameful (as well as other stuff). It's not just the NSOs (or less infamously the Wiz's/Palo Altos etc).
There are plenty of good things though - startups in the biotech/health/classic "tech" space. I'll spare you the long list of stuff like Mellanox that drives Nvidias in data centers and leave the googling of medtech to you. Lots of neutral stuff too.
> my experience has been getting antisemstic (yes, not anti-zionist) comments whenever this gets discussed a lot
I appreciate your experience. I have no doubt there's indeed been an increase in such comments. I think it's important to note that the Israeli government does work very hard to conflate Zionism with Judaism, (which itself seems antisemitic to me), making it harder for some to separate the two.
> There are plenty of good things though - startups in the biotech/health/classic "tech" space.
That's good to know, as I said in another comment, it may be time for those startups to make themselves heard more, not because they have to, but because it is in their interest if they have any expansion plans going forward, given what a poor PR the Israeli state and firms like NSO, BlackCore etc. give the Israeli tech scene.
> I think it's important to note that the Israeli government does work very hard to conflate Zionism with Judaism, (which itself seems antisemitic to me), making it harder for some to separate the two.
Yes, they are trying their hardest with their actions to fuel a new way of antisemitism.
Turns out if you are a religious fundamental colony that occupies territory based on the bible, that gives bad rap to the whole religion.
Except Zionism is not religious. It is a modern secular nationalist ideology rooted in ethnicity, shared ancestry, history, culture, and language. Indeed, socialism dominated Zionism for a long time.
Many if not most Israelis are not religious, and traditionally, religious Jews (especially the Orthodox; an extreme case is Neturei Karta) oppose Zionism and the State of Israel as a secular ersatz, believing that they must wait for the Messiah to restore Israel.
Of course, in the last few decades, a faction of Zionists have commandeered the messianic for political purposes, but this is not the origin.
I never understood this: the Palestinian children whose family and limbs are torn from them for Israeli sport are also Semites. It seems like the ultimate erasure to claim "antisemitic" for only Jews.
Etymologically you're correct that semites refers to [all] people from middle east and horn of Africa. But the label is from the European perspective, where it was used to refer to Jews. I'm sure that if they'd had a say in it, they would not have referred to themselves as Jews.
But yeah, there is indeed some irony in the term "antisemitism" in the context you describe
Semitic does not refer to people nor to a race of people, but to a family of languages including Hebrew and Arabic. The man who coined the term "antisemitic" used it to describe his own views which were specifically anti-Jew.
The only erasure is the attempt to diffuse the term to include Akkadians, Amharics, Carthaginians, Phoenicians, Black Israelites, adherents to the Nation of Islam, all 1.3 billions Arabs, what-have-you, when it always and only ever referred to anti-Jew hatred.
There is no such thing as a "semite." It's an archaic racial category that 19th century German race science used since "anti-semite" sounds more scientific than "Jew hater." Consequently, that's why it's applied to Jews rather than a larger pseudoscientific racial group.
(More broadly, "they're semites too" is the "Elon Musk is African American" of I/P discourse. You can recognize extraordinary human tragedy without re-using race science.)
I don’t know why you would assert this like it’s any of those things. You can look it up if you don’t believe me; you would be considered extremely weird for talking about “Semites” as a coherent racial or ethnic category around anthropologists.
(By comparison: nobody who isn’t a racist talks about Japhetites or Hamites, but these are the coextensive groups implied by the existence of Semites.)
Personally, I think you're going through a hard time. An individual and a country are different, but people do rely to some extent on the image of a country when judging an individual. I agree with your logic, so I'll give you an upvote
> Israeli here - I'll try to write this the least political
We are more than two years into full-on genocide and you hesitate to be political? This position reminds me of many Russians who prefer to "stay out of politics" because there are "two sides" to the conflict and it's an uncomfortable topic for them.
I didn't downvote you. You're Jewish (I stand side by side with Jewish brothers and sisters against Israel), you've expressed disagreements with the Israeli government. We're likely on a similar page then.
However:
> There are plenty of good things though - startups in the biotech/health/classic "tech" space.
Besides the point. I truly won't touch anything from that Apartheid, gen0cideal state.
c.f. the boycott of South Africa during Apartheid. Same principle.
Israeli designed/made chips are in phones, computers, all over the internet. Same with Israeli made software. Anyone using/posting to the internet is touching/supporting quite a few things from Israel.
To be clear, the job of the ordinary citizen in this situation is not to opt out. I criticise China often and yet my phone has Chinese chips. Would you have me shut up about China?. And so it is with Israel.
The job of the ordinary citizen is to do what they reasonably can to protest the gen0cidal, N'azi behaviour of its current administration with the support of a significant percentage of its populous.
Given how the troubles have turned a significant number of the population into blood-thirsty land thieves, the country should be de-N'azified like they did to Germany after WW2.
OMG, really?! Well then, because they did all those beneficial things, then I'm fine with Israel bombing hospitals, schools, and killing children by starving them while they sleep on the pile of rubble that was their home!
People justified their anti-Muslim hate after 9/11 with similar statements about polls saying most Muslims saw Bin Laden in a good light, and have anti-West views.
Not saying I agree with any of it, but I find the parallels illuminating. If anyone wonders why there's more anti-semitism now, s/he can perhaps compare it with how all Muslims are condemned as being members of a barbaric sect after any terrorist attack (yes, even attacks where the perpretator doesn't claim to be doing it for Allah).
Hold on, you're doing a little gymnastics here. People are very deliberately talking about Israel being in favour of the genocide, and quite understandably saying that their government should not be supporting Israel - with "not supporting" meaning anything from BDS to simply not handing billions of dollars to them. Some of the most vocal and strident supporters of this are Jewish. The groups attempting to connect the genocide to Judaism are the US, British and Israeli governments & news media - who are all broadly pro-Israel.
Additionally the anti-Muslim hate was not "ah let's very justifiably cut ties with some mad country" it involved widespread and open islamophobia, calls for mass deaths and indeed invasions of muslim-majority countries.
I wouldn't be surprised if the results of a poll for actual genocide would be the same, but expulsion is not genocide. I really wish people would stop diluting the meaning of genocide at every opportunity.
Which is a reasonable position, given that the Jews within this specific locale are mostly homicidal maniacs.
Given the context, Palestinians wanting to kill every last Israeli Jew is a totally defensible position. It’s a natural reaction to a band of murderous European invaders coming to occupy their homes.
No one has ever called me a kike or Christ killer. No one has ever accused me of controlling the media or banks. No one has spray painted a swastika on my house, or my synagogue for that matter.
My nation, the most powerful in the world, puts a menorah in its halls of government every year for Hanukkah. The legislative and judicial branches have Jewish members at the very top level. The head of government has a Jewish son-in-law.
Even online, I see much more pervasive criticism of my nation than yours.
Yet, listen to Zionists and I’m practically living in Weimar Germany. That dog won’t hunt.
People have criticisms of Israel. They may be fair or unfair. Address them on the merits and leave the rest of us out it. It has nothing to do with Jews qua Jews.
> Yet, listen to Zionists and I’m practically living in Weimar Germany. That dog won’t hunt.
Yeah this is so detached from reality I have to ask how you arrived at this conclusion and consider reexamining the way you consume information. Both in my own personal impression and according ADL global index USA's antisemitism is a low. Because "Zionists" have pro-Israel bias they will perceive any one who support Israel positively, and no one support Israel more than USA, so they will likely view USA as positive further lessening negtive views.
It's hard to separate for some people. Unfortunately those people tend to be the worst on both sides
In general, I think (or at least hope) your experience is the more common one. But fwiw I do have a Jewish friend who was personally cussed at and threatened by his own coworker explicitly for being Jewish (well, and probably because they were from Florida if I'm being honest, but there aren't as many slurs for that). The guy who did it was fired (whole thing was recorded iirc), nobody sided with him, he was clearly off his rocker in some way - but it doesn't take much to get shaken up - it sticks with you. And my friend was understandably, shaken up.
I know that because I used to live in Seattle, and unfortunately I had a really scary experience of being threatened (he yelled "I'm going to kill you b****") and chased down by a homeless man for nothing other than being a woman on the same street as him. So I saw my own perspective shift when it happened first hand. I was no longer excited about living downtown in a big city after that experience.
So what I'm saying is, neither me nor my friend took the experience and made it a defining thing. He still lives where he does, didn't blame the community or anything. And I'm back to taking public transit, talking to strangers on the sidewalk, and all the other stuff that comes with spending time downtown in a big city. But this time the city is Charlotte, my home city. It's probably not any safer than Seattle (maybe worse), but experiences shape perception, and I've always had really good experiences on Charlotte, including with homeless people. I could say it's because Charlotte has more police presence lately, or because there's not visible tent camps or open drug usage. But deep down, I know, crazy people are always gonna be out there, and the most trivial thing can make you a target.
So I really get the pull by people who have experienced victimization like that to talk about it. You feel kinda crazy if you don't, because you are surrounded by people who say it never happens because they've never seen it. That was such a big part I think of the Floyd protests - a lot of white people lived in a bubble and didn't know how pervasive overly violent interactions with the police can be (though the ironic part is that a lot of white people still don't realize that they can also be targeted by police with just as much malice). Most American black people already knew first or second-hand that police brutality was real and not uncommon - but until it was undeniable on video, it was treated by others as if it never happened.
So there's some honest middle ground somewhere, but the extremists are the one who have the most to gain from convincing people to believe otherwise.
There’s definitely antisemitism out there. Criticizing Israel is not part of it. The people that run to that ever. single. time. ought to be ashamed of themselves for crying wolf. They have no right to abuse the term and rob it of legitimate meaning because they don’t have a good response on the merits.
I have stood up for Jews since I was a kid, often saying "I'm Jewish" when racists/antisemitic jokes were told and I have been called those things. I've heard people say all kinds of horrific stuff about Jews. In this very thread we have:
"This is definitely made easier by the fact that the arrogance, the endless lawyering, the shady dealings, the greediness, the constant switching between attacking and playing the victim, they all match to a tee the most known historical antisemitic tropes."
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48515906
Regardless of what good things other Israeli companies might be doing, it's clear that the Israeli government doesn't have a problem with these malware / spyware companies.
Totals since 2016
Country Total Spending
China $562,676,323
Japan $504,111,211
Liberia $432,968,270
Saudi Arabia $421,890,448
Marshall Islands $382,012,024
South Korea $363,237,700
Bahamas $293,205,139
United Arab Emirates $269,529,107
Qatar $269,260,794
Israel $215,168,616
So for small countries UAE and Qatar(no surprise here, they just gifted 1 billion airplane to Trump)
This excludes US based groups lobbying for Israeli interests, which does not count under official spending by Israel, so it is not an accurate representation of the lobbying effort in the interests of Israel.
That seems like the categorically correct thing to do, for the same reason that (for example) a domestic Korean-American nonprofit that lobbies for Korean interests doesn’t get counted as foreign money or influence.
(Perhaps it should be! But it should be consistent, whatever it is.)
> Perhaps it should be! But it should be consistent, whatever it is.
Agreed. Any lobbying that centers on the interests of a foreign country should IMO count as foreign lobbying, I have no problem in including Korean-Americans, Kenyan-Americans etc. in that too.
Well, so here's the question: what counts as the interests of a foreign country? AIPAC's entire lobbying stance is that its positions are mutually beneficial to both the US and Israel, and this is the stance that every other national/ethnic affinity group in the US uses as well.
Put another way: it seems very risky to allow the federal government to determine the propriety of political speech just because it happens to concern two (or more countries) at once.
The difference is the nature of the lobbying and the volume. Follow the rules.
An egregious, non-controversial example of things going poorly is NYC Mayor Adams and Turkey. He basically accepted bribes and favors from the Turkish government and their proxies for specific actions.
A “doing it right” example that wouldn’t have been controversial until recently is Denmark. They mostly focus on direct diplomatic policy lobbying, and leverage consultants to promote mostly tourism. Their affiliations are known and registered. Now they hire K-Street lobbyists to influence policy objectives re: Greenland, etc.
The difference is that when the papers found out about Adams being a crook… that didn’t turn into accusations of racism and fomenting sectarian hatred. In the AIPAC example, there will be a both a legitimate visceral response from Americans and astroturf from lots of prominent people.
> The difference is that when the papers found out about Adams being a crook… that didn’t turn into accusations of racism and fomenting sectarian hatred. In the AIPAC example, there will be a both a legitimate visceral response from Americans and astroturf from lots of prominent people.
I think there's a much more parsimonious explanation for this: the average American doesn't know that much about Turkey, know very many Turkish people, etc.
In contrast, the average American has been steeped in I/P and related proxy conflict news for their entire adult life. That, combined with the fact that the US has a large Jewish population means that there's a degree of salience to accusations around AIPAC that wouldn't exist if the equivalent Turkish-American political lobby entity[1] was caught bribing politicians.
It is explicitly their claim, whether you (or I) find it ridiculous or not. Here’s the copy directly from their homepage[1]:
> America is safer, stronger and more prosperous when its relationship with Israel is ironclad. AIPAC works with Democrats and Republicans in Washington to advance that partnership. AIPAC lobbies Congress to pass annual U.S. security assistance to Israel, support lifesaving missile defense cooperation, and fund joint programs that help protect our troops and our homeland
(Note that “homeland” here refers to the US, not Israel.)
I was adjacent to state level politics for a long time. The German, Korean and French economic development organizations would come around every now and again with promotional events coordinated with their embassy to promote partnerships and business opportunities. Sometimes they had lobbyists focused on general relationship building, more often for specific issues.
The Israeli ground game is different. American PACs affiliated with or specifically “not affiliated with, but always talking about” Israeli interests show up at every level of government - a good friend is a town board member of a big suburban town and they call on him, and he refuses the contributions so will likely get primaried.
The real difference is information awareness. There is a CRM somewhere the ground guys have access to, and relationships are cultivated and used. My buddy is being targeted becuase there’s a good chance he’ll be in the state legislature someday. There’s a pipeline to get targeted American politicians to tour Israel for whatever reason. When critical attention is focused on this stuff, the reaction is fast and painful for the media outlet or political actor.
The only thing close to this is China, who does similar stuff with a different playbook. They’ve been caught embedding agents of one sort or another in California and New York governments at a high level, as well as places like Florida or within government contractors with lower level people.
Note that we’ve purged the FBI counterintelligence division, so the brazenness of the “bad” stuff will get worse - nobody is watching.
These numbers are wrong. There is no possible way Liberia has spent 10% of its GDP on lobbying the US for the past 10 years. They just signed (May 2026) a lobbying contract for $1.2 million with a lobbying company in the US, which seems vastly more in proportion https://liberianinvestigator.com/liberia-ballard-partners-lo...
OpenSecrets laid off 30% of its staff due to financial problems [0] and I'm absolutely sure that site is AI generated. No idea what numbers are displayed there but no country can afford 10% of GDP for 10 years for influence in Washington.
Those numbers in no way indicate that Liberia spent 10% of its gdp lobbying the US. It looks like approximately 0.8%, which is still fantastically high
It works out to about 0.8% of Liberia's GDP. The Marshall Islands number works out to about 15% of the estimated value of the amount of financial assistance the US gives them.
IDF conscripts astroturf on social media all day, and a lot of people do the same for free on behalf of the concept of Israel
Don’t worry about the deflections and karma flagging censorship as consensus, because its not
Jewish and Jewish Israeli people are raised to be afraid of the entire world, and think losing a perception game will result in their eradication perpetuated by everyone around them. This is due to a 1,000 year history of exactly that, so I can empathize, but not at the expense of fiction. I don’t want anyone to hurt them. I want the corrosive traits in their culture to be checked and go away.
Put all those PhD’s that some people are so proud of into other pursuits.
> Jewish and Jewish Israeli people are raised to be afraid of the entire world [...] This is due to a 1,000 year history of exactly that
Actually it goes way further. It seems that a large part of Jewish religion and culture is centered on the idea of being persecuted. A quick list goes from the Egyptian slavery, to the attack by the Amalekites, to the Babylonian destruction of the First Temple, to Haman's plot to exterminate Jews in Persia... and we're still at the book of Esther, 5th century BCE. The list goes on and on. Each of these is commemorated in a religious or civil ceremony: Passover, Purim, Hanukkah, etc.
