Well, fine. If you are a member of my family, and you think that the family is in cahoots with those commit crimes against humanity, you might as well do that. If you had a bit of conscience, I hope you at least implore of doing it.
Animats did not claim otherwise AFAICT. The forming of a union in Poland in 1980 is something I’ve been taught was one of the earliest public signs that Kremlin was losing its grasp over the east bloc. That’s not at all incompatible with Soviet falling apart due to internal problems.
These are called sit-ins or "sitdown strike", and are not particularly uncommon. They happen in many democracies around the world (not at google though).
This comment is confusing. It makes me think that you believe their endgame is actually become the owners of the office they occupied or otherwise gain something. Their goal was to make themselves be heard. Us talking about it right now means it’s working.
The actual acts performed in the protest may very well be the goal for some of the protesters. The stated goals are in that case only rationalizations.
Communist countries absolutely used “vocal minorities” as a way to control people. The vocal minority might be organized crime, the Red Guard, or anonymous denunciation.
It wasn’t a coincidence that communist countries had massive police forces and widespread crime. They are both parts of the same function.
Well there are limits. You can’t for example protest in my living room or by breaking into the Capitol building. Trespassing can be a form of protest but it’s still illegal.
If they had broken into the offices after violently clashing with police, or if they were ransacking the place, I would be 100% in favor of arresting them - just like the Jan 6 protesters who attacked the Capitol.
Instead, as far as I've seen even from the Daily Wire, these people just walked into the offices of their company's boss (at worst breaking a lock?) and were sitting there without disturbing his papers or breaking his computers or anything violent.
In the former (socialist) East German GDR it was illegal to change jobs. You would need state approval to change jobs. The state could mandate your job.
If you didn't work at all or didn't work the job you were assigned, you were sent to prison.
If you didn't work, the state could take away your children and offer them for adoption.
People don't know what un-freedom is, so they don't know what freedom is.
Your whole self isn't all of your behaviors. It doesn't mean proselytize your religion at work. It doesn't mean engage in sexual activity at work. It doesn't mean spend 1/3 of your time at work asleep.
A person can be authentic without being inappropriate.
These posters would prefer all protests be relegated to a closed studio TV channel you can simply avoid ever tuning into, and a state that punishes deviancy from that
I prefer if the protests are relegated to a TV channel I can simply avoid ever tuning into (like CNN or MSNBC). I am not sure what state you have in mind, but US does not punish deviance from anything.
As can be seen here, they did punish these protesters. And the House has just passed a resolution saying that the slogan "from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free" is antisemitic. Many states, such as Texas, require written commitments from all state employees that they will not engage in the BDS movement or other forms of protest against Israel.
How are these not a punishment for deviance from the desired positon?
Well, from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free is indeed antisemitic... because Israel separates West Bank (the river) from Gaza (the sea). Wanting Palestine to be free from West Bank to Gaza means that Israeli state be broken up - which is antisemitic....
Denying someone employment because of their political views is not punishment...
It is not antisemitic to want the borders of Israel to change (if that is how you interpret the song). Just as much as it is not anti-arab or anti-Muslim to want the Palestinian territories to stay disconnected as they are today.
First of all - this is how the song is interpreted by most of the people.
Second of all - if you really believe changing Israel's borders is not an act against Jewish people (and thus antisemitic) you and I cannot agree on anything.
I think it's extremely important to separate opinions on Israel, a sovereign state where both Jewish people and Arabs and other ethnicities live and are welcome, from opinions on Jewish people.
Many Jewish people around the world and inside Israel in fact are strongly against Israel's actions. Some even participate in BDS or other protest movements, even calling for sanctions of Israel.
Similarly, many people oppose the USA's actions. Some Texans even want to secede, affecting the borders of the USA. That doesn't make them antisemitic (even though the majority of the world's Jewish population outside Israel lives in the USA), nor anti-caucasian, nor anti-black, nor anti-hispanic (though of course some of them could also be some of these things).
There really is no rational reason to say that opposing Israel's actions or wanting it to accommodate certain borders for the Palestinian territories is antisemitic. It is anti-Israel and that's it.
Equating judaism with the state of Israel is quite antisemitic.
Being of the opinion that the state of Israel is illegitimate or should stop colonialising its neighbours isn't necessarily an antisemitic position, though some antisemites might surely agree. Many others will however stick to the mainstream zionist opinion that jews should be relocated from their home countries to an israeli territory in the Middle East.
There are quite a few (mostly religious) Jews who believe that the State of Israel should not exist because it is an offense against God. Are they antisemitic?
You can see other free-speech-related court cases fought by Palestine Legal.
I personally don’t think the “from the river…” slogan should be outlawed, being speech, but it does indeed eliminate the country of Israel by referring to its land as “Palestine”.
The USA supports the creation of two countries in that area: Israel, with its current borders minus the colonies it has illegally established in the West Bank, and Palestine, which would include the Gaza strip and the West Bank (in its full 1947 territory, minus the illegal Israeli colonies).
The country of Palestine would then stretch from the river (in the West Bank) to the sea (in Gaza).
Of course, it is also sometimes used to call for the dissolution of the state of Israel. Even that is not per se antisemitic (not that I suport this - Israel has won it's right to exist). There are just as many Jewish people living outside of Israel as inside.
Israel has not won its "right to exist", if anything, its entire history of ethnic-cleansing, murder, apartheid and now genocide has lost them the "right to exist", not that the apartheid colony ever had such a "right" anyway. Israel will only exist as long as it's possible for the USA to protect them, the moment that support crumbles Israel is no more.
Looking at the trends, it's looking extremely bleak for Israel, considering that US support is largely artificial and not organic.
The support arises first and foremost from the work of the israeli lobby AIPAC which takes advantage of America's legalized bribery [1] that results in undue influence on congress.
Another big factor are evangelicals, who are misguided by corrupt pastors and televangelists like John Hagee who are in a business relationship with the israeli lobby and thus have a vested interest in forcing a zionist misinterpretation[4] of the bible to artificially create support for israel.
A key factor in the changing landscape of evangelical Christianity is generational differences. Younger evangelicals are often less aligned with traditional evangelical positions and are harder to misguide with misinterpretations that have no sound basis.
It's terrible that absolute comments in one direction stay, and well cited (in thoroughness - quality of citations are just personal references in this case) ones that counter an unqualified absolute statement are routinely flagged out as bad behavior on topics like this
It's a new Christian fundamentalism-backed ideological McCarthyism to erase the entire left with a new loyalist pledge... sort of like what totalitarian and communism regimes have required. "Separation of church and state be damned, you must believe X or you are un-American and forbidden to hold a job" is their modus operandi.
