It is obvious that Israel is committing genocide. They don't even try to hide it! Indeed they revel in their cruelty. [1]
This historian[2] argues that openly committing genocide is a feature, not a bug, because it will lead to anti-semitism that will make diaspora Jews feel unsafe and bind them to Israel.
There is no doubt that people are suffering. But trying to pin that on Israel is only prolonging their suffering.
Let me ask you, who benefits from Palestinians dying? Or did you think that Hamas care about the Palestinian people. They do not - they care only about the Palestinian state.
> Let me ask you, who benefits from Palestinians dying?
Israel does. There's no need for a two state solution, the project of Greater Israel can be accomplished if they just kill anyone who they aren't able to forcibly expel from the land.
Not cross border. The only purpose German surveillance of Poland would have furthered would have been (again, with the benefit of hindsight) their own occupation. Not the safety of Germans in Germany.
If the Armia Krajowa had carried out an October 7 style attack on the German homeland, against German civilians, their memory would be mixed, not the virtually unblemished heroism they deservedly command in the historic record.
All of my comments in this thread are on the anti-Israel side but this is just such a terrible comparison in so many ways. One can detest what Israel is doing without at all trying to defend Hamas's October 7th attack.
The Palestinian-led military operation on October 7 did not involve killing babies.
One baby was killed. Another died 14 hours after birth after its pregnant mother was shot. Only one of those was conclusively shot by insurgents from Gaza (the UN fact-finding report[1], on page 44, notes that many Israelis were killed and injured by "friendly fire")
Out of 1200 non-Gazans killed, 33 were children, or 2.7%, and again, at least some of these deaths can be attributed to the Israeli military response. It should be noted that the casualty rate of Israel's response in Gaza has been at least 30% children.
It's bizarre that you bring up the infant casualties of Hamas October 7, of which there was 1, as evidence for calling it a terrorist attack, when the actual number of babies killed by Israel is an order of magnitude greater than the total number of people killed by Hamas on October 7
What if China only charges $1k or even free for the same people? I mean, they are doing lots of AI work now also, and you can already see a few foreign programmers in Beijing, Shanghai, and Shenzhen. What is stopping Apple, Microsoft, Meta, or Amazon from doing even more work in India or other countries because they can't get the people they need in the US, or its just cheaper to setup more research jobs in Stockholm or London than it is in Seattle or San Jose?
Its not like it isn't already a work market for talent. $100k is a significant amount of friction to overcome.
Companies are going to be offshoring as much as they can anyway. Bits fly across borders untaxed.
If there is some foreign talent that, for example, Meta thinks will benefit their bottom line by $1M/year, an extra $100K on top of a $250K benefits package is small change!
It's a human-tariff, but it is paid by wealthy corporations.
Yes, world market, darn phone. They have more incentive to offshore now, $100k is some overhead but so is setting up an office overseas (~$100k/engineer).
Set a floor that is regionally adjusted such that the foreign ops/noncitizen cost is consistently higher no matter where. And that it also accounts for and penalizes malicious compliance/intent.
Regarding the overall problem:
For the jobs that people care about keeping away from the alphabet soup provisions, the only problem is finding pliant and desperate people that take any port in a storm - not competence.
On business resistance:
As for firms like Alphabet/Microsoft/Meta, they are not immune to noneconomic forces that might favor US presence and penalize non US expansion, broadly construed.
If I want to understand any position I would look for first sources. Say I want to understand why Russian invaded Ukraine, I would seek out Russian sources. When I try to understand the Palestinian position, I seek out Palestinian sources.
The beautiful thing about intellectual honesty and openness is that you don't have to agree with any position. You can expose yourself to things that deeply conflict with your personal values and walk away with a deeper understanding of why you value what you value, and how to refute ideas that you strongly disagree with.
To dismiss a source because it is Israeli ironically gives fuel to the antisemitism charge. You're saying that the very reason to dismiss it, to not even bother entertaining its arguments is because it is Israeli and no other reason. Beyond that, you are even arguing that any claims of prejudice can be dismissed outright on the basis of one thing that one Israeli Minster once said [allegedly].
Quite simply Israelis and Jews are not the same group, otherwise you would be holding all Jews on the planet responsible for this genocide. Dismissing the source for being Israeli is not antisemitic.
There are many examples of Israeli sources lying about the state of things, from the baseless claims against UNRWA to the unconscionable excuse of burying medics and the ambulances they were in, to avoid wild dogs eating them.
Israeli sources rarely offer evidence to refute the claims presented in this report, and a cry of antisemitism, as stated, conflates Judeism with Israeli nationality, hence these sources are worthless at best.
Which are not validated by the UN, Norway etc.
https://news.un.org/en/story/2024/04/1148821
If the claims were valid, countries would not have restarted funding to UNRWA. Simple.
I note you've not denied the issues with claims of antisemitism which are important.
I was referring to your conflation of Israelis with Jews, and calling dismissal of an Israeli news source antisemitic, which it is not.