This is to say, Judaism is built around grievance. And grievance in turn, if kept unchecked, is dangerous because it can justify unethical behaviours that are seen as reparatory.
> ... because apparently there's many more Israeli startups working on medical research, green technology and world peace.
> If there are, they certainly would do no harm in being more vocal ...
Perhaps, but - talk to someone who's done PR work for startups. Ask them what it would take for an Israeli startup working on, say, home bagel-making machines to get the sort of world-wide media attention that any Israeli creep-tech firm can get - for free - by association with a few nefarious deeds.
Selling spyware and 0days is a significant industry in Israel [1]. This includes Pegasus [2][3]. Countries around the world pay Israeli companies to hack the phones of politicians, opposition leaders, union leaders, journalists and basically anyone they don't like. This is actually a common structure for intelligence agencies who are often restricted from spying domestically or on citizens. They simply farm that out to the intelligence agencies of other countries or these spyware companies. Israel has become kind of an extrajudicial cheat code. Saudi Arabia has been a big user [4]. All of this is just objective fact.
No one was officially blamed for Stuxnet years ago but it's widely believed that the US and Israel were responsible [5]. And of course we had the pager operation [6]. If anyone else had done the same, they'd be labelled as terrorists and be under economic and diplomatic sanctions.
As for BlackCore, I guess it's part of the wider story of Israel's extensive influence campaign on foreign elections and politicians. We've seen this get really overt. For example, Thomas Massie's primary was the most expensive in history when AIPAC and AIPAC affiliates spent a combined ~$35M. I actually think it's this extreme and overt because Israel has lost the PR fight and are increasingly desperate.
Another less-talked about example was the character assassination of Jeremy Corbyn in the UK, which was essentiallya Zionist takeover of the Labor Party and, lo and behold, a few years later we're locking up grandmothers indefinitely for holding up signs that say "Palestine Action" [7].
And of course we have the Jeffrey Epstein of it all where it's really obvious that Epstein was an Israeli access agent and likely Ghislaine Maxwell was as well, particularly when you look at the entire history of Robert Maxwell from WW2 to arming Jewish militias pre-1948 and the IDF after that until finally "falling off" his own yacht.
Oh and there are claims that some unidentified hacker breached the FBI's systems in 2023 and accessed files related to Jeffrey Epstein. There are claims that 500TB was destroyed and 400TB of that was recovered [8]. That's so weird.
It's depressing to me how many people support a state that is functionally the Nazi Germany of our times. Like go ahead and find me the functional distinction between Gaza and the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. But also how impervious Western politicians are to public opinion on this issue, which has drastically switched in the last few years. Opposition movements are suppressed with brutal violence.
This is just cringe conspiracy stuff. Selling CNE tooling is a business (I don't know how big you want to call it) all over the world. Israel is not a global headquarters for it.
They also committed genocide as well. Surprising that even after Israeli human rights organizations acknowledge it, it still remains stuck in the mind of capitalists to support profit at any cost.
Apart from other mentions, they also did cutting edge research on nuclear power and weapons. Some of the scientists understood how massive an undertaking that was, however the political leadership apparently did not, or the world would look different today.
The Z3 was a German electromechanical computer designed by Konrad Zuse in 1938, and completed in 1941. It was the world's first working programmable, fully automatic digital computer. [c] Wikipedia
Most of that stuff was just torture for the sake of cruelty. It lacked the scientific rigor needed to classify it as even remotely close to research, so most of the "data" collected is completely worthless.
Turns out you can't do proper experiments when the subjects are also being starved and worked to death, when you lack a proper control group, or when you interpret all the results from a heavily racist perspective. And that doesn't even touch the completely nonsensical hypotheses yet.
Remilk is an Israeli food-tech startup using yeasts to produce milk proteins. Frankly I find your comment rather odd, why should a startup be more loud because other people are biased? Diplomacy is the job of the state. We have innovative index on which Israel does well and large number of unicorn per capita.
> why should a startup be more loud because other people are biased? Diplomacy is the job of the state.
I agree with you that it is the job of the state to do diplomacy, I would argue that the Israeli state has done an extremely poor job at that, so it may be left to some of its greener industry to pick up the slack, unfortunately.
Not because they 'have to' but because they would want to if they want to expand abroad and not get overshadowed by the bad PR the Israeli state is so good at putting out.
I disagree with you that 'other people are biased'.
One of the reasons Israeli soft power is so weak at the moment is precisely because its diplomats always insist everyone is just simply biased against Israel, often invoking some thousands year old hatred of its people etc. rather than for one second introspecting on the fact that the actions of the state may indeed have something to do with that perceived bias.
It should indeed be the job of Israeli diplomats to work and promote Israel in the best light possible
In addition to this malware, which comes from an Israeli company and is used for the purpose of subverting democratic elections in foreign countries (we don't really know who mandated these interventions, but the target, John Swinney and fellow ministers, have been vocal in their criticism of the Israeli government's actions in Gaza and the West Bank, and have imposed a form of sanctions on the Israel Defense Forces by withholding state grants to arms firms that supply the IDF and freezing support for exports to Israel), they have also infiltrated some countries like the UK and US with very powerful pro-Israel lobbies acting behind the curtain by directly contacting prominent politicians.
In the UK, the Israeli company Elbit Systems produces arms for Israel through its British subsidiary, which holds major Ministry of Defence contracts including the Watchkeeper drone programme (worth over £800 million) and the Jupiter training system (around £130 million) – sources: UK Companies House and MoD contract notices. People protesting for Palestinians at Elbit sites have been arrested: between 2020 and June 2024, over 140 arrests were made at more than 50 actions by Palestine Action, but police and court records show that no terrorism charges were filed, and the High Court rejected a legal challenge against policing of these protests in May 2024. Two main lobbies cover both major parties in the UK: Conservative Friends of Israel and Labour Friends of Israel.
In the US, a similar two‑party structure exists but with far greater financial power. The American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) and its super PAC spent over $4.5 million in the 2023–2024 election cycle, mostly to defeat progressive Democrats critical of Israel, including successfully spending $14.5 million to unseat Congressman Jamaal Bowman (source: Federal Election Commission filings). The Democratic Majority for Israel and the Republican Jewish Coalition mirror the UK's Labour and Conservative lobby groups, while the US provides Israel with roughly $3.8 billion in annual military aid – a sharp contrast to the UK's limited sanctions on the IDF. Unlike the UK, no US protester has been arrested under terrorism laws for actions against arms companies supplying Israel.
In practice, Israel and Russia do similar things:
they affect or subvert foreign elections by manipulating information and social media, and they directly influence politics via foundations, think tanks, and by cultivating politicians and influencers. For Russia, this includes organisations like the Russian House in Washington and sympathetic think tanks such as the Heritage Foundation – though the Heritage Foundation is American, Russian state media and proxies have actively courted its positions.
Russia has also influenced figures like Tucker Carlson, who repeatedly echoes Kremlin talking points, and JD Vance, who has opposed military aid to Ukraine; no public evidence proves formal recruitment, but both have amplified narratives favourable to Moscow and JD Vance made a powerful endorsement of Orban, a corrupted pro-russian statesman, in the past election in Hungary.
There's a lot of offensive security talent, but this has nothing to do with Palestinians. Israeli intelligence is very advanced and is why Israel has been able to eliminate the leaders of Hezbollah and Iran.
Not everything in Israel is about or related to Palestinians. The Palestinian bias only exists in circles where every thought regarding Israel is immediately evoking a Palestinian connotation. In reality, most Israelis never interact with Palestinians.
To suggest that a sector of Israeli startups exists on the experience of people "suppressing Palestinians" is definitely biased, absurd, and is a slippery slope.
> There's a lot of offensive security talent, but this has nothing to do with Palestinians. Israeli intelligence is very advanced and is why Israel has been able to eliminate the leaders of Hezbollah and Iran.
Not everything in Israel is about or related to Palestinians.
I would suggest to you that the focus on Iran is because Iran is perceived as being an obstacle to Israeli hegemony in the region and thus undisputed Israeli rule over Palestinian territory.
Iran also justifies its actions in terms of standing up for Palestinians.
Well that and the fact that Iran is (was) the other peer military adversary in the region, with forces deployed on Israel's border, and with a longstanding declared intent of eradicating Israel.
It turns out Hezbollah and Hamas are not Persian and don't speak Farsi. Hamas are Sunni.
Most importantly, both groups exist as a direct result of Israeli persecution of their civilian populations. They weren't created by Iran, they're a predictable result that happens when you occupy people's land and oppress them, you get resistance groups.
Over the last 10 years Hezbollah has spent more manpower fighting in Syria for Iran than it has confronting Israel. I don't know how to take seriously the idea that Hezbollah is anything but an appendage of the IRGC.
As a reminder: Shia are a minority in Lebanon; it's not even close.
Yeah, but Shia are a bigger percentage of the area that Israel is currently occupying and "turning into Gaza" in their own words. There are approximately 1.5 million homeless in the area now?
Hezbollah do see the Iranian supreme leader as the leader of Shia Islam, and they do see Iran as their key ally, but they didn't even exist before Israel occupied southern Lebanon in the 80s and abetted all sorts of massacres. They have a reason to exist besides being Iranian stooges, they're real people.
One more interesting narrative frame: Fighting in Syria for Iran? Not for Assad? Was Assad a thoughtless Iranian appendage also?
None of this explains why the Quds Force was able to command Hezbollah into Syria to besiege Sunni towns and suburbs of Damascus. It's very easy to find credible sources saying that Hezbollah is an Iranian asset, and the balance of clear evidence supports that. Like Iran itself, Hezbollah uses Israel as a political foil, but their real enemies are Sunni Arabs.
None of these observations make me a supporter of the Netanyahu government; my opinions of Likud have nothing to do with my opinions of Iran and their IRGC militias.
Yeah, I'm also not saying I'm some uncritical supporter of Hezbollah.
I'm just saying they have rational interests in addition to religious/sectarian, and we can see in the current situation that it would have been nice for them to have Assad still in charge of Syria right now. Calling them an IRGC militia isn't any more correct than calling UK/Israel a "USA militia".
It's fine that we disagree, it's fine for us to present different cases to the thread, we can do that respectfully, but just to be very clear: my case is that Hezbollah is (or was immediately prior to the "decapitation") an IRGC asset, commanded at least at a high level --- "which fights to pick, which fights to join" --- by the Quds Force commanders. Several QF elites were injured during the pager strike!
I'd be happy to see Netanyahu in prison. But the horrific death toll in Gaza is a small fraction of what the IRGC has wrought in Syria, Iraq, and especially Yemen. When the IRGC orchestrates starvation sieges, as they did at Madaya in Syria and Taiz in Yemen, they brag about it. They film videos for the besieged residents jokingly eating off banquets.
Winding back to the top of the thread, all this is just to say, Israel is not necessarily wrong about the adversaries they face outside of their borders. (They're definitely not wrong about Hamas and PIJ, but they're seemingly wrong about just about everything else that happens inside their borders.)
I think you're underrating how much you've bought the framing from US/neoliberal media, though. Try to put yourselves in Hezbollah or the Houthis' shoes, you wouldn't think of yourself as a pawn, you'd think of yourself as full-agency humans with interests and allies. Sunni power is against you so you ally with the Shia power.
For example, Iran never directly intervened in Yemen, they limited themselves to sending weapons, but the Saudis did a SHITLOAD[1], to the tune of 10k troops, hundreds of sorties and a "war crimes" section on the wiki page. Yet somehow the IRGC is the most salient group in this conflict to you, despite not doing any direct fighting?
The Houthis are literally Nazis. They run a race cult. They use child soldiers. As with Hezbollah in Lebanon, they're a religious minority that nonetheless exercises de facto control over security in their country. Iran trained and armed them; the Houthis are explicitly Khomeinists.
Now you're talking. They have agency, motivation and accept help where they can get it.
And I'm not saying they're good guys but the next step is weighting their atrocities on the same standard as those committed by the Saudis with our support.
Characterizing the Houthis as a race cult is bizarre. They are a Zaydi Shia group which Iran has cultivated over the years. But they were around before that relationship and would not disappear if that relationship was severed.
Also it's dishonest not to include the actions of the Saudis and the UAE when discussing the Yemen conflict. As well as the sustained U.S targeting support in bombing the hell out of that country.
I don't know what's complicated about this. Yemen is neither a religious nor an ethnic monoculture. Ansar Allah operates a caste system inside of it. Not all Zaydiyya align with Ansar Allah. More than half of Yemen is Sunni. There are ethnic underclasses in Yemen that are literally kept as chattel slaves.
You have never, ever seen me on this site stick up for Saudi Arabia. I feel like this is a big way people get themselves into trouble thinking about MENA. In most of these conflicts, there isn't a protagonist.
Why would we expect further discussion to be productive after you've handwaved away my last comment with a single "basically non-sequiturs" line? Justify that claim first. I'm not a slot machine you can keep pulling until you find the one argument you're prepared to rebut on the merits (after I flesh it out for you).
And while Arafat was responsible for many abominable actions and many, many casualties, let's not forget that one of the first supporters of Hamas was ... oh yes, Netanyahu. Because Arafat, for whatever reason or reasons in his final years softened and the PLO was increasingly being seen by the world as the one willing to negotiate while Israel didn't want to, which made for uncomfortable questions of "why is a terroristic organization willing to figure out how to get to peace while a supposedly peaceful nation is not".
Netanyahu and his ilk realized that rather than a rapidly moderating, rapidly gaining sympathy and support PLO was not the enemy they "needed" for their own agenda - "from the river to the sea", which, let's not forget, was actually Likud's official election slogan in the 70s and 80s (a "hilarious" irony when certain people try to point to Palestinian usage of this as a "gotcha" - "See, they want to exterminate us!"), and that IDF intelligence showed that Hamas was likely to be more extremist and thus garner more sympathy for Israel, so Israel started supporting Hamas' rise.
This could mean anything from a couple of ghettos to all of the modern state of Israel depending on what you think Palestinian territory is or should be.
If you take the approach that all of it is Palestinian territory and the state of Israel shouldn't exist, then yeah, sure? that's different from the assertion that all of the intelligence related businesses in Israel are founded because of direct experience in conflict with the Palestinian people.
Maybe I have a wrong read on the situation between Iran and Israel. But my impression is that Israel is more concerned with Iran as a general threat, moreso than they are concerned that Iran will intervene on behalf of Palestinians, current Palestinian territory, or Hamas.
If Iran didn't get involved directly after ~2 years of open warfare and inarguably genocide-shaped atrocities carried out on civilians, what are they waiting for? Meanwhile Netanyahu has been talking about the danger of Iran developing nuclear weapons for decades now.
Keep in mind I was responding to a post about an assertion that there are so many military startups in Israel because so many Israelis, in their IDF service, have hands-on experience fighting against and oppressing Palestinians. I responded to a post that seemed reductive and misleading in support of that perspective.
> my impression is that Israel is more concerned with Iran as a general threat
Iran has never attacked Israel unless attacked first. As for their 'proxies' they only really exist because Israel has invaded Lebanon long before Hezbollah existed and its creation was spearheaded primarily by Lebanon's local population as a response to the invasion, with Iranian support.
Iran supports these local 'proxies' because it sees itself as a leader of the Shia and more broadly as a leader of the Muslim world and the Palestinian cause as being the responsibility of every Muslim nation (incl theirs) to get involved with.
Israel is indeed concerned with Iran as a threat, but only because they see the other governments in the region as willing to overlook the Palestinian cause, in exchange for economic links with Israel.
In that sense Iran is very much connected to the Palestinians, this assertion that Iran is just super irrational and wants to see Israel go down because they want to laugh watching it or something is nothing more than cheap Israeli propaganda.
Of course Iran is not just looking for the Palestinians out of altruism, they want a leadership position in the Muslim world and this is their way of gaining legitimacy, but the reason why Israel sees them as a threat is very much because of Iran's interest in the Palestinians.
> Iran has never attacked Israel unless attacked first
Iran was involved in attacks against Israel and Israeli towns in the 1980s and 1990s by their mercenaries in Hezbollah and direct IRGC presence in Lebanon. This happened even when Israel supported Iran during the Iraq-Iran war, so this is strictly not true
Other incidents were the Iranian bombings of the Israeli embassy in Argentine or the Jewish center there, and attempts on the London and Bangkok embassies
Furthermore financing of Hamas during the 1990s suicide campaign with the direct goal of derailing the peace process.