Are you living in America? If so, how did you miss the 50% of the population that is the exact opposite of "new Christian fundamentalism-backed ideological McCarthyism"????
The people inside should maybe, I don't know, not be working at a company aiding and abetting apartheid and expecting to not be disturbed? Seems like putting up with a few disturbances is a small price to pay given the high compensation you'll get for working at google. These people will be quickly escorted outside the building by police and fired anyways.
Occupy Wall Street protests took place in a park. I assure you if the Occupy Wall Street protesters entered bank buildings and unfurled their banners they would have been arrested.
For the record, Occupy Wall Street didn't disturb Wall Street. It was a small protest at a park a few blocks away. If you actually live in Manhattan it's hilarious how big of deal the media made what was ultimately an incredibly small and insignificant event.
There are always Americans with a deep-seated belief that US society needs radical change; many of those are journalists. From about 1975 to about 2015 however US society was stable and radical change was very unlikely, so the radical journalists focused vast amounts of their attention on Occupy Wall Street because for a few years it was the movement most likely to cause radical change (that the journalists knew about) even though the actual likelihood was very low.
Again, some journalists (and others) are constantly hoping for radical change; during periods of societal stability, that constant hope will result in their focusing on very slim hopes for radical change -- resulting in ridiculous exaggeration in the press of the importance of movements like Occupy Wall Street.
It's important to remember, whenever a news headline reads "Y after X", that the headline does not actually claim "Y because of X". I find it a frustrating misdirection by the newspaper to employ such headlines, since they are so easy to misread in that way.
There are lots of ways to protest, and plenty of them don’t involve impeding others or trespassing on private property to make their point. We have parks and government centers and sidewalks they can do it in. Your right to protest does not supersede the rights of others.
And these are (were) employees and it’s quite likely Google already has established mechanisms for hearing employee grievances. Google’s not going to allow a small but vocal and disruptive group to override those existing mechanisms, nor would any serious business.
It doesn’t matter. The law is what it is. Breaking the law to get your way isn’t the right way to get things done. Otherwise we’d all be justified in doing it whenever we don’t like something and there would be no point in laws anymore.
In a democracy, you can participate in our system and vote to have it changed, though. And that’s the effective way to address these issues.
Breaking the law isn't a moral question, it's a legal one. You break the law, you go to jail, okay. But what is this "it isn't right" business? Some innocent bystanders are inconvenienced, so what? These people are protesting their employer's complicity in mass murder! And a corporation isn't a democracy, so they can't "vote to have it changed". Should they be bringing their concerns to HR, is that the right way to get things done?
The point is that the "right way"--the way that is sanctioned by the system--is deliberately hobbled by many people in positions of power, to be completely ineffective. So you may well have to push the bounds of the system to actually address these issues.
First of all, these are (probably now former) Google employees. I don’t work for Google, but I do know that most big companies have established channels for addressing employee grievances.
Second, Google isn’t a democracy, but we have a democratic system that allows us to influence our representatives to make reprehensible conduct illegal. If you want to change how a business operates, you can arrange a boycott as well. Companies take the threat of losing significant amounts of money very seriously.
If you honestly think that this type of action should be legal, then by all means, go convince our government to make it so. But I don’t think you are considering the long-term consequences such a change would have.
No, I don't think this type of action should be legal. I think they should do it anyway. Protest is more meaningful (and raises more awareness) when there are consequences.
(You're Lawful Good, which is an admirable quality in a fellow citizen, but Chaotic Good can be more effective when the system has been captured by a strong Lawful Evil element.)
"I don’t work for Google, but I do know that most big companies have established channels for addressing employee grievances"
If you read any of the articles coming out of this event you'll see that the protestors tried for months to get a dialog going with management in half a dozen different capacities, all of which were denied or swept under the rug immediately. Due to this behavior from management, many of the employees engaged in this cause had decided to quit, but if you were one of them why not try to protest one last time? This was basically the last option they had prior to leaving
You certainly can occupy private property as a protest, if you get arrested afterwards is immaterial to the fact that you can indeed do the as a protest.
People throw pies at politicians faces as a protest and they're often arrested afterwards for assault, but it doesn't mean they can't do it.
Sit-ins are an old protest tactic. They were used during the civil rights movement, in private property. They were used during labour protest, in private property. They have repeatedly been successful at achieving the protestors ends. They have repeatedly, in hindsight, been viewed in a favorable light and broadly seen as permissible. They were frequently, at the time, viewed as illegitimate and impermissible. Of course, there were other sit-ins which failed and were very much unpopular and were unjustified.
Rosa Parks wasn’t trespassing or interfering with anyone else. And she wasn’t on private property; she was on a public conveyance. She had every right as a paying passenger to be on that bus.
Rosa Parks was both trespassing (she was subsequently arrested, the exchange shockingly resembles the one here) and interfering with folks that her race was legally proscribed from interfering with.
We should all be glad that the view of "she should have just founded her own capitalist, nonwhites-only bus company" did not prevail.
(Google's anti-Gazan defense-dealing is the bus company, in this example)
That's a pretty interesting use of the word "interesting". As I said, the exchange shockingly resembles the one here ('sorry, but if you dont leave, Im gonna have to have you arrested' or some equivalent), and she was interfering with folks that her race was legally proscribed from interfering with, as Palestinians are often legally proscribed from interfering with Israelis.
>“It took the police a couple of tries to settle on legal language describing her alleged offense.”
You say that as if we don't all already know that the actual offense was upsetting the order of the apartheid. What took a bunch of racists a couple of tries to eventually settle upon is irrelevant. Similarly, the police in this case may take a couple of tries to eventually settle upon legal language, but we nonetheless all know that the actual offense was upsetting the order of the apartheid. Just like Rosa Parks.
My point was that her offense was neither trespass nor interference with others, contrary to your claim. So actually trespassing and interfering with others at work doesn’t make you a Rosa Parks—even if you or others think you’re doing the right thing.
Besides, Ms. Parks herself was impacted by the unjust laws that required her to sit at the back of the bus. It’s unclear how Google’s activities directly and substantially impacted the lives of the protestors here.
My point was that Rosa Parks' offense, whatever the racist police's explanation for it, was indeed interfering with apartheid. There is no "contrary to the claim" there. Rosa Parks was indeed arrested according to some legal framework around preserving an apartheid, just like here. Maybe they took some time to "settle upon legal language". Maybe the police here will, too. Either way, both cases are around protestors protesting apartheid and being arrested under some charges that the apartheid-preserving powers conjured up.