I'm saying that a biased Israeli news source is less valid than the actions of dozens of countries, which decided to restart funding.
It is telling that UN votes for a ceasefire are only opposed by the US, Israel and a handful of client states. This is a genocide, and most countries seem to agree on that.
First, I think you are conflating two different authors in this thread.
Second, you dismissed what you deemed to be Israeli sources as "lying about the state of things, from the baseless claims against UNRWA". I brought up evidence otherwise - specifically that their claims are not baseless. Dismiss _that_ as biased all you want, but its just links to social media posts from Hamas members. Members of Hamas that also work for UNRWA in some fashion.
We do agree that the US and Israel standing alone is telling. But we will disagree on what it means. For me it confirms just how morally bankrupt the United Nations is. I see no epistemological value in just conforming to the majority when I see clear evidence otherwise.
The points still stand and remain unaddressed, that are:
Conflation of Israelis and Jews and the false claim of antisemitism.
The lack of evidence of UNRWA-Hamas association, such that Israel's claims are deemed baseless by multiple countries and they restart funding. That is not a UN decision, it is by each country and serves as a good benchmark for baseless.
As to some posts to Hamas members, Israel have called reporters Hamas members simply for reporting with Hamas members, so as far as a few posts go, classification is the issue here, to the point where Reuters and other news agencies have stopped sending the IDF their locations, as the IDF label them Hamas supporters and deliberately target them. Actions are a much more clear signal. In Lebanon, the IDF saying there were Hamas tunnels under hospitals was debunked by numerous news organisations like the BBC, Sky etc. This is the IDF here misclassifying and outright lying, let alone an Internet site.
Lastly, given that both Trump and Netanyahu have openly and on TV advocated ethnic cleansing, and that these comments get next to zero blowback, the US and Israel appear to be the morally bankrupt ones. If an internet site takes precedence over open admission by presidents, multiple country's decisions, evidence presented from an acknowledged organisation (and confirmed from multiple sources), then I'd argue that there's something amiss here.
"To dismiss a source because it is Israeli ironically gives fuel to the antisemitism charge."
We agree it is an Israeli source.
All the unwatch site does is accuse Israel's critics of being antisemites. When you can't respond to the message, attack the messenger. Accuse them of being antisemitic and being funded by Hamas.
If we're on the subject of damning historic quotes, I've got one for you:
> Initiatives, and so-called peaceful solutions and international conferences, are in contradiction to the principles of the Islamic Resistance Movement.
Of course ignoring that Hamas was deliberately funded by Israel to cause a split between the politics of the West Bank and Gaza to prevent a unified political authority in Palestine.
I can well imagine a parallel universe where Israel gave them NO money whatsoever. You know what would have happened? Hamas would do the usual Islamic fundamentalist thing. Form a terrorist group and attack Israel. And then media commentators and intellectuals would accuse Israel of failing to help Hamas get put on the right path by helping them at the start, and instead Israel's inaction was like strangling a baby in the cradle. Typical Israel! Damned if they do, damned if they don't.
You imagine the future that suits your perspective and act like it's a fait accompli.
In reality, the PLO would have (and had been) quelling Hamas effectively. And then they were sitting at the negotiating table (after a rather ugly period). So Israel was facing awkward questions of "If Arafat is willing to negotiate, why aren't you?", so the Israeli far right locked in on the idea of "surreptitiously fund Hamas against the PLA/PLO".
Your imaginings count for nothing, because they're just your preconceived notion.
Many (not all) of those countries are fine with when it's a member of the second or third worlds committing atrocities. So no, there's no guts here. They perceive it's in their interest to call out some acts but not others - just like almost everyone else.
You are aware that Shulamit Alloni was on the extreme left and was criticizing this supposed misuse of Antisemitism, this is not some playbook
The american equivalent would be to quote Bernie Sanders saying "America is fascist" and then saying, see? therefore the USA system of government is fascism, even Congress agrees!
Plenty of people criticize Israel and are not antisemites. This is true of most Israelis. They generally criticize Israel in non-antisemitic ways. It is quite easy to do so.
Roger Waters is an antisemite.
Do people who have known Roger Waters his entire life think he is an antisemite because of his obsessive criticism of Israel, or because of all the other anti Jewish things he has said and done AND his singular obsession with Israel?
>In the 2023 documentary The Dark Side of Roger Waters, the
>saxophonist Norbert Stachel recounts Waters refusing to eat >vegetarian >dishes in Lebanon, calling them “Jew food”. When >the musician explained >that most of his relatives had been >killed in the Holocaust, the singer did >a crude and offensive >impersonation of a Polish peasant woman, and said, >“Oh, I can >help you feel like you’re meeting your long-lost relatives. I >can introduce you to your dead grandmother.”