This is part of a long line of Iranian aggressive actions that have led them to being isolated and in a string of wars that greatly destroyed their already diminished economic power
Except Israel invaded Lebanon before that. It also engaged in assassinations, espionage, terror and sabotage before that. In fact Israelis engaged in those even before the state of Israel was officially pronounced.
I'm not saying the Iranians or Lebanese etc. never play dirty, but this portrayal of them as just irrational and aggressive for no reason whatsoever against their peace loving Israeli neighbors is just dishonest.
For one, neither the Iranians, nor the Lebanese are occupying foreign territory. The same cannot be said for the Israelis.
Israelis will say they invaded Lebanon in the 70s/80s because of the PLO, (no Hezbollah yet) however the PLO was itself a consequence of Israeli occupation of Palestinian territory.
In conclusion; there's a fairly simple way to disarm the Iranians and strip them and their proxies of any perceived legitimacy they may hold with anyone; stop occupying Palestine.
> Except Israel invaded Lebanon before that. It also engaged in assassinations, espionage, terror and sabotage before that. In fact Israelis engaged in those even before the state of Israel was officially pronounced.
That is moving the goal posts, as these are not instances of attacking Iran, it's hard to claim Iran never attacked Israel first when it is either financing attacks against Israel or participating in them for the last 45+ years
> Israelis will say they invaded Lebanon in the 70s/80s because of the PLO, (no Hezbollah yet) however the PLO was itself a consequence of Israeli occupation of Palestinian territory.
Back when the PLO was founded there was no "foreign territory occupied by Israel", only internationally recognized Israeli borders and Gaza/West Bank which were under Egyptian/Jordanian occupation. Two countries that refused to create an independent Palestinian state
> it's hard to claim Iran never attacked Israel first when it is either financing attacks against Israel or participating in them for the last 45+ years
The Iranians supported the Palestinians Israel was attacking the same way the Soviets supported the Vietnamese. This was not the Soviets attacking the US, this was the Soviets supporting indigenous forces that the US was attacking. It's the same as the Israelis supporting Kurdish groups in Iran, Turkey etc.
These groups have their own motives and agency, the Lebanese opposed to Israel are not mere 'proxies' of Iran, neither are the Palestinians. They're opposed to Israel for their own reasons, namely Israel occupies their land.
If you're so concerned about Iran being able to come in and support them, then stop occupying foreign land and the whole reason Iran is able to make inroads with your neighbors disappears.
You won't do that of course, because Israel is the one who first conducted attacks on Iran directly. Therefore it does not get to play the card of being attacked. It invaded Syria too for no reason whatsoever, other than taking more land.
> Back when the PLO was founded there was no "foreign territory occupied by Israel", only internationally recognized Israeli borders and Gaza/West Bank which were under Egyptian/Jordanian occupation.
Which is why the PLO has a bloody conflict with Jordan, which you conveniently omit. It's almost as if they were opposed to being occupied, period.
When Israel invaded Lebanon back in the 70s/80s, it already took control of Gaza and the West Bank by that point.
> Two countries that refused to create an independent Palestinian state
I love this talking point. So because someone else was horrible to the Palestinians, that justifies Israel being horrible to them too?
> Which is why the PLO has a bloody conflict with Jordan, which you conveniently omit. It's almost as if they were opposed to being occupied, period.
The PLO tried to takeover Jordan after Jordan stopped occupying the West Bank, I don't see how that makes sense chronologically.
You could also point at Palestinian attempts at taking over Lebanon, but that doesn't really support your argument that Palestinians are aggressive due to being under occupation
Regarding the Iranians comparison with the Soviets, The Soviets were an aggressive actor and that's why the world was on the brink of nuclear war numerous times in the 20th century, causing both sides to regulate. Iran had never really toned down its aggressive behavior towards Israel, culminating in the October 7th massacre and ended eventually with Iran in complete ruins
You're doing the same thing you're accusing the other person of.
The PLO was not an inevitable force of nature, it was an organization that consisted of human beings, making conscious decisions.
The British took Palestine from the Ottomans and handed it to the state of Israel. Maybe morally it's an occupation, but if so then the USA is occupying Hawaii.
Yes that's why I brought it up. There's actually a substantially better argument for Hawaii because the USA just showed up and conquered the kingdom that was there. Whereas the Ottomans had Palestine for what, 500 years?
It's more complicated than that as the Palestinians are speaking the language of an earlier foreign colonizing empire that replaced another empire that ethnically cleansed the Jews and then colonized the area
> Iran has never attacked Israel unless attacked first
I mean, come on dude. You explaining away the actions of Iran's proxies as not the actions of Iran is just ahistorical nonsense at best. They funded them, trained them, and directed their actions.
> Israel is indeed concerned with Iran as a threat, but only because they see the other governments in the region as willing to overlook the Palestinian cause, in exchange for economic links with Israel
The complete lock down of the border between Egypt and the Gaza strip is because Egypt is beholden to Israel? Is that what you're saying here?
> the reason why Israel sees them as a threat is very much because of Iran's interest in the Palestinians
And by "interest" you're referring to backing the most violent terrorist groups in the region, who have the blood of thousands of Israeli citizens on their hands.
Iran is not strictly "an obstacle" to Israeli hegemony. Its ideology since the 1970s clearly states the destruction of Israel as its goal. It clashed with Israel over Iran's desire to set up a Shia vassal state in Lebanon and it killed Jews and Israelis all over the world through terror (e.g. AMIA bombing in Argentina)
The Palestinians are merely a tool for Iran to gain influence, Hezbollah and Shias in Iraq were far more important for them historically
> you say that as if israel doesn't have the exact same ideology against iran (it does)
What are the parallels in Israeli society for Iranian school systems morning chants of "Death to Israel" and a public countdown clock to the destruction of Israel?
Are you seriously going to bring up chants when Israel is a country where they chant 'Death to Arabs' casually, watch the Gaza genocide from a hilltop and have installed vending machines to make the massacres more fun to watch?
But to answer your question directly, the Iranians would say they equate Israel with ethno-supremacy, same as apartheid South Africa. Getting rid of apartheid in South Africa was not about getting rid of while South Africans as such, it was about getting rid of the ethno-supremacy underpinning apartheid.
Sorry, but none of your examples are related to Iran or are state mandated (and are awfully cherry-picked).
Iran ideological wishes of destroying Israel are pretty much in the open, no need to try to weasel around it. While there isn't any such ideology in Israel towards Iran
Sorry, but none of your personal restrictions on type and style of evidence are pertinent to the matter at hand (and are awfully cherry-picked).
israeli ideological wishes of destroying Palestine, Lebanon, Iran, etc are pretty much in the open, no need to try to weasel around it. Heck, israel doesn't even recognize Palestine's right to exist in the first place.
What would recognizing "Palestine's right to exist" look like? They proposed the creation of a Palestinian state several times; what more would you expect?
> israeli ideological wishes of destroying Palestine, Lebanon, Iran, etc are pretty much in the open
This is pretty ironic considering that Iran, Hamas and Hezbollah are all quite explicit about their ambitions of wiping out Israel, while the reverse isn't true at all. Israelis have no desire to kill Persians a thousand kilometers away, they just don't have much choice but to fight foreign armies who attack them.
> They proposed the creation of a Palestinian state several times; what more would you expect?
The Palestinian state already exists, so the least they could do is recognize its right to exist, which is equal in every way to israel's. That is to say: if israel has an unconditional right to exist, then Palestine's right to exist is equally unconditional. Likewise, if israel can place conditions on Palestine's existence, then Palestine has equal rights to place conditions on israel's existence.
> Iran, Hamas and Hezbollah are all quite explicit about their ambitions of wiping out Israel
This is pretty ironic considering that israel is pretty explicit about their ambitions of wiping out Palestinians and taking their land, as well as destroying Palestine, Lebanon, and Iran.
> Israelis have no desire to kill Persians a thousand kilometers away
This unsupported claim is immediately belied by their actions (they initiated a war in which they are killing persians a thousand kilometers away), and also ignores that they are also killing Palestinian and Lebanese people.
> The Palestinian state already exists, so the least they could do is recognize its right to exist
There exists a national identity, but the organization that claims to be its government does not enjoy popular support, and more importantly, has never really controlled the territory that it aspires to govern.
> This is pretty ironic considering that israel is pretty explicit about their ambitions of wiping out Palestinians and taking their land, as well as destroying Palestine, Lebanon, and Iran.
This is false; there's absolutely nothing resembling Iran's, Hamas' or Hezbollah's clear, explicit goals of destroying Israel.
> they initiated a war
This perspective only makes sense if we pretend that proxy warfare doesn't count. Once we acknowledge the fact that Iran funded, armed and trained multiple terrorist groups specifically to attack Israel for years, it becomes very clear who started the Israel-Iran conflict.
* Avisa Partners / iStrat, a French lobbying, intelligence, cybersecurity, and online-influence firm, has been accused in French investigations of information manipulation through ghostwritten articles, fake or undisclosed profiles, blogs, and Wikipedia interventions on behalf of powerful clients. Mediapart reported that Avisa was suspected of modifying Wikipedia pages for clients including French business elites and foreign powers. Wikimedia France also summarized the affair, saying Avisa or its subcontractors were suspected of numerous undeclared paid contributions to Wikipedia. Avisa has denied wrongdoing.
[1] [2] [3]
* iStrat, Avisa's predecessor, was separately linked in French reporting to fake online personas used to publish commentary about business disputes. The Avisa Partners Wikipedia summary, based on French media reports, says JDN traced fake analyst profiles and critical commentary to iStrat-era activity, while iStrat and its owners denied the claims.
[4]
* There was also a France-linked, though not company-linked, covert influence operation in Africa. In December 2020, Facebook/Meta removed networks for coordinated inauthentic behavior targeting African audiences; one network was linked to individuals associated with the French military. Meta said the operation used fake accounts, pages posing as news or military entities, and off-platform domains. Graphika and Stanford described it as French and Russian influence operations going head-to-head in Africa.
[5] [6]
* The Washington Post reported the same Facebook takedown as people affiliated with the French military using fake Facebook accounts to meddle in African politics, while noting that Facebook said it did not have evidence that the French military institution itself directed the activity.
[7]
It's disturbing to think that there are people getting paid huge amounts of money by governments, using taxpayer money to f around with politics of other countries... Meanwhile I've been trying to raise a $100K seed round for my startup which I've been working on for 14 years during nights and weekends... and I never even made it the interview phase of a tech incubator. WTF is wrong with people?
* CLS Strategies, a Washington, D.C. communications firm, was named by Facebook/Meta in 2020 when Meta removed fake accounts and pages tied to operations in Venezuela, Bolivia, and Mexico. Meta defines coordinated inauthentic behavior as efforts to manipulate public debate for a strategic goal where fake accounts are central. PRWeek also reported the takedown as fake accounts and pages managed by CLS.
[1] [2]
* Rally Forge, a U.S. marketing firm, was linked by Facebook to a 2020 domestic U.S. operation run on behalf of Turning Point USA, involving fake accounts and coordinated behavior. Axios reported that Facebook removed 200 accounts, 55 pages, and 76 Instagram accounts.
[3] [4]
* New Knowledge / Project Birmingham is another ugly example. In the 2017 Alabama Senate race, Democratic-aligned operatives experimented with Russian-style disinformation tactics, including fake or misleading Facebook activity and buying retweets. The effort was reportedly small and probably did not decide the election, but it proves the category exists inside the U.S. political ecosystem.
[5] [6]
* There are also U.S.-linked pro-Western covert influence operations. Graphika and the Stanford Internet Observatory analyzed accounts removed by Twitter and Meta for platform manipulation or coordinated inauthentic behavior; later reporting said the Pentagon ordered a review after fake accounts suspected of being run by the U.S. military were taken down. Meta later attributed a campaign targeting the Middle East and Central Asia to people associated with the U.S. military.
[7] [8] [9]
* Cambridge Analytica is adjacent but not identical. It had U.S. offices and U.S. political clients, and it was part of the broader “election manipulation for hire” world, but its central scandal was data harvesting, psychographic targeting, and political ad targeting, not necessarily fake-account bot networks in the same narrow sense.
[10]
I predict that this will be flagged very soon. I would love for HN to publish some data on likes/flags, even anonymous IDs with some infos like account age and number of posts. Sure someome will argue things here get flagged cause they are political, but I don't buy that.
We've had discussions about this sort of stuff before.
As an Israeli (note the article exposing them is Israeli too) I was not aware until I saw this and I definitely intend to protest/organize about this (though to be fair I've been protesting about other stuff in the past and the climate here sucks).
> Are you saying that this isn't political? It's literally about politics.
Sure it's about politics, but it's also about tech. The intersection of politics and tech is a fascinating area, of great interest to many folks on HN, and probably within HN's charter.
I think that merely touching on politics should not be grounds for flagging a submission, even when the specifics are highly controversial (as in this case).
I do not disagree that there is a political aspect to this article. Todays news on Fable and Mythos are political too. HN has plenty of political articles, yet some are more flagged than others.
I claim there might be a pattern of supression. Are arguing against my main point that it would be good to have more transparency so I can support or refute my claim?
Do you want to count how many times words like nazi, genocide, terrorists appears in comments section about Anthropic vs here? Do you see the difference?
Is the USA finally doing something about foreign lobbyists here? Trump is like the ultimate tool here for foreigners to gain influence, no matter the country. Yuri explained this already in the 1980s (!!!): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9apDnRRSOCk (it's the KGB view, so biased too, of course, but if you extend it, then also connect it to Epstein, you have basically undermined democracy effectively; a shame Yuri is dead, he would have had a field day with "analysing" Putin).
OP is talking about American's here. AIPAC is made of and paid for AIPAC, like other political packs or other American groups. AIPAC is just Americans, doing the American political thing.
I always thought this was a new thing until I read The Palestine Laboratory by Antony Loewenstein. Over more than 50 years Israel has developed a global export industry around military, surveillance, and security technologies that were developed and tested through its control of Palestinian territories, and that these technologies are then marketed and sold worldwide. Buyers are often bad actors that use it to kill and suppress other populations including in Armenia/Azerbaijan, Myanmar, Rwanda genocide, authoritarian governments and many other examples cited in the book.
Wow, again I am dismayed by the antizionism and anti-Israel sentiment. The popularity of this short, weak article on this website, and the vitriol and hate in the comments is unreal. Can't you all go to Reddit?
In 2016 the UK based Cambridge Analytica was blamed for Trump's win in 2016. Then he won again in 2024 without them. Meanwhile both USA parties invested heavily in social media campaigns.
In my country local government elections are in a few months and political parties are already flooding my social media with rage bait (primarily Instagram and Facebook).
This short article is about a private company, not linked to the government, that may or may not have been retained by locals, that may or may not have breached foreign interference laws, and that certainly did not lend its targeted candidates an overwhelming advantage (Mamdani was the most popular candidate in the NYC mayoral election). But because it is about Israel everyone goes crazy.
Is the "meddling" just running campaign ads? I don't really see how an election where voters' brains were hijacked by tiktok ads funded by foreign governments is less legitimate than one where voters' brains were hijacked by tiktok ads funded by local organizations.
You don't see a difference between local and foreign organizations influencing an election?
Most countries only allow citizens to vote. By your logic, they should let anyone vote, because what's the difference between a citizen and a foreigner when it comes to elections?
As a New Yorker this doesn’t shock me too much. The level of “Mamdani is an anti-Semite” sentiment I saw online (Reddit particularly) felt truly hysterical. And wasn’t matched by any equivalent in the offline world.
I suspect that many people, like me, now hear "antisemitic" as "anti Israel" and assume it's a politically motivated slur without justification. This is not good. As racism and actual antisemitism continues to be very real, any conflating or exaggeration of a real problem diminishes people's willingness to address the real problems.
And this is what Israel wants. To claim that anyone who disagrees with Israel and their genocide is antisemetic
They have to be kind of panicking that the smear tactics keep backfiring.
Didn't stop Mamdani. Won't stop Platner.
At this point it is amusing to see them pissing away so many millions of dollars to stop a public opinion tide that has no chance of being stopped.
I'm not sure in the Platner case why the supposed progressive cause can't find someone without a Nazi tattoo.