To address your edit:
Rosa Parks was protesting the treatment African Americans were receiving, these workers were protesting the treatment Gazans are receiving.
Laws against trespass to property exist in every nation that has private property rights. (They protect you, too.) There’s no “conjuring up” of trumped-up charges going on here.
No.. that's what a stupid and illegal protest looks like. You can peacefully protest in public as much as you want, it's your right under the first amendment. This does not extend into private property. If you don't have permission from the property owner, that's no longer a protest, that's trespassing. One could argue that the whole thing is a meta-protest (along with the arrest and the media coverage) which would be more or less correct, but that's not what you're arguing.
That the rich digerati have taken up the cause of the ongoing Palestinian man-made famine and genocide diverges from actions of similar demographics in the past. The genocides in Rwanda and Bosnia received little notice in the global press and received little global action. This is positive progress. Even if the effect of an individual protest causes no direct change, it is important voices are heard and directed toward the political class and the owners of capital who buy influence over the political class. Unfortunately though, far-right Christian fundamentalists hold too much clout in America for mystical theological reasons and will never chide Israel for any behavior, no matter how abhorrent.
Not to agree or disagree with what you are saying here, unlike Rwanda and Bosnia, which were horrible enough, every single day of the apartheid and genocide operations are funded and aided by US. And in this instance the Nimbus program is actively complicit in it. If I were to use the trolley thing here, Rwanda and Bosnia were inaction, but this is fueling and arming the trolley to be a killing machine.
Regardless of your opinion of the Daily Wire, they have an in-depth article with details that the Washington Post omitted. With hyperlinks to each source:
Maybe not, but the DW article includes more photos and video than the WP article, it provides a copy of the original employee letter + list of demands, and it also embeds some tweets from one of the protest's organisers. You can form your opinion from the primary sources.
All sources have at least a small element of truth to them... it's better to get as many sides as you can and come up with your own conclusion, rather than completely block off certain opinions.
Are there any places where it's not? Sure, it's not mandatory anymore, but why are you objecting to people voluntarily taking measures to prevent getting infected? COVID is still around, and it's not the only thing that can have dire health consequences.
They said nimbus was for civilian use only, then time publishes an article saying they are dealing with the IDF directly and have a discount given that Nimbus exists…
It's pretty weak proof. It only says some part of it was billed to the ministry of defense. Who knows what it was used for? It could be their HR, billing, etc.
> 72. In these circumstances, the Court considers that the catastrophic humanitarian situation in
the Gaza Strip is at serious risk of deteriorating further before the Court renders its final judgment.
> 73. The Court recalls Israel’s statement that it has taken certain steps to address and alleviate
the conditions faced by the population in the Gaza Strip. The Court further notes that the Attorney
General of Israel recently stated that a call for intentional harm to civilians may amount to a criminal
offence, including that of incitement, and that several such cases are being examined by Israeli law
enforcement authorities. While steps such as these are to be encouraged, they are insufficient to
remove the risk that irreparable prejudice will be caused before the Court issues its final decision in
the case.
> 74. In light of the considerations set out above, the Court considers that there is urgency, in
the sense that there is a real and imminent risk that irreparable prejudice will be caused to the rights
found by the Court to be plausible, before it gives its final decision.
Basically, based on the facts on the harm coming to civilians in Gaza, and on reports of genocidal rhetoric being used in Israel and investigated by Israeli authorities, they find that there is a real and urgent risk that the citizens of Gaza will be subject to genocide.
This is not in any way based on the simple existence of an abstract right to be protected from genocide. It is about finding that there is a real, urgent, risk of genocide happening before the ICJ can issue a final decision.
repeating lies doesn't make them any more true. starting a war, then losing badly, is just that, losing a war. Or maybe you think the US committed genocide against Germany in the 1940s too?
Every liberal democracy subscribes to the idea of civilian control of the military, so the distinction between civilian leadership and the military they oversee isn't a new or foreign concept.
Why would you assume MoD use = IDF use? Do you also assume everything the DoD contracts for is used by the U.S. Army?
I also suspect that almost everything to do with actual military operations - intelligence, logistics, targeting, whatever - would be classified, and therefore could not run on civilian infrastructure.
The same contract the exists between CIA and aws for it's top secret regions. I always ponder why people protest against something that happens thousands of miles from their homes, while the same activity occurs in their own country.
Maybe they protested those things too? And maybe they have family that died or other connections to this topic? Or maybe they feel that there’s a better ROI on protesting this while the conflict is ongoing and the contract is newish versus protesting an American company doing business with America? Maybe they weren’t politically aware when those contracts were signed?
You'd rather Israel doesn't have the technology to target terrorists with precision, and instead will be forced to use crude methods to carpet-bomb large areas where they hide?
Hamas did not kill 1200 civilians on October 7. There were ~1200 victims total in the attack. There were 274 soldiers, and 95 police or other security officers, and 764 civilians [0]. At least a few of the civilians were not killed by Hamas directly, but by IDF firing on Hamas terrorists holding them hostage [1].
Of course, each and every one of these victims is a tragedy. There are also an additional few hundred people taken hostage, another war crime by Hamas. I don't intend to minimize the hurt or excuse the terrorists. But just as much, every civilian being killed in Gaza is a tragedy and inexcusable. And there are many times more civilians killed in Gaza, even by the most conservative estimates, than the victims in Israel.
Also, while the 30+k victims in Gaza (which also include Hamas soldiers) are indeed coming from Hamas itself, there are no better numbers. The Israeli media and even official sources sometimes quote these numbers, and all external organizations that have looked into them consider them credible. Not to mention, these are only those confirmed dead, each of them identified specifically (the Hamas Palestinian Health
Ministry is publishing a list of the exact names of every victim, and not including unidentified dead or those who are missing in the numbers).
Israel has not published any list or even estimate of the casualties, except their claims for Hamas soldiers killed.
Hamas Ministry of Health officials changed their numbers and brought it down to 22k. so if 13K of these are Hamas terrorists(according to IDF), it means 9K civilians dead. Probably half from failed Hamas rocket launches that were raining down on Gaza civilians at the beginning of the war. These are very low numbers for urban combat as we see in Gaza.
Don't you think it's strange that every civilian that dies is either a woman or a child? According to Israels numbers they have never killed an innocent man, only women and children get in the way while killing the resistance fighters.
