The difference doesn't matter for the purpose of this thread. The comment was crude, inappropriate, and unnecessarily political.

I agree. The comment that equated an intelligence service with a religion was crude, inappropriate and unnecessarily political. It is downright shameful to invoke the very real phenomenon of religious persecution as a way to discourage mere mention of a specific, relatively small intelligence organization.

Modern antisemitism tends to be rooted in racist prejudice against a Jewish ethnicity more then plain religious discrimination. And tends to be related to a lot of conspiracy theories.

I think its possible to fairly critize a nation state and and intelligence agency but some criticismtends towards mossad shark type conspiracies

I dont think

Yes it does. If they were founded by former Russian or Chinese intel you would hear the same thing.

Israel is a democracy; Russia and China are not. Also, whataboutisms are childish arguments that don't belong on HN.

Nobody was talking about terrorism.

I think the point is that the Israeli government is akin to a terrorist organization

I'm well aware of what the commenter was trying to suggest, and was not going to dignify it.

Every time a story involves Israel somehow--even if it's about the success of a business based there--it turns into a debate about Israel itself. It's exhausting and stupid.

If ex NSA agents made a cyber security company and Baidu acquired it I think that would be relevant.

Yes they are