I'm not sure what the alleged benefits of Platner are either. Mamdani has been amazing, but what is Platner for?
It's not like it's a swastika, it was a skull and crossbones that turns out to have been used by the SS (I think?). I had no idea that particular image was nazi-related and I don't think most other people would have either. As far as "mistakes made by marines on shore leave" go it's pretty mild. Honestly his more recent scandals are more concerning as far as character.
Platner's upside is being a senator that's not from the student senate -> Hill staffer -> party insider pipeline. We're all pretty much sick of that character, he sounds much more authentic by comparison.
It's an extremely well known nazi symbol. Probably second behind the swastika itself. There's even that famous "are we the baddies" meme, which uses that symbol as a central pillar of the gag.
I'm pretty online, I've seen that skit and I to this day don't really know what a totenkopf looks like. I'd never heard the word before this Platner business either. Surprising you're saying it's well-known. Am I in some kind of bubble?
Not even just that, the main villain (Amon Göth) in Schindler’s List (which won Best Picture) has it on his uniform throughout the film.
It’s not like it’s some obscure icon.
If the bones are a little longer, it's a Jolly Roger. If the teeth were longer, it would be a punisher skull. If it weren't turned at that particular angle it would just be a generic skull. If it were 2 angular lightning bolts, it would obviously be SS but a skull is really common in a lot of contexts.
If you happened to clock this particular skull shape as a symbol from an SS division, then congrats, but 95% of people just would not and that's why it didn't land as a scandal. Everyone said "Huh. I didn't know either." and then accepted "Marine gets dumb skull tattoo while drunk on shore leave" as a fairly normal thing to have happened.
If I had wheels I’d be a bicycle. I don’t see your point? It’s very obvious what it is and just because you can alter an icon to make it look like something else doesn’t change what it is.
Ignorance of something doesn’t change what it is. “Oops I accidentally had a Nazi for nearly 20 years and only had it covered up 9 months ago when it became a political liability” isn’t a good look to say the least.
My point is that it's not very obvious what it is unless you are super studied in Nazi symbology. I thought I was clear but there it is in case I wasn't.
If this were a swastika, the SS lightning bolts or even the Iron Cross, yeah, that looks pretty Nazi. Instead it's a skull and crossbones just like every other one used all over the place, including the very cool jolly roger, except this one happens to be Nazi. I didn't know, most people didn't know, he can credibly say he didn't know, and we all think the jolly roger's cool. Dog's not gonna hunt.
“My point is that it's not very obvious what it is unless you are super studied in Nazi symbology”
Or if you ever played a WWII themed video game (Wolfenstein, Call of Duty), or if you’ve ever watched a WWII show like Band of Brothers or watched a major WWII movie like Schindlers List or Saving Private Ryan. I could go on, it’s prominent in nearly any WWII media.
Honestly, I don’t know if people toting the line saying it’s “obscure” are intentionally lying because he aligns with their political agenda or are completely oblivious to any level of detail in any media.
It’s really astonishing.
Not sure what to tell you--I like many others here it seems (and probably elsewhere) hadn't even heard of a totenkopf before this issue was raised. It's a non-issue. Honestly I think it's a bit strange that you think it's so recognizable.
Bro, I am not lying, there are skulls and crossbones from so many sources. I saw all those movies, I knew some Nazi units used skulls just like units of many militaries, pirates, motorcycle gangs etc. It's a cross-cultural symbol for "we fuck shit up".
If you examined so much Nazi symbology that you would immediately flag this as a particularly Nazi skull based on the angle and bone length, you are the unusual one. It's cool to have interests but understand that the rest of us just see a skull and don't have nearly the response we would to a swastika.
You do realize there are many people, especially younger folk, who will never have played or seen the media listed? And if they did not even noticed the symbol?
I’m older and have and I didn’t even know there was a special Nazi skull symbol while I do know about many of their other symbols.
>which won Best Picture
And that's relevant how?
Because it demonstrates it’s not some obscure piece of history that only WWII buffs would know.
A major film with one of the most acclaimed directors of all time that won the highest award you can win as a movie had the icon featured prominently on the main villain’s uniform throughout the nearly 4 hour movie. Come on my guy.
Winning "best picture awards" is not a relevant history buff thing, it is just a made-up meaningless BS awarded on favors, politics, nepotism, cronyism, and fucking the right industry gatekeeping pedophiles and sexual harassers of Hollywood mafia (Philip Berk, Harvey Weinstein, Jeffrey Epstein, etc) that are also the ones responsible or part of the same in-group as those dishing out the movie awards, and who all happened share the same religion together as the original founders of hollywood's studios, which i'm sure is just one giant coincidence and not a long-running mob-like organized crime group that ensure preferential treatment and exposure for their in-group while gatekeeping whistle-blowing outsiders using these fake awards in order to ensure they can all cover up and get away with crimes and control of their political narratives that then get parroted as historical gospel by the clueless.
I'm still in awe how easy it is to get seemingly intellectual people who built careers on pattern recognition, to accept the programming without question and refuse to recognise the patterns that are right in their face.
Not an American here, but I too never knew the skull and bones symbol is somehow associated with the Nazis. So I would disagree that it is "extremely well known".
Neither did a lot of nazis, that’s the reason the Mitchell and Webb bit is so funny. Nazi’s are always the least self aware, by definition.
He may have known, he may not have known. I think he likely knew much earlier than he reported.
All that said, he was very online and very much not an online Nazi. To me that matters a lot more than a bad tattoo.
There'd simply be a lot worse comments from his reddit history if his beliefs aligned with his tattoo. That, to me, is why it just doesn't matter.
Like Musk's salute
IIRC the experts debunked that disinformation.
Yes I remembered correctly https://x.com/ADL/status/1881474892022919403
The ADL is not a trustworthy source about what is and isn't anti-Semitism. Maybe they do point out actual incidents of anti-Semitism and true anti-Semites (which still exist in large numbers.) but they're unflinching support for Israel (a leading world cause of anti-Semitism) calls all their messaging into question.
Whatever that performance was, it certainly was not a debunking. The guy made a Nazi salute at CPAC, I saw it, there wasn't any ambiguity or question of intent. To me and everyone I know it was an obvious overt Nazi salute made in a context where it was clear that's what he was doing, esp. to me and my Jewish family members. The fact that the ADL stooped to what they did doesn't change reality, it just shows what a bunch of ghouls the ADL have become. Other Jewish orgs have been clear that this was a Nazi salute.
You're welcome to your opinion but I will trust the experts.
The experts on what? Zionist lobbying?
I have not heard anybody who is assured that it was a nazi salute after "doing their own research on the internet" who did not already hate Musk and wish desperately for this to be a nazi salute. The evidence for this conclusion that I have seen boils down to "Musk is a nazi therefore this was a nazi salute", because somehow the exact same kind of actions can be deemed with certainty to not be nazi salutes when performed by figures these self-enlightened people like. So you will forgive me for not trusting frothing "internet researchers" at their word, over organizations like the ADL.
Well this has been a fascinating case study in how rapidly expert opinion is cast aside and to make way for conspiracy theories about the scheming Jews when it suits peoples biases, so let's just end the thread at that.
Sounds like the converse is true actually--I haven't seen anyone who isn't a Musk stan (or anti-semite) say it's not a Nazi salute.
> I had no idea that particular image was nazi-related and I don't think most other people would have either
for context it's https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Totenkopf#Nazi_Germany , i'm surprised so many people didn't know the nazi use
if platner really didn't know, i guess it just spoke to him as a (future?) blackwater mercenary
> if platner really didn't know, i guess it just spoke to him as a (future?) blackwater mercenary
Yes, correct. Despite that, if I lived in Maine, I'd wholeheartedly vote for him. Not sure why I shouldn't?
> no idea that particular image was nazi-related and I don't think most other people would have either
He knew what it was [1]. That doesn't mean he's unelectable in 2026.
[1] https://www.cnn.com/2026/06/05/politics/graham-platner-cant-...
I'm sure he figured it out at some point and should have had it covered up sooner, but I doubt he knew what it was when he got it.
Honestly, I'd be more concerned with someone who knows too much Nazi minutiae rather than too little.
EDIT: reading the CNN story, I'm actually less convinced, this is all coming from a conservative activist ex-girlfriend. Its a really obscure symbol and then there's this quote:
"Platner argued that he had the tattoo for 17 years without anyone raising concerns about Nazi symbolism, noting that he received a State Department security clearance, reenlisted in the Army after being screened for gang and hate-related tattoos, and regularly appeared shirtless around family members, including Jewish relatives."
> I doubt he knew what it was when he got it
Sure, maybe. I'm doubtful. But that's irrelevant. He knew when he launched his campaign. He chose to keep it. Worse, there's a good chance his family and his staffers knew as well. This is Jill Biden covering up Joe Biden's dementia all over again, except this time for racism.
Platner is a rubbish candidate. But! There is a case to be made that he's better for America than Susan Collins.
Did you recognize that skull as a Nazi symbol without being told? Like, "Oh, that's the Totemkompf"?
Personally, like I said, I think the more recent sexting thing is way more damaging to his brand. "Got a dumb tattoo on shore leave and posted dumb reddit comments 10 years ago" are fine for an everyman candidate, recent infidelity is not.
Plenty of people recognize that as a nazi symbol. Its why he covers it up in photos but leaves other tats uncovered. We only found out because of a leaked video from a personal event and someone inside his life confirming.
> Did you recognize that skull as a Nazi symbol without being told?
Nope. But if you're sending your pics out, someone is going to come back to you with that feedback. In this case, we have someone who says they did that.
> the more recent sexting thing is way more damaging to his brand
Sure, why not. I don't think, at the end of the day, we have any evidence either is electorally relevant anymore.
For the record, and I hope this isn't too forward, I respect your honesty and understand it's gotta be tough being a liberal zionist with everything that's going on. I respect it so much more than just going full Stephen Miller which I've seen some friends do.
> it's gotta be tough being a liberal zionist
Not sure why you’re being (a) so randomly wrong and (b) randomly irrelevant.
EDIT: Ah, a 4-month old single-issue troll account. Lovely.
>troll account.
Why do you say? What is the single issue? I can’t find a linking theme.
I think people are really past the point of caring. The limousine liberals of course make a fuss but sitting on the high horse has not really served democrats that well, just taking L after L. And the sitting president is Epstein-Mossad pedofile and huge number still stand behind him without any shame.
I would expect anybody who graduated with a 4 year degree in the US to be able to recognize a totenkopf. It's probably the third most well-known Nazi symbol, and is almost certainly present in any textbook or museum about WWII (besides being a symbol is fictional media about Nazi Germany).
However, I think this is beside the point. The more relevant questions are (1) whether Platner knew what it was, and (2) whether an informed voter should want someone who doesn't know the meaning of the things they get tattooed on their body. Authentic or not, (2) demonstrates a lack of good judgement to me.
(Separately, having been to that part of part of Slavic southern Europe, it is inconceivable that any tattoo parlor that would give you a totenkopf tattoo is not plastered in other Nazi and far-right iconography. You would need to actively look past all of the other Nazi stuff and assume that the skull is the one thing that doesn't have some additional meaning.)
Plathner is authentic and able to see and correct his mistakes (tattoo), two important properties that candidates from the una-party lack. He is certainly not perfect, but apparently better than the rest.
What is the alleged downside of Platner as a politician?
All I see discussed is tatto which is irrelevant and does not reflect his policy
Just pure hysteria from neurotic people
Platner is to help win the Senate for Dems. He has progressive policies and he's anti-Israel.
I believe him that he didn't know it was a Nazi tattoo. There's no other evidence that he holds Nazi views and he has covered it up.
Stop hand wringing, vote Platner.
> what is Platner for?
Not being MAGA. I have some respect for Susan Collins. But this nonsense where a tattoo and infidelity should be disqualifying on one side while the President, popularly elected this time, sleeps with porn stars and endorses anti-Semites and KKK adjacents, is unsustainable. If we need a dude with a Nazi tattoo to win Maine, I guess I prefer to be pissed off and winning.
> Not being MAGA
Yes, but that should be baseline for the Democrat candidate? Are there really no better candidates in Maine? This sort of thing would be regarded as disqualifiing in the UK even for local councilors from the far right. https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2026/may/27/calls-barns...
It was rather disappointing to listen to Jodi Kantor of the New York Times come up with reasons why, well, it's different this time.
I have the fear that Platner will just be another Fetterman, and you will have brought this unto ourselves...
Fear not: “As you can all probably tell, I got a lot of criticisms about the way this government functions. But in order for us to make it functional, we’re gonna have to do stuff,” Platner said. “And you can’t just go down there and be John Fetterman and ... just sort of be an a*hole.”
Source: https://nebraska.tv/news/nation-world/graham-platner-calls-p...
Talk is cheap. Platner has already shown he wouldn't uphold the vow he made to his wife. I start with the assumption he will break his word.
Still better than the half-brained man who loves Israel above all else.
> Platner will just be another Fetterman
This reminds me of the folks who had conniptions over Sinema and Manchin. You know what we'd have if we had four of those right now? A majority.
A majority that does what exactly, though?
Manchin was against Build Back Better, expanding voting rights legislation and codifying abortion rights.
Yes, he was better than a Republican. But he was a big reason why Democrats are seen as the do-nothing party who never achieve things. Because he stood in the way of it.
Not to mention, Fetterman isn’t Manchin. Manchin at least voted to impeach Trump, Fetterman is skeptical of even doing that.
> A majority that does what exactly, though?
Doesn’t confirm Pam Bondi and Pete Hegseth. Doesn’t confirm a new numpty to SCOTUS. Doesn’t blow the budget on a fake deportation push and tax breaks for the rich.
I agree Democrats have no agenda. But Republicans don’t seem to either right now. They have talking points. But the policy passed bears no resemblance to those in the slightest.
>"Democrats are seen as the do nothing party". Quite a few people I know [eu based] used to consider themselves 'democrats' ie not republicans. But, more and more are co.ing to the conclusion that the dems are pretty darn useless.
As if that has ever overcome the American media and political classes' fixation with bipartisanship (which is how the American system inoculates itself against left-wing policy)
I feel like Maine's about to lie down with dogs over this.
> Won't stop Platner.
That's unfortunate. Choosing a leader who lies constantly and boasts of enjoying killing people seems like an unnecessary mistake. He is attacked by people who have defended far worse and are quite cynical. That doesn't mean he should be defended. He should be attacked by a left comfortable enough in its future vision as to not compromise on basic principles.
The attacks against Mamdani were disingenuous. This suspicion has heightened when the other candidates being artificially propped up had such huge flaws. I hope we can learn to see when that dynamic pops up in other places.
> Choosing a leader who lies constantly and boasts of enjoying killing people seems like an unnecessary mistake.
I hate to break this to you, but you're already rocking multiple of them.
As a newyorker who was raised a modern orthdox jew, but left that world for the world arts, the last few years have been weird.
On the one hand, it's been the first time I've no longer been able to take for granted that everyone in a room agrees with my political views and doesn't pre-judge me based on my background. On the other hand, I've gone back home to the suburbs and heard some really ridiculous hyperbole about what it's like in NYC.
Then there's the fact that while I support Isreal, I don't support all its actions. Nor do a lot of people in the [Orthodox] Jewish community, but they are afraid to speakup too much.
Modern orthdoox jews are kind of like Mitt Romney is for Mormons. Observant of all the rules, but also raised with a full secular education, encouraged to go to college, and expected to participate in society rather than isolate in thier community.
The 2026 budget for Hasbara is $730 million. That's a lot of push.
I like and have come to, on certain policies and candidates, ally with Mamdani. But I’m struggling to find the relevance to New York City in this article beyond supposition. I went in ready to find a foreign attack on our homeland and come away grasping at straws.
French foreign services said they discovered this, but they haven't made all material they know public. They say the contacted the NY/US authorities with what they know.
Do you think they are lying just for kicks?
> they haven't made all material they know public
I want more than this! There is a lot of room between lying and fucking up. And if you're going to present a half-baked case on first impression, it's going to be a lot harder to regain everyone's attention when you get your shit together.
Maybe I'm just annoyed with this issue. But I came into this thread looking for anything actionable. I'm not finding it. Just the same old nonsese being flung across the same aisle.