Because TikTok and social media brainwashed them to do it. Note these protests are for very specific topic - Israel. Plenty of countries and their militaries/agencies deal with US companies, dictatorships and authoritarian governments.
> Several Google employees were arrested Tuesday evening at the company’s offices in New York City and Sunnyvale, Calif., after staging sit-ins to protest the tech giant’s work with the Israeli government
The obvious question here is "how old were these employees?". The article doesn't even bring it up.
This is the moment Thomas Kurian showed his true colors, silently hiding behind his security henchman when confronted with peaceful protesters, when he could have ignored them and simply not gone into the office for now. Silence is equivalent to actively stating he sides with Israel and "The Company", Google, who pays him tens of millions of dollars per year in compensation. That's a helluva incentive for someone with Atherton-level property taxes to pay.
Oracle is lucky TK took off for Google after he lost the cloud boss battle to Don Johnson in 2019. Also fortunate that Safra Katz (current Oracle CEO, previously vocal supporter of Israel) is smart enough to keep a low profile for the time being.
Yeah, there are a lot of [gx]ooglers on this site, so the massive downvotes were not asurprise. I also acknowledge my comment was against site guidelines (not contributing to "curious conversation"). Yet still, I feel compelled to speak my mind because I have direct firsthand knowledge of Thomas Kurian.. and yuck. Nothing is special or surprising about that one.
Best wishes to all personkind,
M.D.
p.s. Even Dang gets downvoted sometimes, although to be fair, he doesn't engage in this sort of thread. *Shrug*
I have no idea what happened but I always love it when people get cross over improper behaviour such as grey hat work or “sitting protests” at the worlds largest corp … on a website called hackernews
Unfortunately, the historical hacker culture is not the hacker culture for which this forum was created. Watching the culture clashes when expectations meet reality is always a hoot.
I heard about this community about a decade ago through the respect being paid to a legendary hacker from the (nineties?) I believe so I guess the forum adopted the culture. It sure is as close as I got to them, reading obituary threads, with folks telling tales of yore.
I am with you but unfortunately the sense of "hacker" here is closer to what it is in "hackaton".
A "hackaton" is an event where ivy league students compete to write sloppy code using APIs from different corporations. They also get branded t-shirts and free redbull (paid by said corporations).
Maybe because they think they could change it while inside? Like so many republican politicians hate big government but work for (Ie get elected to) said government, then try to change it to what they think is better.
Or maybe they want to quit and figured going out in a ball of fire would be more effective than resigning?
I hope so, these protestors are accepting blood money every time a direct deposit from Google hits their bank account or their stocks vest! Surely they'd want to keep their moral integrity intact and quit if their demands are not met.
For once I see a post that needs to be locked as all it is going to do is bring the worst out in HN crowd. I think we are quickly crossing into "Please don't use Hacker News for political or ideological battle. That tramples curiosity."
And the worst is really horrible. You would think that people who have pretty much all the resources to learn about the genocide is actively promoting the voice of the perpetrator. This for sure is an eye opening incident, if we were to get to AGI one day, what biases it might hold. And by looking at the attitude of those in power, future is looking a bit bleak.
You saw something like it in the 1980s over the conflict over apartheid in South Africa, and that’s without the level of acute violence as there is in the Israel/Palestine conflict. You saw it around the US’s own Iraq War, with no draft prospect. In short, no, this is very clearly wrong.
The difference between the Israel/Palestine conflict and most other conflicts that people bring up with “why aren’t protestors attacking this” (including the inverted side of the Israel/Palestine conflict: “why aren’t people protesting against Hamas?”) is the combination of widespread US disapproval for Israeli action in the conflict [0] with substantial ongoing US military assistance for the Israel. People aren’t protesting Israel, they are protesting US policy in support of Israel while Israel acts in ways that are opposed. This is in common with both the anti-apartheid movement in the US (where, again, US government support for South Africa was the target) and the Iraq War protests (where the US was a direct party to the conflict), though while substantial opposition to US policy was involved in both cases, neither (at least at the beginning of substantial protest) had nearly the level of domestic opposition as exists to Israel’s actions in Gaza.
the US provides a lot of support and weapons to Turkey, which has committed one genocide in the past against Armenians and has been repressing the Kurds for decades. the US also provides weapons and support to Pakistan, which is an actual religious apartheid state and is involved in a messy conflict with India. China puts muslims in camps and these protestors happily use phones built in that country. none of these activist groups care about any of the conflicts mentioned above, which calls into question their true motivations.
Congratulations to people with morals. There's always few of them in the present, but also few of them historically. But we remember them more then people looking the other way out of convenience.
I didn't pick any side. Israel has killed tens of thousands of people including a large percentage of children in 6 months. It doesn't matter to me at all what one side "wants" to do. This is what's happening right now.
> By every available poll, the Palestinians want to kill them all.
I think that's a big stretch. Many/most Palestinians want "their" land back, and many/most might want Israel gone. But that is not at all the same as saying they want all Israelis killed. Some might want a one-state solution that gives them rights without necessarily infringing on Jews's rights, some might think that most Jews will have a place to go if they get their land back (with the settler-colonialism framing), etc. There are many valid things people can think that aren't "we want to kill all Jews".
(I'm purposefully writing Jews and not Israelis, because I assume we both agree that most would explicitly not want to kill the 2 million or so Israeli-Palestinians!)
> Do you really expect a hypothetical Palestine to be any different?
Depends on a lot of factors. I think there is definitely a path by which a peaceful neighborly Palestine can be created, though it will likely take a long time.
And btw, many of these Arab neighbors now have peace with Israel, that has held for a long time. Including this week helping defend Israel against Iranian missiles.
Not something anyone would've thought possible in the past, now it's reality. A reality that Israel would do well to internalize, instead of thinking of itself as a lone state surrounded by enemies.
There is a path to coexistence, but it needs to overcome a lot of malevolence present on the side of Arab nationalism and political Islam. Currently, violent extremists are setting the tone when it comes to public opinion, and the governements are somewhere in the middle between turning a blind eye and qctively promoting the hate. The right-wing hardliners in Israel also promote a similar dynamic, they are strongly opposed by the state establishment and most of the public, but it seems like the extremists on both sides make each other stronger while dragging the two nations to hell.
Yet, the kind of black and white thinking the villifies Israel and naively promote appeasement and pacifism with genocidial terrorists could only lead to a hugh storm of violence and suffering, that may or may not end with the destruction of Israel in the most violent way possible.
Egypt had 66,000 Jews before 1948.