>
>Tellingly, Stachel also claimed to overhear Waters telling a >girlfriend that Judaism was not a race, saying, “They’re >white European men that grow beards and they practise the >religion Judaism, but they’re no different than me; they have >no difference in their background or their history or their >culture or anything.”
He did write the forward to Shahak's Jewish History, Jewish Religion: The Weight of Three Thousand Years. The book is framed as an attack on Jewish fundamentalism.
Werner Cohn, Professor Emeritus at the University of British Colombia, writes: “He [Shahak] says (pp. 23-4) that "Jewish children are actually taught" to utter a ritual curse when passing a non-Jewish cemetery.[b] He also tells us (p. 34) that "both before and after a meal, a pious Jew ritually washes his hands....On one of these two occasions he is worshiping God... but on the other he is worshiping Satan..." I did take the trouble to question my orthodox rabbi nephew to find what might be behind such tall tales. He had no clue. If orthodox Jews were actually taught such hateful things, surely someone would have heard. Whom is Dr. Shahak kidding?”
Edward Said wrote the foreward to the second edition, calling Shahak “one of the most remarkable individuals in the contemporary Middle East.” Said writes that the book is “nothing less than a concise history of classic and modern Judaism, insofar as these are relevant to the understanding of modern Israel.”
At best Said endorses antisemites.
Tucker Carlson hosted Darryl Cooper, a podcaster known for promoting Holocaust revisionism and making historically inaccurate claims about World War II. He labeled Winston Churchill as the "chief villain" of the conflict. They perpetuated downplayed Nazi atrocities.
Regarding antisemitism, it is unfortunately a two millennium old racist phenomenon, which shows itself in an obsession many persons had with Jews and their "influence on world politics".
Behaviors include use of ritual scapegoating, where double standards are applied to the jews and then blame is shifted to them, culminating in ritual violence.
It's hard to delete 2000 years of western culture, so what you are seeing is mostly a rehash of this
This predated Israel by much and can be seen online for example by the unhealthy obsession with this conflict or even paranoid delusions considering Israel ("Israel killed Charlie Kirk cause I saw Nethanyahu respond to the murder" as can be seen in this thread)
In the above mentioned UN human right council you can see it in the fact 40% of decisions are about Israel while countries like Iran chair the committee. Or the fact there is a permanent clause (Article 7) meant to condemn Israel permanently, the only such country that had such a clause
I don't think you responded to the argument there. He's not saying antisemitism isn't real. Of course it's real, and has been for a long time. He's saying that automatically tarring critics of Israel as antisemites is invalid.
No, antisemitism is historically based on shifting blame and scapegoating. That's why the nazis were blaming Jews of genocide ("Germany must perish") while they were working on their destruction.
That's why an organization that used death squads to mass-execute civilians in entire towns (as was done by the Einsatzgruppen) gets to blame the side that bombs military targets (exactly the tactic used against nazis) with genocide
Israeli is implementing a final solution to the Palestinian problem, and that solution is...genocide!
Some might argue it's not genocide but simply mass-murder. That's an awful lot of mass-murdering going on.
The Bret Stephens hasbara is that it's not a genocide because of how slow the killing is. Obviously the IDF could dig in machine guns in hidden trenches, lure starving Palestinians with the bait of food, and gun down thousands at once.
The problem with that approach is that such a strategy would risk rousing the conscience of the world. It's much safer to murder a few hundred a day and have slow starvation take thousands.
While pictures of starving Palestinian children are evocative of the Holocaust, or at least of the end of the Holocaust when cameras were allowed into liberated concentration camps, the world seems not to have a problem with Holocaust 2.0
Parsing the stock exchange notice [1], the three founders seem to have received 42 Million USD. If they had the same amount of shares, they received around 14 Million each.
> The three founders of Memfault - CEO Francois Baldassari, CTO Chris Coleman and VP Developer Experience Tyler Hoffman – will reinvest 30% of their share sale proceeds in Nordic Semiconductor shares, totalling approximately USD 13 million.
The point is not that boredom is good but that the fidget spinner in your pocket conditions you to experience boredom in an absence of stimuli. To sit and contentedly daydream or watch the world go by is very different from the anxious ennui a screen addiction engenders.
In small doses, in the correct circumstances, Boredom can be the Necessity that drives new ideas.
Put another way, think of it as an opportunity for more conscious reflection and exploration. Like sleep, but not just 'run the garbage collector and predictive simulation pre-cache' routines, instead time to consciously consider and critically cultivate new perspectives on issues that might have been vexing the individual.
- Vaping damages lungs (more research needed on other possible conditions).
- Nicotine pouches damage teeth.
I suppose the healthiest way of ingesting nicotine would be nicotine pills, which exist to help people quit smoking (and which is why they are very expensive).
This historian[2] argues that openly committing genocide is a feature, not a bug, because it will lead to anti-semitism that will make diaspora Jews feel unsafe and bind them to Israel.
[1]https://www.thecanary.co/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/snapins-... [2]https://youtu.be/sS9xidsyxXY?t=330