Russia Today has some details on the operations of these firms:
- Wired for War: Why is the EU ignoring the Israeli cyber threat? - https://www.rt.com/news/639159-israel-spies-eu-pegasus/
- Wired for war: The Israeli spy-tech machine strikes again - https://swentr.site/news/640352-israel-interference-france-b...
- EU state lifts arms embargo on Israel after spy scandal - https://www.rt.com/news/641456-slovenia-arms-ban-israel/
(The whole Wired for war series on RT is interesting - https://www.rt.com/trends/wired-for-war/ - as it also describes AI techs evolving role in politics and the military).
Well previous NYC mayors felt the need to travel to Israel and talk to them about how good of a job he did for them, so it is quite a change
The NY Times coverage of him is abhorrently biased. Every time I see an article about him, the headline, summary, and article itself feel like the editors were desperate to paint him in as negative a light as possible.
The man has almost overnight gotten the city to start doing things that benefit the general public, nto just the wealthy. Actions on bike lane projects that were stalled and actually taking action against slumlords.
All that barely gets a mention, but they seem obsessed with trying to find fault with everything he does.
During the NBA finals, he paid for his own ticket but they still took him to task for its expense ($1000) and the ticket coming from the "VIP ticket pool" like this was some abuse of his position or unethical of him.
Of course the mayor gets access to the VIP pool of tickets? And he didn't abuse the privilege to get tickets for anyone else - not staff, not family, not friends. Just him.
Because he represents a huge threat to power.
He's showing that government can be efficient. It can help people. People can actually like their local governments. And that is completely counter to the politics of these rags and their funders.
They want to talk about how government can't work, will always be inefficient, and how it must be cut.
The people who own these papers know that the obvious solution to a lot of societal problems is "tax the rich, build out social programs" and they desperately don't want that message to get out. It makes it a lot harder to setup gig and gambling economies.
Same with Politico and WSJ. Transparently biased against him.
They are racist, and unfortunately hard core israel supporter, which makes anybody that doesn't go with that agenda as a target.
The moment that Mandani said he will stay home and serve the people of NYC, what asked 'where are you going to make your first visit when elected' it made him a target. He showed he wasn't willing to bow down to a foreign power.
NYT still tries to put a veneer of modicum. NY Post is the one that is unbashingly always negative against Mamdani, full on attacks all the time.
I think people had enough of it, and saw through it and voted for him just in spite.
I know all the members of my soccer team voted for him. I had no clue who he was, but all the attacks backfired and made him even more famous.
Murdoch's News Corp, owner of the NY Post, has always hated political figures cut from the same "for the people" cloth as Mandani.
It's a pattern going back to humble origins in Australia, continued forward in the UK when they shredded Fleet Street norms, and exuberantly applied throughout their decades in the USofA.
do they mention hwo they meddled? there is a scenario where such firm would expect mamdani elected as a favorable outcome.
I confused BlackCore with Black Cube, a different Israeli private oppo research and dirty tricks group of former intelligence agents. They gained attention for their dirty campaigns against Harvey Weinstein's accusers, NSOs critics and Hungarian opposition.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Cube
Not to be confused with Blackrock or Blackstone, both large American investment companies with their own shady operations.
And don’t forget Blackwater.
What about Blackstool
"Lecornu said the French government had asked Israel for explanations of BlackCore's actions, and also for help in trying to find out who may have been behind the smear campaign."
This is a very well executed bit of diplomacy.
Nonsense, it'll end up with merely some public head scratching and shrugs, and a "gee whiz monsieur, it sure is a mystery to us too".
Interesting that whatever they wanted to do backfired in NYC.
Well of course, that’s the point - it gives the French government the cover to investigate while sending Israel a soft warning.
“Israel, thank you for your cooperation, my gosh, we’re really going to get to the bottom of this” = ‘We know what you’re doing, fuck off’
Here in Scotland it seems the desinfo campaign targeted mostly the SNP and Swinney. I guess it's hard to know how effective it was but his party lost 6 seats in last month's elections.
https://www.heraldscotland.com/news/26188090.john-swinney-ta...
At least the French demonstrated they hold other governments accountable. Israel is shrugging off the killing of some 70k civilians, for sure they will shrug off this one too, to no one's surprise (including the French government).
The israeli ambassador in France should already have been kicked out a while ago for a myriad of reasons, I'm ashamed my country is so spineless.
Europeans couldn't even get Israel out of a silly pop song contest, so it seems a bit hopeless to expect any actual political action.
Israel literally owns that contest. By what reasoning could the EU force the owner of a silly song contest to exclude their own country?
They don’t own the contest, an Israeli company sponsors Eurovision.
I suspect the song on Israeli participation is not over yet, but that’s a side tangent.
A sponsored business is effectively owned by its sponsors
> A sponsored business is effectively owned by its sponsors
This is nonsese. The business is owned by its owners. Sponsors are the customers. For multinational staples like Eurovision, sponsors get limited say.
well they did it against russia RTnews and even today russian players are treated like trash in Europe. just look at tennis for instance.
Rogue states will attack Western democracy. It's a tale as old as... Well, actually, in the past few years, this one has done more on that front than all the others combined.
Is this the same company that Slovenia was asking the EU for help with regarding the company's meddling in the election process?
Not quite. That was Black Cube, a second Israeli spy firm accused of election meddling: https://www.politico.eu/article/robert-golob-slovenia-eu-pro...
Israel has been getting away with this for years: https://www.france24.com/en/technology/20230215-israeli-firm...
I'm surprised that they dare to target NYC. I think NSO Group restricted Pegasus so that no US adversary would be retained as a client and the US would not be targeted.
The current US administration would have likely been in favor of it. Long term it’s a bad idea but it wouldn’t be the first time we saw groups like this only thinking about the short term.
They think they can do whatever they want. And thus far, they have been right about that.
> thus far, they have been right about that
NSO has been sued [1][2] and sanctioned [3].
[1] https://about.fb.com/news/2025/05/winning-the-fight-against-...
[2] https://www.reuters.com/sustainability/society-equity/us-cou...
[3] https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2021/11/03/pegasus...
The same Israeli BlackCore that masqueraded as a humanitarian fund for Gaza and stole the money?
https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/security-aviation/2026-0...
Lowest of the low.
Quite revealing when this comment has been getting downvoted. I guess some people support the fact that some people dishonestly raise money for a humanitarian cause and then steal that money.
"Israel has of course no intention to interfere in the French political process, be it at the national or municipal level," it said in a statement."
Yeah right. Surely not. Why would they even?
It is called HASBARA, spreading lies with Israeli government money received from USA as aid.
I would love to hear from someone knowledgeable - is that bad for the company or good?
Another entry in the 'Black' villain line, along with BlackStone, BlackRock, BlackWater etc ... really makes you think the world is run by a thinly veiled cult of evil comic style villains.
Also Black Cube: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Cube
Black, like Leon Black of Epstein fame
… and if you’re against Israeli firms against meddling in our elections, you’re somehow accused of antisemitism
Article is very light on details
If our press was honest, every story you heard about Russia would have been about Israel instead. Israel is overwhelmingly America's worst enemy and they distract from that by pretending Russia/Iran/China/Qatar is. No other country blackmails our politicians or steals so much of our money, military resources, soldier lives as much as Israel. There's no close competitor even.
Yet we're never told that explicitly and it's never framed as the abusive relationship that it is.
Makes you really wonder who the press works for.
What a surprise..
Last time I suggested on a similar story that there's a disproportionate number of firms in Israel with an explicit focus on subversion, manipulation, spying and malware, seemingly because a large portion of the Israeli population gain a certain expertise in these fields as part of serving in the IDF and working to suppress Palestinians, I got accused of bias because apparently there's many more Israeli startups working on medical research, green technology and world peace.
If there are, they certainly would do no harm in being more vocal, firms like BlackCore is unfortunately what Israel is becoming known for around the world.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imperial_boomerang
Israeli here - I'll try to write this the least political as I can since I on one hand disagree strongly with the government and on the other my experience has been getting antisemstic (yes, not anti-zionist) comments whenever this gets discussed a lot (and likely downvotes but who cares I've been here 10 years and have more fake points than is important anyway).
Israel has several "cores" of technology. The military stuff is shameful (as well as other stuff). It's not just the NSOs (or less infamously the Wiz's/Palo Altos etc).
There are plenty of good things though - startups in the biotech/health/classic "tech" space. I'll spare you the long list of stuff like Mellanox that drives Nvidias in data centers and leave the googling of medtech to you. Lots of neutral stuff too.
> my experience has been getting antisemstic (yes, not anti-zionist) comments whenever this gets discussed a lot
I appreciate your experience. I have no doubt there's indeed been an increase in such comments. I think it's important to note that the Israeli government does work very hard to conflate Zionism with Judaism, (which itself seems antisemitic to me), making it harder for some to separate the two.
> There are plenty of good things though - startups in the biotech/health/classic "tech" space.
That's good to know, as I said in another comment, it may be time for those startups to make themselves heard more, not because they have to, but because it is in their interest if they have any expansion plans going forward, given what a poor PR the Israeli state and firms like NSO, BlackCore etc. give the Israeli tech scene.
> I think it's important to note that the Israeli government does work very hard to conflate Zionism with Judaism, (which itself seems antisemitic to me), making it harder for some to separate the two.
Yes, they are trying their hardest with their actions to fuel a new way of antisemitism.
Turns out if you are a religious fundamental colony that occupies territory based on the bible, that gives bad rap to the whole religion.
Except Zionism is not religious. It is a modern secular nationalist ideology rooted in ethnicity, shared ancestry, history, culture, and language. Indeed, socialism dominated Zionism for a long time.
Many if not most Israelis are not religious, and traditionally, religious Jews (especially the Orthodox; an extreme case is Neturei Karta) oppose Zionism and the State of Israel as a secular ersatz, believing that they must wait for the Messiah to restore Israel.
Of course, in the last few decades, a faction of Zionists have commandeered the messianic for political purposes, but this is not the origin.
What is shameful about the "military stuff"? Isn't that's what is protecting you from your neighbors and their patron?
Recent events have taken ‘protection’ to a whole new level that’s extremely controversial.
It seems unlikely that you don’t know that.
I never understood this: the Palestinian children whose family and limbs are torn from them for Israeli sport are also Semites. It seems like the ultimate erasure to claim "antisemitic" for only Jews.
Etymologically you're correct that semites refers to [all] people from middle east and horn of Africa. But the label is from the European perspective, where it was used to refer to Jews. I'm sure that if they'd had a say in it, they would not have referred to themselves as Jews.
But yeah, there is indeed some irony in the term "antisemitism" in the context you describe
European origin jews are not semites btw. Antisemitism is a misnomer, when they refer to antisemitism they refer to Jews only.
Semitic does not refer to people nor to a race of people, but to a family of languages including Hebrew and Arabic. The man who coined the term "antisemitic" used it to describe his own views which were specifically anti-Jew.
The only erasure is the attempt to diffuse the term to include Akkadians, Amharics, Carthaginians, Phoenicians, Black Israelites, adherents to the Nation of Islam, all 1.3 billions Arabs, what-have-you, when it always and only ever referred to anti-Jew hatred.
There is no such thing as a "semite." It's an archaic racial category that 19th century German race science used since "anti-semite" sounds more scientific than "Jew hater." Consequently, that's why it's applied to Jews rather than a larger pseudoscientific racial group.
(More broadly, "they're semites too" is the "Elon Musk is African American" of I/P discourse. You can recognize extraordinary human tragedy without re-using race science.)
Speakers of Semitic languages are Semitic. This isn't controversial, unclear, or irrelevant.
I don’t know why you would assert this like it’s any of those things. You can look it up if you don’t believe me; you would be considered extremely weird for talking about “Semites” as a coherent racial or ethnic category around anthropologists.
(By comparison: nobody who isn’t a racist talks about Japhetites or Hamites, but these are the coextensive groups implied by the existence of Semites.)
Personally, I think you're going through a hard time. An individual and a country are different, but people do rely to some extent on the image of a country when judging an individual. I agree with your logic, so I'll give you an upvote
> Israeli here - I'll try to write this the least political
We are more than two years into full-on genocide and you hesitate to be political? This position reminds me of many Russians who prefer to "stay out of politics" because there are "two sides" to the conflict and it's an uncomfortable topic for them.
I didn't downvote you. You're Jewish (I stand side by side with Jewish brothers and sisters against Israel), you've expressed disagreements with the Israeli government. We're likely on a similar page then.
However:
> There are plenty of good things though - startups in the biotech/health/classic "tech" space.
Besides the point. I truly won't touch anything from that Apartheid, gen0cideal state.
c.f. the boycott of South Africa during Apartheid. Same principle.
Israeli designed/made chips are in phones, computers, all over the internet. Same with Israeli made software. Anyone using/posting to the internet is touching/supporting quite a few things from Israel.
Nazis made rockets and medical advances. That didn't make Nazi Germany positive in any kind of way.
You are very intelligent......
https://iea.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/mister-gotcha-...
To be clear, the job of the ordinary citizen in this situation is not to opt out. I criticise China often and yet my phone has Chinese chips. Would you have me shut up about China?. And so it is with Israel.
The job of the ordinary citizen is to do what they reasonably can to protest the gen0cidal, N'azi behaviour of its current administration with the support of a significant percentage of its populous.
Given how the troubles have turned a significant number of the population into blood-thirsty land thieves, the country should be de-N'azified like they did to Germany after WW2.
You're welcome.
OMG, really?! Well then, because they did all those beneficial things, then I'm fine with Israel bombing hospitals, schools, and killing children by starving them while they sleep on the pile of rubble that was their home!
/S
Your PM Netanyahu is a disaster. Your religious hardliners seem to love him.
Even someone neutral to sympathetic can’t help but look on in disgust at your PM and his supporters.
Edit: The point being that it tarnishes everything that Israel does, and makes fault-finding way too easy.
Let's not pin it all on Netanyuhu, he is a good representation of his society.
It is an indisputable fact that when polled, most Israelis openly support genocide.
People justified their anti-Muslim hate after 9/11 with similar statements about polls saying most Muslims saw Bin Laden in a good light, and have anti-West views.
Not saying I agree with any of it, but I find the parallels illuminating. If anyone wonders why there's more anti-semitism now, s/he can perhaps compare it with how all Muslims are condemned as being members of a barbaric sect after any terrorist attack (yes, even attacks where the perpretator doesn't claim to be doing it for Allah).
Hold on, you're doing a little gymnastics here. People are very deliberately talking about Israel being in favour of the genocide, and quite understandably saying that their government should not be supporting Israel - with "not supporting" meaning anything from BDS to simply not handing billions of dollars to them. Some of the most vocal and strident supporters of this are Jewish. The groups attempting to connect the genocide to Judaism are the US, British and Israeli governments & news media - who are all broadly pro-Israel.
Additionally the anti-Muslim hate was not "ah let's very justifiably cut ties with some mad country" it involved widespread and open islamophobia, calls for mass deaths and indeed invasions of muslim-majority countries.
The two situations are not remotely alike
Can you provide these sources?
First google result https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2025-06-03/ty-article/.p...
At least according to this study, almost all Israelis are monsters who openly support genocide.
I wouldn't be surprised if the results of a poll for actual genocide would be the same, but expulsion is not genocide. I really wish people would stop diluting the meaning of genocide at every opportunity.
Forced displacement and ethnic cleansing is a core component of genocide, you're making a distinction without a difference.
Most pro-Palestinians support the expulsion of Jews from that same area.
The surrounding Arab states already ethnically cleansed the indigenous Jews from the majority of the Middle East.
Jews and arabs lived there peacefully together for hundreds if not thousands of years ... until the British arrived and started their games...
Israel put in a lot of work to induce Arab Jews to migrate. That includes false flag attacks on synagogues. Surprised you don't know this.
Synagogues such as..?
Which is a reasonable position, given that the Jews within this specific locale are mostly homicidal maniacs.
Given the context, Palestinians wanting to kill every last Israeli Jew is a totally defensible position. It’s a natural reaction to a band of murderous European invaders coming to occupy their homes.
Right. So you are pro-genocide yourself, but only of certain groups of people.
Touche
As is Trump for Americans.
No one has ever called me a kike or Christ killer. No one has ever accused me of controlling the media or banks. No one has spray painted a swastika on my house, or my synagogue for that matter.
My nation, the most powerful in the world, puts a menorah in its halls of government every year for Hanukkah. The legislative and judicial branches have Jewish members at the very top level. The head of government has a Jewish son-in-law.