A peace agreement was reached in 1979. Yet almost none came back to live in Egypt. Jews and Israelis were very afraid to live in Egypt after the peace.
Only in recent years A-Sisi started to do some work to replenish synagogoues and care for the country's very long Jewish legacy, probably as part of his policy against extremism.
A Two-State solution could work in some constellation. a one state solution I see as leading to massacre and banishment of most of the Jews in the land.
> "There is a path to coexistence, but it needs to overcome a lot of malevolence present on the side of Arab nationalism and political Islam."
I doubt that you can provide evidence for your biased statements with full context of the history of Zionism and its crimes against the natives of the region.
That "track record" was a direct response to the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians by the Zionist colonizers. If one studies history in detail and nuance I'd say the Arabs have a much better track record than anyone else esp. Europe.
The Hamas charter says kill all jews. They got so much pushback about that that they amended it, now it says kill all zionists. Killing Israelis is not a controversial take among palestinians.
It shouldn't be controversial to hate and want to destroy the people who have been oppressing and murdering you and your people for decades. It's understandable. It's absurd that the oppressor can then turn around and say "Our victims hate us! We have to keep oppressing and murdering for our own security!" and that anyone would take this argument seriously.
In practice we've seen that the oppressed usually don't go on a massive revenge killing spree. Take for example the end of slavery in the US, or the end of apartheid in South Africa. Were all the white people murdered in revenge? No, even though many probably deserved it.
I'm sure most Palestinians would be open for having a single country with equal rights and no apartheid from the river to the sea shared with the Israelis. Israel will never accept this because they want to maintain their apartheid and white supremacy.
Simplistic oppressor vs opressed narratives are simplistic. Yes, the palestinians have been oppressed for almost a century at this point. No, I dont blame them for fighting back. I dont blame the Israelis for defending their home either though. The reality is that both sides have committed grave atrocities here and any narrative that tries to place the blame squarely on one side is glossing over a huge amount of historical context.
The Israelis have every reason to continue to be worried about palestinian terrorism. A one state solution would involve them losing control of the government. Maybe the palestinians that would make up the majority would be nice to the Israelis, but I really really doubt that based on the way theyve treated the israelis over the past century. They certainly would attempt to institute sharia law which is probably enough of a reason for Israelis to reject a one state solution.
They are also the party that won the last (and only) election held by Palestinians, as well as the current rulers of Gaza.
Their explicit goal is to kill every Jew in Israel, and they have acted it out in the genocidal 10/7 massacre.
So not only do Palestinians support a party that promotes the genocide of all Jews in Israel - by all available evidence, this party is currently the favorite to control a Palestinian state.
Not to mention there's pretty solid ground to believe that if Fatah (Hamas's only viable rival) controlled a Palestinian state, they'd also support the genocide of Jews. Just look at the education they provide to West Bank children, describing Jews as subhuman monsters that must be eradicated.
It's absurd to be accusing Hamas of genocide while Israel is committing an actual genocide on the Palestinians as we speak, and has a long history of apartheid and ethnic cleansing as well. Maybe we can worry about the hypothetical genocide that Hamas might want to commit but can't due to the massive difference in military power after the genocide that is currently being committed by Israel is stopped?
Of course people of Israel want to live in peace, that's why they are protesting their genocidal government run by religious fanatics and nationalists.
Standing against Netanyahu is not standing against Israel, and every decent person should do just that.
The problem with this narrative is the settlers and ben givir. Neither are happy with living in peace, they are hell bent on expanding Israel's borders, and they have no problem with using violence.
> Anti-Semitism appears to be rampant throughout Google’s workforce.
If someone would have told me 5 years ago that in just a few years, Google employees would be accused of anti-semitism, or any -ism, really, I would have never believed it. They were on the frontlines "punching nazis" and fighting rising fascism here in US, and here they are, being accused of anti-semitism, themselves.
In recent years the left labels anyone who opposes them nazis. Oh, ANTIFAS are like SS but they are anti-facists. So, I’m not sure that anti-nazis argument holds water
It reminds me of Putin and his excuses for attacking Ukraine -- fighting fascists, of course. How can the Americans oppose that, he is doing exactly what they are doing. They are brothers in arms, really.
Ever since that video 8 years ago of a college kid yelling at a professor at Yale [1], it seemed to me that a non-negligible part of American youth, much of it in highly regarded universities (such as Yale, Harvard, Berkeley and Stanford) does not understand, nor want to understand, nuance and proportionality. You don't protest violence by being violent yourself.
Rank-and-file Googlers in the US tend to be young (<30) and from those universities or their like. Certainly seems to be the case in this article.
What's even more disturbing is that there are groups and interests which are actively controlling these students opinions. One would think these would be the best and brightest at those universities, and consequently the best and brightest at Google. Surely, they should be hardest ones to use as ideological drones.
One case I remember, for instance, which illustrates this drone control well was the bakery incident at Oberlin college. At some point during the discovery, there was an email from an "organizer" how they will unleash the students. I thought that a rare case of controller putting in writting and acknowledging how the whole mechanism works.
yea because you bothered to verify who actually did that, if that's all it takes then anybody can just spray such things against their own tribe and create artificial hysteria.
That is a fair point. This should be investigated. I have heard of incidents like that at the nearby college. The police got called and eventually it turned out a member of the target group wrote the message.
It's been pretty well-known and much commented on that "the left" is full of anti-semites. E.g. the Black Lives Matter movement was often accused of being at best indifferent to anti-semitism.
(No comment from me on the truth or otherwise of that sentiment, I'm just pointing out this isn't exactly a new thing.)
It concerns me that this is being labeled as anti-semitism.
> At an Amazon shareholder meeting in May, anti-Nimbus Amazon employees said they will support a resolution requesting a third-party investigative report on whether “customers’ use of its products and services with surveillance, computer vision, or cloud storage capabilities contributes to human rights violations or violates international humanitarian law.”
That seems like a fairly basic request?
It seems like in a lot of areas, in the last 6 months we can't even have a conversation about what is going on without anything except 100% support for Israel being labeled as "anti-semitism" which is really dangerous to do.
We don't even expect that level of blanket support for the actions of our own government. We should be able to critically look at what is going on regardless of who is doing it without trying to hand wave it away with a single word.
Many Jewish people do believe that, yes. JVP is not a mainstream group. They tread pretty close to the line on things like the Blood Libel in their rhetoric, and, in particular, in a long-term campaign they've run linking police violence in the US to Israel (a risible claim, for what it's worth).
I'm not saying they're antisemitic. I'm not qualified to render that kind of judgement. You can easily argue that the ADL isn't either --- the ADL has problemicized itself in a bunch of ways too in the last few years. But you probably shouldn't be shocked when people make that claim; it's a common one.
If people are arguing that a Jewish peace advocacy group is antisemitic, I think they've lost all conception of what that word means. They're using the word "antisemite" to mean anti-zionist or anti-Israel, or anti-occupation.
"Anti-semitism" is a hatred of Jewish people or discriminatory attitudes towards them.
There is a large contingency of Jewish people who believe Jews are better than other people (this idea is at least one of the beliefs underpinning the existence of Israel).
Calling Jews who push back against this narrative anti-semitic is like calling white people who oppose white supremacy anti-white.
There are lots of white anti-white racists, there are Black anti-Black racists, and there are indeed Jewish antisemites. You're adopting a position of shock and disbelief that (some) Jewish people find JVP problematic. I'm telling you: that's not helping the credibility of your argument, because this is an old, well-covered controversy, and the points that JVP's critics raise aren't superficial. You don't have to agree with them, but to suggest that those critics have "lost all conception" of what "antisemitism" means mostly suggests that you're unfamiliar with JVP.
(I don't know what I believe about JVP! My confidence in any assessment is very low. What I do know, though, is that if I were doing persuasive work, like, say, getting a ceasefire resolution passed in my municipality, I would do my best to keep JVP's name off the enterprise.)
For a clearer example of this phenomenon, unrelated to JVP, see Jewish Currents, also frequently cited in discussions to insulate arguments from accusations of antisemitism.
I'm curious about these white anti-white "racists" or black anti-black racists. I realize that people internalize racism in different ways so I definitely don't discount the idea that black people may conduct themselves in ways that demonstrate prejudice against black people, but I've heard never heard accusations that PoC solidarity groups represented by black people (which would be the closest example I can think of) are racist against black people. Perhaps a better example of what I think you're trying to communicate would be "trad-wives" who reinforce certain elements of the patriarchy.
The prime difference between trad-wives and groups like JVP, I think, is that trad-wives advocate for trad-wifery because traditional gender roles appeal to their values or interests, rather than out of a sense of social justice and equity (which are likely not important to them).
However, I'm not at all shocked that there are Jewish people who find JVP problematic, and I'm not sure where you got that idea.
I'd guess something like 50% of practicing Jews in the diaspora hold beliefs that Jews are intrinsically better than non-jews, and perhaps a sizeable minority of non-practicing Jews as well. This is based on my own experiences growing up in a Jewish community as well as the arguments used by Zionist Jews in support of Israel. The Jewish school I went to literally taught that Jews had a more legitimate claim to peace and safety in Israel than the Palestinians, by virtue of being the chosen people.
Reducing all criticism of the ethno-state that results from such beliefs to anti-semitism is an underhanded tactic that twists the meaning of the word in order to manipulate public opinion.
I don't know too much about JVP as they don't have presence in my country, but I just did some reading (including their core values[1] which are far from anti-semitic) and found a lot of the same tired arguments: their "admin" lives in lebanon (not said: one of 18 admins on their facebook page), it's a front for non-Jewish antisemites to rally under the banner of Jewishness (not said: their board and leadership are all Jewish), they said "XYZ" which can be interpreted as antisemitic (not said: either an anti-semitic person or even a plant said something while claiming to represent the group, or what was said was a criticism of mainstream Jewish Zionism taken out of context)
Add to that a lot of the same criticisms typically levied at leftist groups, some of which may actually be good-faith, fair criticisms, but unrelated to anti-semitism.
I certainly agree there can be Jewish anti-semites, but they're much more likely to gravitate to the right than the left.
edit: I'll say this one additional thing: I've personally observed a high correlation between Jews who call anti-Zionist advocates anti-semitic, and Jews who secretly or not-so-secretly have a belief that Jewish people are inherently better than non-Jews (and for many this goes down to ethnicity, I'm not talking just about spiritual practice). To me, it seems like they're generally oblivious to how similar beliefs (by any group that holds them) are a type of problematic prejudice, and critical of leftist Jews because they represent a threat to those deeply-held beliefs of supremacy.
I'd guess something like 50% of practicing Jews in the diaspora hold beliefs that Jews are intrinsically better than non-jews
Whoah, wtf? I don't care what your background is: no, not OK.
I had a relatively straightforward non-normative point to make about how controversial JVP is, which you can easily Google to verify. I wasn't even here to tell you you were wrong: you asked a question, it had a straightforward answer, I provided it. My answer was not out of left field: the ADL literally has a page on JVP, up in the first page of search results on Google.
I'm not interested in litigating the intellectual vices of "practicing Jews" writ large.
I think Thomas (whose posts I overall have a lot of respect for) misunderstood my initial question as an indication of surprise at the mere accusation, and felt the need to explain why such accusations of anti-semitism are unsurprising.
Read that way, I can see why he thought the ADL statement on JVP might be relevant and accurate (it certainly does accurately represent the views of a number of people within the Jewish community, though I think many also use the allegations of anti-semitism tactically to distract from legitimate criticism of the actions wrought by an attitude of ethno-religious exceptionalism).
To be fair, as a descendant of Jewish holocaust survivors myself, I'm glad there's a high-profile group that makes it their mission to bring light to actual anti-semitism when it occurs, but unfortunately the ADL is influenced by actors I believe to be operating in bad-faith and has strayed from their mission in order to hand-wave away legitimate criticism of actions stemming from prejudice that exists within the Jewish community.
The Jewish community is by no means unique here; there are elements of prejudice within every demographic, and I'd wager that a near-majority of practitioners of every religion have an attitude of exceptionalism, though Judaism is unusual in having religious practices very tightly coupled with an ethnic identity that often excludes practitioners of Judaism-the-religion who aren't considered ethnically Jewish, or are an unconventional kind of ethnically Jewish (see [1] and [2]).
But I suppose to someone less familiar with the topic, criticism of prejudice that exists within a minority population can be hard to distinguish from prejudice against that minority population, so I can understand what seemed like a strongly oppositional reaction to my earlier post.
If anyone is this deep in the thread and wants modern perspectives by well-respected scholars, Gabor Mate (a holocaust survivor himself) and Noam Chomsky (another Jew who has been unfairly accused of anti-semitism and holocaust denialism by the ADL) have spoken extensively about related issues.