Even online, I see much more pervasive criticism of my nation than yours.
Yet, listen to Zionists and I’m practically living in Weimar Germany. That dog won’t hunt.
People have criticisms of Israel. They may be fair or unfair. Address them on the merits and leave the rest of us out it. It has nothing to do with Jews qua Jews.
> My nation, the most powerful in the world,
USA?
> Yet, listen to Zionists and I’m practically living in Weimar Germany. That dog won’t hunt.
Yeah this is so detached from reality I have to ask how you arrived at this conclusion and consider reexamining the way you consume information. Both in my own personal impression and according ADL global index USA's antisemitism is a low. Because "Zionists" have pro-Israel bias they will perceive any one who support Israel positively, and no one support Israel more than USA, so they will likely view USA as positive further lessening negtive views.
It's hard to separate for some people. Unfortunately those people tend to be the worst on both sides
In general, I think (or at least hope) your experience is the more common one. But fwiw I do have a Jewish friend who was personally cussed at and threatened by his own coworker explicitly for being Jewish (well, and probably because they were from Florida if I'm being honest, but there aren't as many slurs for that). The guy who did it was fired (whole thing was recorded iirc), nobody sided with him, he was clearly off his rocker in some way - but it doesn't take much to get shaken up - it sticks with you. And my friend was understandably, shaken up.
I know that because I used to live in Seattle, and unfortunately I had a really scary experience of being threatened (he yelled "I'm going to kill you b****") and chased down by a homeless man for nothing other than being a woman on the same street as him. So I saw my own perspective shift when it happened first hand. I was no longer excited about living downtown in a big city after that experience.
So what I'm saying is, neither me nor my friend took the experience and made it a defining thing. He still lives where he does, didn't blame the community or anything. And I'm back to taking public transit, talking to strangers on the sidewalk, and all the other stuff that comes with spending time downtown in a big city. But this time the city is Charlotte, my home city. It's probably not any safer than Seattle (maybe worse), but experiences shape perception, and I've always had really good experiences on Charlotte, including with homeless people. I could say it's because Charlotte has more police presence lately, or because there's not visible tent camps or open drug usage. But deep down, I know, crazy people are always gonna be out there, and the most trivial thing can make you a target.
So I really get the pull by people who have experienced victimization like that to talk about it. You feel kinda crazy if you don't, because you are surrounded by people who say it never happens because they've never seen it. That was such a big part I think of the Floyd protests - a lot of white people lived in a bubble and didn't know how pervasive overly violent interactions with the police can be (though the ironic part is that a lot of white people still don't realize that they can also be targeted by police with just as much malice). Most American black people already knew first or second-hand that police brutality was real and not uncommon - but until it was undeniable on video, it was treated by others as if it never happened.
So there's some honest middle ground somewhere, but the extremists are the one who have the most to gain from convincing people to believe otherwise.
There’s definitely antisemitism out there. Criticizing Israel is not part of it. The people that run to that ever. single. time. ought to be ashamed of themselves for crying wolf. They have no right to abuse the term and rob it of legitimate meaning because they don’t have a good response on the merits.
I have stood up for Jews since I was a kid, often saying "I'm Jewish" when racists/antisemitic jokes were told and I have been called those things. I've heard people say all kinds of horrific stuff about Jews. In this very thread we have:
"This is definitely made easier by the fact that the arrogance, the endless lawyering, the shady dealings, the greediness, the constant switching between attacking and playing the victim, they all match to a tee the most known historical antisemitic tropes." https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48515906
"Large American investment companies that were also both founded by Jewish people. I'm sure it's just a coincidence, though" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48516750
Regardless of what good things other Israeli companies might be doing, it's clear that the Israeli government doesn't have a problem with these malware / spyware companies.
They actively export it. See Pegasus
There are dozens of firms around the world, including several in the US, doing exactly the same thing.
Looks like several in israel, like the one described in the article.
Which government are you comparing to?
Any other small country?
You rarely read about Finland spying on other nations, or trying to influence their politics.
There is the AIPAC, I challenge you to find anything similar from any other country.
If the I in AIPAC stood for Italian they would call it a Mafia organisation.
From https://www.opensecrets.org/
Totals since 2016 Country Total Spending China $562,676,323 Japan $504,111,211 Liberia $432,968,270 Saudi Arabia $421,890,448 Marshall Islands $382,012,024 South Korea $363,237,700 Bahamas $293,205,139 United Arab Emirates $269,529,107 Qatar $269,260,794 Israel $215,168,616
So for small countries UAE and Qatar(no surprise here, they just gifted 1 billion airplane to Trump)
This excludes US based groups lobbying for Israeli interests, which does not count under official spending by Israel, so it is not an accurate representation of the lobbying effort in the interests of Israel.
That seems like the categorically correct thing to do, for the same reason that (for example) a domestic Korean-American nonprofit that lobbies for Korean interests doesn’t get counted as foreign money or influence.
(Perhaps it should be! But it should be consistent, whatever it is.)
> Perhaps it should be! But it should be consistent, whatever it is.
Agreed. Any lobbying that centers on the interests of a foreign country should IMO count as foreign lobbying, I have no problem in including Korean-Americans, Kenyan-Americans etc. in that too.
Well, so here's the question: what counts as the interests of a foreign country? AIPAC's entire lobbying stance is that its positions are mutually beneficial to both the US and Israel, and this is the stance that every other national/ethnic affinity group in the US uses as well.
Put another way: it seems very risky to allow the federal government to determine the propriety of political speech just because it happens to concern two (or more countries) at once.
The difference is the nature of the lobbying and the volume. Follow the rules.
An egregious, non-controversial example of things going poorly is NYC Mayor Adams and Turkey. He basically accepted bribes and favors from the Turkish government and their proxies for specific actions.
A “doing it right” example that wouldn’t have been controversial until recently is Denmark. They mostly focus on direct diplomatic policy lobbying, and leverage consultants to promote mostly tourism. Their affiliations are known and registered. Now they hire K-Street lobbyists to influence policy objectives re: Greenland, etc.
The difference is that when the papers found out about Adams being a crook… that didn’t turn into accusations of racism and fomenting sectarian hatred. In the AIPAC example, there will be a both a legitimate visceral response from Americans and astroturf from lots of prominent people.
> The difference is that when the papers found out about Adams being a crook… that didn’t turn into accusations of racism and fomenting sectarian hatred. In the AIPAC example, there will be a both a legitimate visceral response from Americans and astroturf from lots of prominent people.
I think there's a much more parsimonious explanation for this: the average American doesn't know that much about Turkey, know very many Turkish people, etc.
In contrast, the average American has been steeped in I/P and related proxy conflict news for their entire adult life. That, combined with the fact that the US has a large Jewish population means that there's a degree of salience to accusations around AIPAC that wouldn't exist if the equivalent Turkish-American political lobby entity[1] was caught bribing politicians.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turkish_Coalition_of_America
>AIPAC's entire lobbying stance is that its positions are mutually beneficial to both the US and Israel
I don't think AIPAC is making that ridiculous claim!
The point of the lobbying is make the people American serve the interests of Israel.
There is a book written about this:
https://www.amazon.com/Israel-Lobby-U-S-Foreign-Policy/dp/03...
It is explicitly their claim, whether you (or I) find it ridiculous or not. Here’s the copy directly from their homepage[1]:
> America is safer, stronger and more prosperous when its relationship with Israel is ironclad. AIPAC works with Democrats and Republicans in Washington to advance that partnership. AIPAC lobbies Congress to pass annual U.S. security assistance to Israel, support lifesaving missile defense cooperation, and fund joint programs that help protect our troops and our homeland
(Note that “homeland” here refers to the US, not Israel.)
[1]: https://www.aipac.org/
It’s very different.
I was adjacent to state level politics for a long time. The German, Korean and French economic development organizations would come around every now and again with promotional events coordinated with their embassy to promote partnerships and business opportunities. Sometimes they had lobbyists focused on general relationship building, more often for specific issues.
The Israeli ground game is different. American PACs affiliated with or specifically “not affiliated with, but always talking about” Israeli interests show up at every level of government - a good friend is a town board member of a big suburban town and they call on him, and he refuses the contributions so will likely get primaried.
The real difference is information awareness. There is a CRM somewhere the ground guys have access to, and relationships are cultivated and used. My buddy is being targeted becuase there’s a good chance he’ll be in the state legislature someday. There’s a pipeline to get targeted American politicians to tour Israel for whatever reason. When critical attention is focused on this stuff, the reaction is fast and painful for the media outlet or political actor.
The only thing close to this is China, who does similar stuff with a different playbook. They’ve been caught embedding agents of one sort or another in California and New York governments at a high level, as well as places like Florida or within government contractors with lower level people.
Note that we’ve purged the FBI counterintelligence division, so the brazenness of the “bad” stuff will get worse - nobody is watching.
This is a reference to Americans. Americans choosing to freely donate to groups/causes they support and Americans being involved in American politics.
These numbers are wrong. There is no possible way Liberia has spent 10% of its GDP on lobbying the US for the past 10 years. They just signed (May 2026) a lobbying contract for $1.2 million with a lobbying company in the US, which seems vastly more in proportion https://liberianinvestigator.com/liberia-ballard-partners-lo...
OpenSecrets laid off 30% of its staff due to financial problems [0] and I'm absolutely sure that site is AI generated. No idea what numbers are displayed there but no country can afford 10% of GDP for 10 years for influence in Washington.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenSecrets
Those numbers in no way indicate that Liberia spent 10% of its gdp lobbying the US. It looks like approximately 0.8%, which is still fantastically high
You are right, of course. Thanks for the correction. I will try to switch on my brain before posting next time.
Liberia does not have that much money. Same goes for Marshall Islands. The Marshall Islands has a GDP of $342 million. What the heck is going on here?
It works out to about 0.8% of Liberia's GDP. The Marshall Islands number works out to about 15% of the estimated value of the amount of financial assistance the US gives them.
there's not much controversy that would pull media attention in green tech or medical research
Medical research is still plenty controversial: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2009_Aftonbladet_Israel_contro...
IDF conscripts astroturf on social media all day, and a lot of people do the same for free on behalf of the concept of Israel
Don’t worry about the deflections and karma flagging censorship as consensus, because its not
Jewish and Jewish Israeli people are raised to be afraid of the entire world, and think losing a perception game will result in their eradication perpetuated by everyone around them. This is due to a 1,000 year history of exactly that, so I can empathize, but not at the expense of fiction. I don’t want anyone to hurt them. I want the corrosive traits in their culture to be checked and go away.
Put all those PhD’s that some people are so proud of into other pursuits.
> Jewish and Jewish Israeli people are raised to be afraid of the entire world [...] This is due to a 1,000 year history of exactly that
Actually it goes way further. It seems that a large part of Jewish religion and culture is centered on the idea of being persecuted. A quick list goes from the Egyptian slavery, to the attack by the Amalekites, to the Babylonian destruction of the First Temple, to Haman's plot to exterminate Jews in Persia... and we're still at the book of Esther, 5th century BCE. The list goes on and on. Each of these is commemorated in a religious or civil ceremony: Passover, Purim, Hanukkah, etc.
This is to say, Judaism is built around grievance. And grievance in turn, if kept unchecked, is dangerous because it can justify unethical behaviours that are seen as reparatory.
At this point just file it under "Tech-washing".
As if Rudolph Höss' innovations in chemical and civil engineering somehow excuse Auschwitz.
People need to start being clear about subversion and inhumanity exported from Israel and not attempt to bookkeep that against their B2B SaaS'.
This demonic rhetoric would not be valid in any other circumstance.
> ... because apparently there's many more Israeli startups working on medical research, green technology and world peace.
> If there are, they certainly would do no harm in being more vocal ...
Perhaps, but - talk to someone who's done PR work for startups. Ask them what it would take for an Israeli startup working on, say, home bagel-making machines to get the sort of world-wide media attention that any Israeli creep-tech firm can get - for free - by association with a few nefarious deeds.
Selling spyware and 0days is a significant industry in Israel [1]. This includes Pegasus [2][3]. Countries around the world pay Israeli companies to hack the phones of politicians, opposition leaders, union leaders, journalists and basically anyone they don't like. This is actually a common structure for intelligence agencies who are often restricted from spying domestically or on citizens. They simply farm that out to the intelligence agencies of other countries or these spyware companies. Israel has become kind of an extrajudicial cheat code. Saudi Arabia has been a big user [4]. All of this is just objective fact.
No one was officially blamed for Stuxnet years ago but it's widely believed that the US and Israel were responsible [5]. And of course we had the pager operation [6]. If anyone else had done the same, they'd be labelled as terrorists and be under economic and diplomatic sanctions.
As for BlackCore, I guess it's part of the wider story of Israel's extensive influence campaign on foreign elections and politicians. We've seen this get really overt. For example, Thomas Massie's primary was the most expensive in history when AIPAC and AIPAC affiliates spent a combined ~$35M. I actually think it's this extreme and overt because Israel has lost the PR fight and are increasingly desperate.
Another less-talked about example was the character assassination of Jeremy Corbyn in the UK, which was essentiallya Zionist takeover of the Labor Party and, lo and behold, a few years later we're locking up grandmothers indefinitely for holding up signs that say "Palestine Action" [7].
And of course we have the Jeffrey Epstein of it all where it's really obvious that Epstein was an Israeli access agent and likely Ghislaine Maxwell was as well, particularly when you look at the entire history of Robert Maxwell from WW2 to arming Jewish militias pre-1948 and the IDF after that until finally "falling off" his own yacht.
Oh and there are claims that some unidentified hacker breached the FBI's systems in 2023 and accessed files related to Jeffrey Epstein. There are claims that 500TB was destroyed and 400TB of that was recovered [8]. That's so weird.
It's depressing to me how many people support a state that is functionally the Nazi Germany of our times. Like go ahead and find me the functional distinction between Gaza and the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. But also how impervious Western politicians are to public opinion on this issue, which has drastically switched in the last few years. Opposition movements are suppressed with brutal violence.
[1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lfOgm1IcBd0
[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pegasus_(spyware)
[3]: https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2022/2/8/what-you-need-to-kno...
[4]: https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/press-release/2021/07/the-...
[5]: https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-12633240
[6]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2024_Lebanon_electronic_device...
[7]: https://www.france24.com/en/live-news/20250807-uk-pensioner-...
[8]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47184683
This is just cringe conspiracy stuff. Selling CNE tooling is a business (I don't know how big you want to call it) all over the world. Israel is not a global headquarters for it.
The Nazis did a ton of cutting edge research too.
They also committed genocide as well. Surprising that even after Israeli human rights organizations acknowledge it, it still remains stuck in the mind of capitalists to support profit at any cost.
Did they? Like, which exactly?
Rockets: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wernher_von_Braun
He later worked at NASA.
Don't say that he's hypocritical
Say rather that he's apolitical
"Once the rockets are up, who cares where they come down?
That's not my department!" says Wernher von Braun
Some have harsh words for this man of renown
But some think our attitude
Should be one of gratitude
Like the widows and cripples in old London town
Who owe their large pensions to Wernher von Braun.
This is fantastic. This is what I'm going to say next time I work on military tech.
It's from the old Tom Lehrer song, "Wernher von Braun."
I've never seen someone take it as a suggestion before.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Paperclip
Apart from other mentions, they also did cutting edge research on nuclear power and weapons. Some of the scientists understood how massive an undertaking that was, however the political leadership apparently did not, or the world would look different today.
The Z3 was a German electromechanical computer designed by Konrad Zuse in 1938, and completed in 1941. It was the world's first working programmable, fully automatic digital computer. [c] Wikipedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nazi_human_experimentation
Hypothermia research, sleep deprivation research, etc. really cruel stuff.
Most of that stuff was just torture for the sake of cruelty. It lacked the scientific rigor needed to classify it as even remotely close to research, so most of the "data" collected is completely worthless.
Turns out you can't do proper experiments when the subjects are also being starved and worked to death, when you lack a proper control group, or when you interpret all the results from a heavily racist perspective. And that doesn't even touch the completely nonsensical hypotheses yet.
Remilk is an Israeli food-tech startup using yeasts to produce milk proteins. Frankly I find your comment rather odd, why should a startup be more loud because other people are biased? Diplomacy is the job of the state. We have innovative index on which Israel does well and large number of unicorn per capita.