You of course run into pretty big problems with both Gabor Mate, an admirer of Hamas, and Noam Chomsky, who among other things is infamous for denying the genocide in Cambodia on campist grounds. About the whole cursed situation you can distill out a through-line, of people starting their analyses with the axiom that an alliance of western capitalist world powers is responsible on a daily basis for all the ills of the world, and extrapolating from there.
I don't know what I think about JVP other than that they're not a mainstream organization. I went down a grim rabbit hole of reading about their advocacy to evangelical churches and the whole "Zionism Unsettled" thing. Look, there's nothing wrong with being resolutely leftist. It's just that it's not reasonable to argue that a resolutely leftist organization is representative of American Jewish people, or that it can insulate other activists from charges of antisemitism when it itself is continuously subjected to those same charges.
About ADL, I probably mostly agree with you, that they haven't navigated the distinctions between anti-Zionism and antisemitism well, and, like other antiracist activist organizations, diluted their credibility with mission creep and capture. Like Rationalwiki, I read ADL things for the receipts they bring and disregard the analysis.
This thread, too, is deeply cursed, and I don't mean to try to "win" any arguments here; there's no such thing, especially on this topic. I'm just clarifying what I dropped in here to say.
Actually Gabor Mate and Noam Chomsky are just really good examples of what I'm talking about, right?
Like: if an activist said something, and a normie person objected to it, and you came back with "Noam Chomsky says this is just fine to say", you wouldn't expect that to persuade the normie. That doesn't make Chomsky wrong! It just makes him not all that rhetorically useful.
My point is that such people exist doesn't mean they represent anyone other than as an argument point. These people have zero influence or access to levers in politics. They are convenient idiots for the opposite viewpoint.
"Many Jewish people" according to....who, you? Seriously! Who is the "many Jewish people"??! Do you regularly poll the jewish diaspora? Israel? Specifically on the collective jewish opinions of JVP? Man if I wanted to write up an example breakdown on how to structure a weasel word contradiction ridden filled post I could start a lot worse than here!
"They tread pretty close to the line on things like the Blood Libel in their rhetoric" sure seems like something I'd want to substantiate! Claiming one of the most venerable peace organizations in American Jewish communal life is "treading the line on Blood Libel" (love that capitalization, great stuff) is disgusting, full stop. Maybe if you recognize that you're "not qualified to render that judgement" you should....not do it. Which is exactly what a cowardly "they come close to blood libel" type of a claim is. A claim about antisemitism. Really really gross and frankly beggars belief that you, a gentile, who is a self-professed catholic (I've been on this board almost as long as you have homie, and up until recently I read your posts with interest) feels the need to accuse a bunch of pacifist jews of capital B capital L Blood Libel.
As for US police training in Israel, once again, you show your own profound ignorance, or outright dishonesty, by stating this is a "risible" claim. US police training in Israel has been well documented, and pretending that there aren't any carryover effects of that training is itself the "risible" claim.
https://www.amnestyusa.org/updates/with-whom-are-many-u-s-po...
this group has many non-jewish members and is used a fig-leaf by notorious antisemites to agitate for the genocide of the only minority state in the Middle East. it's like saying Clarence Thomas can't promote anti-black racism since he's black himself.
Yeah, and when following this logic to its conclusion you end up aligning with actual literal anti-semites in the alt-right like Richard Spencer, who loves Israel[1] as an exemplary model of what a white ethno-nationalist state should aspire to be.
I can see both sides:
Yes, Google offices are private property.
Yes, Google is an American company - if Google's employees don't agree with an American company serving America and its allies - Israel has been an ally for a long time - then, they should leave for more agreeable pastures. They can even remove Google from their resume once they've found a better resume brand.
However, If I were an employee at Google, and my company had begun serving DoD / IDF against my wishes - then, I would have a better chance of changing this from inside the company than from outside. So, speaking out internally against taking on undesirable customers seems like a more effective tactic than quitting.
But, by protesting in the way they did, they've likely ensured that they will no longer be inside the company.
There are more reasonable, honorable, and effective ways to persuade your company of an idea than ambushing your boss with an office occupation, leaking to the press, or criminal sabotage (possibly treasonous given US and other allies use of the product).
You know, we hear this thing about Israel being a "long-standing ally" all the time, but what exactly does US get out of this alliance except for a massive yearly bill of military aid, and recurring feuds with basically everyone else in that region?
The national interest is really just the collective interests of the citizens of a country, and America has a lot of Jewish citizens.
As a more practical matter, there is significant amount of technology transfer between Israel and the US, and Israel also is also a friendly and militarily capable country in a region where America doesn’t have many allies.
Also, does America provide much aid to Israel? I don’t think they do.
Israel is the single largest recipient of foreign aid from US. Has been that way for many, many years.
The national interest should be the collective interests of citizens, you're right. I don't think that what's actually sold to us as "national interest" is that in any meaningful sense, though.
But also, those Jewish citizens of US are, well, citizens of US. It's not that it's wrong for them to also have some interests wrt Israel, but why should it be of any concern to the rest of this polity?
I wonder what it would take to insert the equivalent of a “thermal vent” into the ”all-encompassing cloud solution” for the Israeli government. Maybe give the Israeli government private cloud the “us-east1” treatment during critical Israeli milops.
Losing a $1.2B contract for Amazon or Google due to subterfuge is nothing.
Wonder how the US government would respond though, especially since Israeli government is one of their most highly regarded allies (highest amount of foreign aide, critical trade partners). Would the people who inserted exploit into Project Nimbus be prosecuted for espionage?
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[ 3.3 ms ] story [ 99.0 ms ] threadPlease don't say "communism" as they would be sent to the gulag or worse in every communist regime that has ever existed.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solidarity_%28Polish_trade_uni...
It wasn’t a coincidence that communist countries had massive police forces and widespread crime. They are both parts of the same function.
Let me guess, you want power to control what people and companies can or can not do? I don’t trust you enough to put you in control of that.
Instead, as far as I've seen even from the Daily Wire, these people just walked into the offices of their company's boss (at worst breaking a lock?) and were sitting there without disturbing his papers or breaking his computers or anything violent.
If you didn't work at all or didn't work the job you were assigned, you were sent to prison.
If you didn't work, the state could take away your children and offer them for adoption.
People don't know what un-freedom is, so they don't know what freedom is.
A person can be authentic without being inappropriate.
In principle, yes. But when your work collides with your values, that stops being the case.
How are these not a punishment for deviance from the desired positon?
Edit: punish, not publish.
Denying someone employment because of their political views is not punishment...
Second of all - if you really believe changing Israel's borders is not an act against Jewish people (and thus antisemitic) you and I cannot agree on anything.