> why should a startup be more loud because other people are biased? Diplomacy is the job of the state.
I agree with you that it is the job of the state to do diplomacy, I would argue that the Israeli state has done an extremely poor job at that, so it may be left to some of its greener industry to pick up the slack, unfortunately.
Not because they 'have to' but because they would want to if they want to expand abroad and not get overshadowed by the bad PR the Israeli state is so good at putting out.
I disagree with you that 'other people are biased'.
One of the reasons Israeli soft power is so weak at the moment is precisely because its diplomats always insist everyone is just simply biased against Israel, often invoking some thousands year old hatred of its people etc. rather than for one second introspecting on the fact that the actions of the state may indeed have something to do with that perceived bias.
It should indeed be the job of Israeli diplomats to work and promote Israel in the best light possible
In addition to this malware, which comes from an Israeli company and is used for the purpose of subverting democratic elections in foreign countries (we don't really know who mandated these interventions, but the target, John Swinney and fellow ministers, have been vocal in their criticism of the Israeli government's actions in Gaza and the West Bank, and have imposed a form of sanctions on the Israel Defense Forces by withholding state grants to arms firms that supply the IDF and freezing support for exports to Israel), they have also infiltrated some countries like the UK and US with very powerful pro-Israel lobbies acting behind the curtain by directly contacting prominent politicians.
In the UK, the Israeli company Elbit Systems produces arms for Israel through its British subsidiary, which holds major Ministry of Defence contracts including the Watchkeeper drone programme (worth over £800 million) and the Jupiter training system (around £130 million) – sources: UK Companies House and MoD contract notices. People protesting for Palestinians at Elbit sites have been arrested: between 2020 and June 2024, over 140 arrests were made at more than 50 actions by Palestine Action, but police and court records show that no terrorism charges were filed, and the High Court rejected a legal challenge against policing of these protests in May 2024. Two main lobbies cover both major parties in the UK: Conservative Friends of Israel and Labour Friends of Israel.
In the US, a similar two‑party structure exists but with far greater financial power. The American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) and its super PAC spent over $4.5 million in the 2023–2024 election cycle, mostly to defeat progressive Democrats critical of Israel, including successfully spending $14.5 million to unseat Congressman Jamaal Bowman (source: Federal Election Commission filings). The Democratic Majority for Israel and the Republican Jewish Coalition mirror the UK's Labour and Conservative lobby groups, while the US provides Israel with roughly $3.8 billion in annual military aid – a sharp contrast to the UK's limited sanctions on the IDF. Unlike the UK, no US protester has been arrested under terrorism laws for actions against arms companies supplying Israel.
In practice, Israel and Russia do similar things: they affect or subvert foreign elections by manipulating information and social media, and they directly influence politics via foundations, think tanks, and by cultivating politicians and influencers. For Russia, this includes organisations like the Russian House in Washington and sympathetic think tanks such as the Heritage Foundation – though the Heritage Foundation is American, Russian state media and proxies have actively courted its positions.
Russia has also influenced figures like Tucker Carlson, who repeatedly echoes Kremlin talking points, and JD Vance, who has opposed military aid to Ukraine; no public evidence proves formal recruitment, but both have amplified narratives favourable to Moscow and JD Vance made a powerful endorsement of Orban, a corrupted pro-russian statesman, in the past election in Hungary.
There's a lot of offensive security talent, but this has nothing to do with Palestinians. Israeli intelligence is very advanced and is why Israel has been able to eliminate the leaders of Hezbollah and Iran.
Not everything in Israel is about or related to Palestinians. The Palestinian bias only exists in circles where every thought regarding Israel is immediately evoking a Palestinian connotation. In reality, most Israelis never interact with Palestinians.
To suggest that a sector of Israeli startups exists on the experience of people "suppressing Palestinians" is definitely biased, absurd, and is a slippery slope.
> There's a lot of offensive security talent, but this has nothing to do with Palestinians. Israeli intelligence is very advanced and is why Israel has been able to eliminate the leaders of Hezbollah and Iran. Not everything in Israel is about or related to Palestinians.
I would suggest to you that the focus on Iran is because Iran is perceived as being an obstacle to Israeli hegemony in the region and thus undisputed Israeli rule over Palestinian territory.
Iran also justifies its actions in terms of standing up for Palestinians.
So yes, it's very much related.
Well that and the fact that Iran is (was) the other peer military adversary in the region, with forces deployed on Israel's border, and with a longstanding declared intent of eradicating Israel.
It turns out Hezbollah and Hamas are not Persian and don't speak Farsi. Hamas are Sunni.
Most importantly, both groups exist as a direct result of Israeli persecution of their civilian populations. They weren't created by Iran, they're a predictable result that happens when you occupy people's land and oppress them, you get resistance groups.
Over the last 10 years Hezbollah has spent more manpower fighting in Syria for Iran than it has confronting Israel. I don't know how to take seriously the idea that Hezbollah is anything but an appendage of the IRGC.
As a reminder: Shia are a minority in Lebanon; it's not even close.
Yeah, but Shia are a bigger percentage of the area that Israel is currently occupying and "turning into Gaza" in their own words. There are approximately 1.5 million homeless in the area now?
Hezbollah do see the Iranian supreme leader as the leader of Shia Islam, and they do see Iran as their key ally, but they didn't even exist before Israel occupied southern Lebanon in the 80s and abetted all sorts of massacres. They have a reason to exist besides being Iranian stooges, they're real people.
One more interesting narrative frame: Fighting in Syria for Iran? Not for Assad? Was Assad a thoughtless Iranian appendage also?
None of this explains why the Quds Force was able to command Hezbollah into Syria to besiege Sunni towns and suburbs of Damascus. It's very easy to find credible sources saying that Hezbollah is an Iranian asset, and the balance of clear evidence supports that. Like Iran itself, Hezbollah uses Israel as a political foil, but their real enemies are Sunni Arabs.
None of these observations make me a supporter of the Netanyahu government; my opinions of Likud have nothing to do with my opinions of Iran and their IRGC militias.
Yeah, I'm also not saying I'm some uncritical supporter of Hezbollah.
I'm just saying they have rational interests in addition to religious/sectarian, and we can see in the current situation that it would have been nice for them to have Assad still in charge of Syria right now. Calling them an IRGC militia isn't any more correct than calling UK/Israel a "USA militia".
It's fine that we disagree, it's fine for us to present different cases to the thread, we can do that respectfully, but just to be very clear: my case is that Hezbollah is (or was immediately prior to the "decapitation") an IRGC asset, commanded at least at a high level --- "which fights to pick, which fights to join" --- by the Quds Force commanders. Several QF elites were injured during the pager strike!
I'd be happy to see Netanyahu in prison. But the horrific death toll in Gaza is a small fraction of what the IRGC has wrought in Syria, Iraq, and especially Yemen. When the IRGC orchestrates starvation sieges, as they did at Madaya in Syria and Taiz in Yemen, they brag about it. They film videos for the besieged residents jokingly eating off banquets.
Winding back to the top of the thread, all this is just to say, Israel is not necessarily wrong about the adversaries they face outside of their borders. (They're definitely not wrong about Hamas and PIJ, but they're seemingly wrong about just about everything else that happens inside their borders.)
I think you're underrating how much you've bought the framing from US/neoliberal media, though. Try to put yourselves in Hezbollah or the Houthis' shoes, you wouldn't think of yourself as a pawn, you'd think of yourself as full-agency humans with interests and allies. Sunni power is against you so you ally with the Shia power.
For example, Iran never directly intervened in Yemen, they limited themselves to sending weapons, but the Saudis did a SHITLOAD[1], to the tune of 10k troops, hundreds of sorties and a "war crimes" section on the wiki page. Yet somehow the IRGC is the most salient group in this conflict to you, despite not doing any direct fighting?
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saudi-led_intervention_in_the_...
The Houthis are literally Nazis. They run a race cult. They use child soldiers. As with Hezbollah in Lebanon, they're a religious minority that nonetheless exercises de facto control over security in their country. Iran trained and armed them; the Houthis are explicitly Khomeinists.
Now you're talking. They have agency, motivation and accept help where they can get it.
And I'm not saying they're good guys but the next step is weighting their atrocities on the same standard as those committed by the Saudis with our support.
Characterizing the Houthis as a race cult is bizarre. They are a Zaydi Shia group which Iran has cultivated over the years. But they were around before that relationship and would not disappear if that relationship was severed.
Also it's dishonest not to include the actions of the Saudis and the UAE when discussing the Yemen conflict. As well as the sustained U.S targeting support in bombing the hell out of that country.
I don't know what's complicated about this. Yemen is neither a religious nor an ethnic monoculture. Ansar Allah operates a caste system inside of it. Not all Zaydiyya align with Ansar Allah. More than half of Yemen is Sunni. There are ethnic underclasses in Yemen that are literally kept as chattel slaves.
You have never, ever seen me on this site stick up for Saudi Arabia. I feel like this is a big way people get themselves into trouble thinking about MENA. In most of these conflicts, there isn't a protagonist.
>>Ansar Allah operates a caste system inside of it.
The rest of your reply is basically non sequiturs. For this part however I would sincerely be interested in seeing a source.
Why would we expect further discussion to be productive after you've handwaved away my last comment with a single "basically non-sequiturs" line? Justify that claim first. I'm not a slot machine you can keep pulling until you find the one argument you're prepared to rebut on the merits (after I flesh it out for you).
And while Arafat was responsible for many abominable actions and many, many casualties, let's not forget that one of the first supporters of Hamas was ... oh yes, Netanyahu. Because Arafat, for whatever reason or reasons in his final years softened and the PLO was increasingly being seen by the world as the one willing to negotiate while Israel didn't want to, which made for uncomfortable questions of "why is a terroristic organization willing to figure out how to get to peace while a supposedly peaceful nation is not".
Netanyahu and his ilk realized that rather than a rapidly moderating, rapidly gaining sympathy and support PLO was not the enemy they "needed" for their own agenda - "from the river to the sea", which, let's not forget, was actually Likud's official election slogan in the 70s and 80s (a "hilarious" irony when certain people try to point to Palestinian usage of this as a "gotcha" - "See, they want to exterminate us!"), and that IDF intelligence showed that Hamas was likely to be more extremist and thus garner more sympathy for Israel, so Israel started supporting Hamas' rise.
> over Palestinian territory
This could mean anything from a couple of ghettos to all of the modern state of Israel depending on what you think Palestinian territory is or should be.
If you take the approach that all of it is Palestinian territory and the state of Israel shouldn't exist, then yeah, sure? that's different from the assertion that all of the intelligence related businesses in Israel are founded because of direct experience in conflict with the Palestinian people.
> If you take the approach that all of it is Palestinian territory and the state of Israel shouldn't exist, then yeah, sure?
You know there's such a thing as internationally recognized Palestinian territory occupied by Israel, right?
Start with that, instead of deploying the 'do you want Israel to not exist' deflection tactic.
I genuinely wasn't sure what GP meant.
Maybe I have a wrong read on the situation between Iran and Israel. But my impression is that Israel is more concerned with Iran as a general threat, moreso than they are concerned that Iran will intervene on behalf of Palestinians, current Palestinian territory, or Hamas.
If Iran didn't get involved directly after ~2 years of open warfare and inarguably genocide-shaped atrocities carried out on civilians, what are they waiting for? Meanwhile Netanyahu has been talking about the danger of Iran developing nuclear weapons for decades now.
Keep in mind I was responding to a post about an assertion that there are so many military startups in Israel because so many Israelis, in their IDF service, have hands-on experience fighting against and oppressing Palestinians. I responded to a post that seemed reductive and misleading in support of that perspective.
> my impression is that Israel is more concerned with Iran as a general threat
Iran has never attacked Israel unless attacked first. As for their 'proxies' they only really exist because Israel has invaded Lebanon long before Hezbollah existed and its creation was spearheaded primarily by Lebanon's local population as a response to the invasion, with Iranian support.
Iran supports these local 'proxies' because it sees itself as a leader of the Shia and more broadly as a leader of the Muslim world and the Palestinian cause as being the responsibility of every Muslim nation (incl theirs) to get involved with.
Israel is indeed concerned with Iran as a threat, but only because they see the other governments in the region as willing to overlook the Palestinian cause, in exchange for economic links with Israel.
In that sense Iran is very much connected to the Palestinians, this assertion that Iran is just super irrational and wants to see Israel go down because they want to laugh watching it or something is nothing more than cheap Israeli propaganda.
Of course Iran is not just looking for the Palestinians out of altruism, they want a leadership position in the Muslim world and this is their way of gaining legitimacy, but the reason why Israel sees them as a threat is very much because of Iran's interest in the Palestinians.
> Iran has never attacked Israel unless attacked first
Iran was involved in attacks against Israel and Israeli towns in the 1980s and 1990s by their mercenaries in Hezbollah and direct IRGC presence in Lebanon. This happened even when Israel supported Iran during the Iraq-Iran war, so this is strictly not true
Other incidents were the Iranian bombings of the Israeli embassy in Argentine or the Jewish center there, and attempts on the London and Bangkok embassies
Furthermore financing of Hamas during the 1990s suicide campaign with the direct goal of derailing the peace process.
This is part of a long line of Iranian aggressive actions that have led them to being isolated and in a string of wars that greatly destroyed their already diminished economic power
> in the 1980s and 1990s
Except Israel invaded Lebanon before that. It also engaged in assassinations, espionage, terror and sabotage before that. In fact Israelis engaged in those even before the state of Israel was officially pronounced.
I'm not saying the Iranians or Lebanese etc. never play dirty, but this portrayal of them as just irrational and aggressive for no reason whatsoever against their peace loving Israeli neighbors is just dishonest.
For one, neither the Iranians, nor the Lebanese are occupying foreign territory. The same cannot be said for the Israelis.
Israelis will say they invaded Lebanon in the 70s/80s because of the PLO, (no Hezbollah yet) however the PLO was itself a consequence of Israeli occupation of Palestinian territory.
In conclusion; there's a fairly simple way to disarm the Iranians and strip them and their proxies of any perceived legitimacy they may hold with anyone; stop occupying Palestine.
> Except Israel invaded Lebanon before that. It also engaged in assassinations, espionage, terror and sabotage before that. In fact Israelis engaged in those even before the state of Israel was officially pronounced.
That is moving the goal posts, as these are not instances of attacking Iran, it's hard to claim Iran never attacked Israel first when it is either financing attacks against Israel or participating in them for the last 45+ years
> Israelis will say they invaded Lebanon in the 70s/80s because of the PLO, (no Hezbollah yet) however the PLO was itself a consequence of Israeli occupation of Palestinian territory.
Back when the PLO was founded there was no "foreign territory occupied by Israel", only internationally recognized Israeli borders and Gaza/West Bank which were under Egyptian/Jordanian occupation. Two countries that refused to create an independent Palestinian state
> as these are not instances of attacking Iran
No, they're instances of attacking Palestinians.
> it's hard to claim Iran never attacked Israel first when it is either financing attacks against Israel or participating in them for the last 45+ years
The Iranians supported the Palestinians Israel was attacking the same way the Soviets supported the Vietnamese. This was not the Soviets attacking the US, this was the Soviets supporting indigenous forces that the US was attacking. It's the same as the Israelis supporting Kurdish groups in Iran, Turkey etc.
These groups have their own motives and agency, the Lebanese opposed to Israel are not mere 'proxies' of Iran, neither are the Palestinians. They're opposed to Israel for their own reasons, namely Israel occupies their land.
If you're so concerned about Iran being able to come in and support them, then stop occupying foreign land and the whole reason Iran is able to make inroads with your neighbors disappears.
You won't do that of course, because Israel is the one who first conducted attacks on Iran directly. Therefore it does not get to play the card of being attacked. It invaded Syria too for no reason whatsoever, other than taking more land.
> Back when the PLO was founded there was no "foreign territory occupied by Israel", only internationally recognized Israeli borders and Gaza/West Bank which were under Egyptian/Jordanian occupation.
Which is why the PLO has a bloody conflict with Jordan, which you conveniently omit. It's almost as if they were opposed to being occupied, period.
When Israel invaded Lebanon back in the 70s/80s, it already took control of Gaza and the West Bank by that point.
> Two countries that refused to create an independent Palestinian state
I love this talking point. So because someone else was horrible to the Palestinians, that justifies Israel being horrible to them too?
> Which is why the PLO has a bloody conflict with Jordan, which you conveniently omit. It's almost as if they were opposed to being occupied, period.
The PLO tried to takeover Jordan after Jordan stopped occupying the West Bank, I don't see how that makes sense chronologically. You could also point at Palestinian attempts at taking over Lebanon, but that doesn't really support your argument that Palestinians are aggressive due to being under occupation
Regarding the Iranians comparison with the Soviets, The Soviets were an aggressive actor and that's why the world was on the brink of nuclear war numerous times in the 20th century, causing both sides to regulate. Iran had never really toned down its aggressive behavior towards Israel, culminating in the October 7th massacre and ended eventually with Iran in complete ruins
You're doing the same thing you're accusing the other person of.
The PLO was not an inevitable force of nature, it was an organization that consisted of human beings, making conscious decisions.
The British took Palestine from the Ottomans and handed it to the state of Israel. Maybe morally it's an occupation, but if so then the USA is occupying Hawaii.
> Maybe morally it's an occupation, but if so then the USA is occupying Hawaii.
You realize that there's a non-negligible contingent of Hawaiians who absolutely believe this, too?
Yes that's why I brought it up. There's actually a substantially better argument for Hawaii because the USA just showed up and conquered the kingdom that was there. Whereas the Ottomans had Palestine for what, 500 years?
It's more complicated than that as the Palestinians are speaking the language of an earlier foreign colonizing empire that replaced another empire that ethnically cleansed the Jews and then colonized the area
> Iran has never attacked Israel unless attacked first
I mean, come on dude. You explaining away the actions of Iran's proxies as not the actions of Iran is just ahistorical nonsense at best. They funded them, trained them, and directed their actions.
> Israel is indeed concerned with Iran as a threat, but only because they see the other governments in the region as willing to overlook the Palestinian cause, in exchange for economic links with Israel
The complete lock down of the border between Egypt and the Gaza strip is because Egypt is beholden to Israel? Is that what you're saying here?
> the reason why Israel sees them as a threat is very much because of Iran's interest in the Palestinians
And by "interest" you're referring to backing the most violent terrorist groups in the region, who have the blood of thousands of Israeli citizens on their hands.
Iran is not strictly "an obstacle" to Israeli hegemony. Its ideology since the 1970s clearly states the destruction of Israel as its goal. It clashed with Israel over Iran's desire to set up a Shia vassal state in Lebanon and it killed Jews and Israelis all over the world through terror (e.g. AMIA bombing in Argentina)
The Palestinians are merely a tool for Iran to gain influence, Hezbollah and Shias in Iraq were far more important for them historically
> Iran is not strictly "an obstacle" to Israeli hegemony. Its ideology since the 1970s clearly states the destruction of Israel as its goal.
you say that as if israel doesn't have the exact same ideology against iran (it does)
> you say that as if israel doesn't have the exact same ideology against iran (it does)
What are the parallels in Israeli society for Iranian school systems morning chants of "Death to Israel" and a public countdown clock to the destruction of Israel?
rather than words, israelis are required to enlist and actively murder rape, and maim palestinians as a right of passage to becoming an adult?
Are you seriously going to bring up chants when Israel is a country where they chant 'Death to Arabs' casually, watch the Gaza genocide from a hilltop and have installed vending machines to make the massacres more fun to watch?
But to answer your question directly, the Iranians would say they equate Israel with ethno-supremacy, same as apartheid South Africa. Getting rid of apartheid in South Africa was not about getting rid of while South Africans as such, it was about getting rid of the ethno-supremacy underpinning apartheid.
Sorry, but none of your examples are related to Iran or are state mandated (and are awfully cherry-picked).
Iran ideological wishes of destroying Israel are pretty much in the open, no need to try to weasel around it. While there isn't any such ideology in Israel towards Iran
Sorry, but none of your personal restrictions on type and style of evidence are pertinent to the matter at hand (and are awfully cherry-picked).
israeli ideological wishes of destroying Palestine, Lebanon, Iran, etc are pretty much in the open, no need to try to weasel around it. Heck, israel doesn't even recognize Palestine's right to exist in the first place.
What would recognizing "Palestine's right to exist" look like? They proposed the creation of a Palestinian state several times; what more would you expect?
> israeli ideological wishes of destroying Palestine, Lebanon, Iran, etc are pretty much in the open
This is pretty ironic considering that Iran, Hamas and Hezbollah are all quite explicit about their ambitions of wiping out Israel, while the reverse isn't true at all. Israelis have no desire to kill Persians a thousand kilometers away, they just don't have much choice but to fight foreign armies who attack them.
> They proposed the creation of a Palestinian state several times; what more would you expect?
The Palestinian state already exists, so the least they could do is recognize its right to exist, which is equal in every way to israel's. That is to say: if israel has an unconditional right to exist, then Palestine's right to exist is equally unconditional. Likewise, if israel can place conditions on Palestine's existence, then Palestine has equal rights to place conditions on israel's existence.
> Iran, Hamas and Hezbollah are all quite explicit about their ambitions of wiping out Israel
This is pretty ironic considering that israel is pretty explicit about their ambitions of wiping out Palestinians and taking their land, as well as destroying Palestine, Lebanon, and Iran.
> Israelis have no desire to kill Persians a thousand kilometers away
This unsupported claim is immediately belied by their actions (they initiated a war in which they are killing persians a thousand kilometers away), and also ignores that they are also killing Palestinian and Lebanese people.
> The Palestinian state already exists, so the least they could do is recognize its right to exist
There exists a national identity, but the organization that claims to be its government does not enjoy popular support, and more importantly, has never really controlled the territory that it aspires to govern.
> This is pretty ironic considering that israel is pretty explicit about their ambitions of wiping out Palestinians and taking their land, as well as destroying Palestine, Lebanon, and Iran.
This is false; there's absolutely nothing resembling Iran's, Hamas' or Hezbollah's clear, explicit goals of destroying Israel.
> they initiated a war
This perspective only makes sense if we pretend that proxy warfare doesn't count. Once we acknowledge the fact that Iran funded, armed and trained multiple terrorist groups specifically to attack Israel for years, it becomes very clear who started the Israel-Iran conflict.
Everything is israel is and always will be related to palestinians in some sense because it's being done on their land
Is this protected free speech in USA?
why would the First Amendment apply to foreign nationals working for a foreign corporation in a foreign country?
A shocker!
Another Russiagate?
* Avisa Partners / iStrat, a French lobbying, intelligence, cybersecurity, and online-influence firm, has been accused in French investigations of information manipulation through ghostwritten articles, fake or undisclosed profiles, blogs, and Wikipedia interventions on behalf of powerful clients. Mediapart reported that Avisa was suspected of modifying Wikipedia pages for clients including French business elites and foreign powers. Wikimedia France also summarized the affair, saying Avisa or its subcontractors were suspected of numerous undeclared paid contributions to Wikipedia. Avisa has denied wrongdoing. [1] [2] [3]
* iStrat, Avisa's predecessor, was separately linked in French reporting to fake online personas used to publish commentary about business disputes. The Avisa Partners Wikipedia summary, based on French media reports, says JDN traced fake analyst profiles and critical commentary to iStrat-era activity, while iStrat and its owners denied the claims. [4]
* There was also a France-linked, though not company-linked, covert influence operation in Africa. In December 2020, Facebook/Meta removed networks for coordinated inauthentic behavior targeting African audiences; one network was linked to individuals associated with the French military. Meta said the operation used fake accounts, pages posing as news or military entities, and off-platform domains. Graphika and Stanford described it as French and Russian influence operations going head-to-head in Africa. [5] [6]
* The Washington Post reported the same Facebook takedown as people affiliated with the French military using fake Facebook accounts to meddle in African politics, while noting that Facebook said it did not have evidence that the French military institution itself directed the activity. [7]
[1] Operation Fake Info: firm used by French business elites suspected of infiltrating Wikipedia https://www.mediapart.fr/en/journal/france/230722/operation-...
[2] L'affaire Avisa Partners sur Wikipédia, expliquée https://www.wikimedia.fr/affaire-avisa-partners-sur-wikipedi...
[3] France: Avisa Partners withdraws its defamation actions against a number of media outlets https://europeanjournalists.org/blog/2023/06/29/france-avisa...
[4] Avisa Partners https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avisa_Partners
[5] Removing Coordinated Inauthentic Behavior from France and Russia https://about.fb.com/news/2020/12/removing-coordinated-inaut...
[6] More-Troll Kombat: French and Russian influence operations go head to head targeting audiences in Africa https://graphika.com/reports/more-troll-kombat
[7] People affiliated with French military used Facebook to meddle in Africa https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2020/12/15/people-...
It's disturbing to think that there are people getting paid huge amounts of money by governments, using taxpayer money to f around with politics of other countries... Meanwhile I've been trying to raise a $100K seed round for my startup which I've been working on for 14 years during nights and weekends... and I never even made it the interview phase of a tech incubator. WTF is wrong with people?
* CLS Strategies, a Washington, D.C. communications firm, was named by Facebook/Meta in 2020 when Meta removed fake accounts and pages tied to operations in Venezuela, Bolivia, and Mexico. Meta defines coordinated inauthentic behavior as efforts to manipulate public debate for a strategic goal where fake accounts are central. PRWeek also reported the takedown as fake accounts and pages managed by CLS. [1] [2]
* Rally Forge, a U.S. marketing firm, was linked by Facebook to a 2020 domestic U.S. operation run on behalf of Turning Point USA, involving fake accounts and coordinated behavior. Axios reported that Facebook removed 200 accounts, 55 pages, and 76 Instagram accounts. [3] [4]
* New Knowledge / Project Birmingham is another ugly example. In the 2017 Alabama Senate race, Democratic-aligned operatives experimented with Russian-style disinformation tactics, including fake or misleading Facebook activity and buying retweets. The effort was reportedly small and probably did not decide the election, but it proves the category exists inside the U.S. political ecosystem. [5] [6]
* There are also U.S.-linked pro-Western covert influence operations. Graphika and the Stanford Internet Observatory analyzed accounts removed by Twitter and Meta for platform manipulation or coordinated inauthentic behavior; later reporting said the Pentagon ordered a review after fake accounts suspected of being run by the U.S. military were taken down. Meta later attributed a campaign targeting the Middle East and Central Asia to people associated with the U.S. military. [7] [8] [9]
* Cambridge Analytica is adjacent but not identical. It had U.S. offices and U.S. political clients, and it was part of the broader “election manipulation for hire” world, but its central scandal was data harvesting, psychographic targeting, and political ad targeting, not necessarily fake-account bot networks in the same narrow sense. [10]
[1] August 2020 Coordinated Inauthentic Behavior Report https://about.fb.com/news/2020/09/august-2020-cib-report/
[2] Facebook deletes dozens of fake accounts, pages run by CLS Strategies https://www.prweek.com/article/1693342/facebook-deletes-doze...
[3] October 2020 Coordinated Inauthentic Behavior Report https://about.fb.com/news/2020/11/october-2020-cib-report/
[4] Facebook removes inauthentic campaign linked to Turning Point USA https://www.axios.com/2020/10/08/facebook-turning-point-usa-...
[5] Researcher whose firm wrote report on Russian interference used questionable online tactics during Alabama Senate race https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2018/12/19/researc...
[6] Project Birmingham (disinformation campaign) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Birmingham_%28disinfor...
[7] Unheard Voice: Evaluating five years of pro-Western covert influence operations https://public-assets.graphika.com/reports/graphika_stanford...
[8] Meta, Twitter take down accounts pushing pro-U.S. messages https://www.axios.com/2022/08/24/meta-twitter-take-down-acco...
[9] Fewer Bots, More Ads: The Pentagon's Evolving Online Influence Campaigns https://www.lawfaremedia.org/article/fewer-bots--more-ads--t...
[10] Cambridge Analytica https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cambridge_Analytica
I predict that this will be flagged very soon. I would love for HN to publish some data on likes/flags, even anonymous IDs with some infos like account age and number of posts. Sure someome will argue things here get flagged cause they are political, but I don't buy that.
We've had discussions about this sort of stuff before.
As an Israeli (note the article exposing them is Israeli too) I was not aware until I saw this and I definitely intend to protest/organize about this (though to be fair I've been protesting about other stuff in the past and the climate here sucks).
>Sure someome will argue things here get flagged cause they are political, but I don't buy that.
Are you saying that this isn't political? It's literally about politics. The comments section will be predictable and it will be flagged for that.
Do you disagree?
> Are you saying that this isn't political? It's literally about politics.
Sure it's about politics, but it's also about tech. The intersection of politics and tech is a fascinating area, of great interest to many folks on HN, and probably within HN's charter.
I think that merely touching on politics should not be grounds for flagging a submission, even when the specifics are highly controversial (as in this case).
>Sure it's about politics, but it's also about tech.
Can you point me how was the tech used in this article about *tech* and politics. I didn't see anything.
Ctrl-F "digital"
I do not disagree that there is a political aspect to this article. Todays news on Fable and Mythos are political too. HN has plenty of political articles, yet some are more flagged than others.
I claim there might be a pattern of supression. Are arguing against my main point that it would be good to have more transparency so I can support or refute my claim?
>I claim there might be a pattern of supression.
Do you want to count how many times words like nazi, genocide, terrorists appears in comments section about Anthropic vs here? Do you see the difference?
But I am going to point to https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
Blackcore isn't a startup. It was already covered everywhere in the news. So there is no need to post yet again.
The purpose is support enterprises which have investment in genocide, the free speech nature of this website was always questionable at best.
Just because something is political and is flagged, does not mean it was flagged because it was political.
HN has plenty of unflagged political topics.
UK‘s censorship and surveillance is also political.
Do they get flagged?
it isnt all that interesting from a tech perspective without details about the code and techniques used for doing it.
its worth a flag in that its rage bait, and not surprising or new by any means that israel is aiming to meddle in elections
Lol. Just use reddit. No need for creating new platforms
Is the USA finally doing something about foreign lobbyists here? Trump is like the ultimate tool here for foreigners to gain influence, no matter the country. Yuri explained this already in the 1980s (!!!): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9apDnRRSOCk (it's the KGB view, so biased too, of course, but if you extend it, then also connect it to Epstein, you have basically undermined democracy effectively; a shame Yuri is dead, he would have had a field day with "analysing" Putin).
Nope, the war in Iran is testament to that.
Nope, foreign lobbyists in the guise of AIPAC spent record amounts to primary Thomas Massie.
OP is talking about American's here. AIPAC is made of and paid for AIPAC, like other political packs or other American groups. AIPAC is just Americans, doing the American political thing.
BlackCore? Yeah, those are these Russians meddling in elective all over the Europe and the USA.
I always thought this was a new thing until I read The Palestine Laboratory by Antony Loewenstein. Over more than 50 years Israel has developed a global export industry around military, surveillance, and security technologies that were developed and tested through its control of Palestinian territories, and that these technologies are then marketed and sold worldwide. Buyers are often bad actors that use it to kill and suppress other populations including in Armenia/Azerbaijan, Myanmar, Rwanda genocide, authoritarian governments and many other examples cited in the book.
Wow, again I am dismayed by the antizionism and anti-Israel sentiment. The popularity of this short, weak article on this website, and the vitriol and hate in the comments is unreal. Can't you all go to Reddit?
In 2016 the UK based Cambridge Analytica was blamed for Trump's win in 2016. Then he won again in 2024 without them. Meanwhile both USA parties invested heavily in social media campaigns.
In my country local government elections are in a few months and political parties are already flooding my social media with rage bait (primarily Instagram and Facebook).
This short article is about a private company, not linked to the government, that may or may not have been retained by locals, that may or may not have breached foreign interference laws, and that certainly did not lend its targeted candidates an overwhelming advantage (Mamdani was the most popular candidate in the NYC mayoral election). But because it is about Israel everyone goes crazy.
Is the "meddling" just running campaign ads? I don't really see how an election where voters' brains were hijacked by tiktok ads funded by foreign governments is less legitimate than one where voters' brains were hijacked by tiktok ads funded by local organizations.
You don't see a difference between local and foreign organizations influencing an election?
Most countries only allow citizens to vote. By your logic, they should let anyone vote, because what's the difference between a citizen and a foreigner when it comes to elections?