Freedom to agree to disagree....
Many Jewish people around the world and inside Israel in fact are strongly against Israel's actions. Some even participate in BDS or other protest movements, even calling for sanctions of Israel.
Similarly, many people oppose the USA's actions. Some Texans even want to secede, affecting the borders of the USA. That doesn't make them antisemitic (even though the majority of the world's Jewish population outside Israel lives in the USA), nor anti-caucasian, nor anti-black, nor anti-hispanic (though of course some of them could also be some of these things).
There really is no rational reason to say that opposing Israel's actions or wanting it to accommodate certain borders for the Palestinian territories is antisemitic. It is anti-Israel and that's it.
Being of the opinion that the state of Israel is illegitimate or should stop colonialising its neighbours isn't necessarily an antisemitic position, though some antisemites might surely agree. Many others will however stick to the mainstream zionist opinion that jews should be relocated from their home countries to an israeli territory in the Middle East.
I personally don’t think the “from the river…” slogan should be outlawed, being speech, but it does indeed eliminate the country of Israel by referring to its land as “Palestine”.
The country of Palestine would then stretch from the river (in the West Bank) to the sea (in Gaza).
Of course, it is also sometimes used to call for the dissolution of the state of Israel. Even that is not per se antisemitic (not that I suport this - Israel has won it's right to exist). There are just as many Jewish people living outside of Israel as inside.
Looking at the trends, it's looking extremely bleak for Israel, considering that US support is largely artificial and not organic.
The support arises first and foremost from the work of the israeli lobby AIPAC which takes advantage of America's legalized bribery [1] that results in undue influence on congress.
Another big factor are evangelicals, who are misguided by corrupt pastors and televangelists like John Hagee who are in a business relationship with the israeli lobby and thus have a vested interest in forcing a zionist misinterpretation[4] of the bible to artificially create support for israel. A key factor in the changing landscape of evangelical Christianity is generational differences. Younger evangelicals are often less aligned with traditional evangelical positions and are harder to misguide with misinterpretations that have no sound basis.
[1] So You Want to Bribe a Politician - https://youtu.be/QZcLuT3RasA
[2] Why evangelicals influence US foreign policy in the Middle East - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IhT7oyDlBIk
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Hagee
[4] Eschatological Madness about Israel, James White - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3gmd90XJyhA
Genius!! Why doesn’t everyone do that?!
Cmon man hahah
Again, some journalists (and others) are constantly hoping for radical change; during periods of societal stability, that constant hope will result in their focusing on very slim hopes for radical change -- resulting in ridiculous exaggeration in the press of the importance of movements like Occupy Wall Street.
They took over company offices, including the office of Google Cloud CEO in Sunnyvale, and refused to vacate them for 9+ hours.
And these are (were) employees and it’s quite likely Google already has established mechanisms for hearing employee grievances. Google’s not going to allow a small but vocal and disruptive group to override those existing mechanisms, nor would any serious business.
It isn't nice to go to jail
There are nicer ways to do it
But the nice ways always fail
- Malvina Reynolds, "It Isn't Nice"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2lWkV2QpgQo
In a democracy, you can participate in our system and vote to have it changed, though. And that’s the effective way to address these issues.
The point is that the "right way"--the way that is sanctioned by the system--is deliberately hobbled by many people in positions of power, to be completely ineffective. So you may well have to push the bounds of the system to actually address these issues.
Second, Google isn’t a democracy, but we have a democratic system that allows us to influence our representatives to make reprehensible conduct illegal. If you want to change how a business operates, you can arrange a boycott as well. Companies take the threat of losing significant amounts of money very seriously.
If you honestly think that this type of action should be legal, then by all means, go convince our government to make it so. But I don’t think you are considering the long-term consequences such a change would have.
(You're Lawful Good, which is an admirable quality in a fellow citizen, but Chaotic Good can be more effective when the system has been captured by a strong Lawful Evil element.)
If you read any of the articles coming out of this event you'll see that the protestors tried for months to get a dialog going with management in half a dozen different capacities, all of which were denied or swept under the rug immediately. Due to this behavior from management, many of the employees engaged in this cause had decided to quit, but if you were one of them why not try to protest one last time? This was basically the last option they had prior to leaving
Sitting in an office is much nicer.
People throw pies at politicians faces as a protest and they're often arrested afterwards for assault, but it doesn't mean they can't do it.
Can you murder someone? Even if you are physically capable of pulling a trigger, I think you know damn well that’s not what anyone means.
Sit-ins are an old protest tactic. They were used during the civil rights movement, in private property. They were used during labour protest, in private property. They have repeatedly been successful at achieving the protestors ends. They have repeatedly, in hindsight, been viewed in a favorable light and broadly seen as permissible. They were frequently, at the time, viewed as illegitimate and impermissible. Of course, there were other sit-ins which failed and were very much unpopular and were unjustified.
We should all be glad that the view of "she should have just founded her own capitalist, nonwhites-only bus company" did not prevail.
(Google's anti-Gazan defense-dealing is the bus company, in this example)
You’ll find a copy of her arrest warrant here: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/26/us/rosa-parks-montgomery-...
“It took the police a couple of tries to settle on legal language describing her alleged offense.”
>“It took the police a couple of tries to settle on legal language describing her alleged offense.”
You say that as if we don't all already know that the actual offense was upsetting the order of the apartheid. What took a bunch of racists a couple of tries to eventually settle upon is irrelevant. Similarly, the police in this case may take a couple of tries to eventually settle upon legal language, but we nonetheless all know that the actual offense was upsetting the order of the apartheid. Just like Rosa Parks.
Besides, Ms. Parks herself was impacted by the unjust laws that required her to sit at the back of the bus. It’s unclear how Google’s activities directly and substantially impacted the lives of the protestors here.
To address your edit:
Rosa Parks was protesting the treatment African Americans were receiving, these workers were protesting the treatment Gazans are receiving.
In those cases, it is better to violate the law than to preserve apartheid.
Just like Rosa Parks.
See https://www.aclu.org/know-your-rights/protesters-rights
Anyway, if the protestors actually believe they changed minds with this, I will forever be disappointed by Google's hiring practices.
- Stonewall Riots (1969)
- Soweto Uprising (1976)
- Tiananmen Square protests (1989)
- Women's Suffrage Movement
- Anti-Apartheid Protests in South Africa
US politician are hostages, opposing Israel on the political stage puts your life at risk.
https://www.dailywire.com/news/google-employees-occupy-offic...
the dw is a fascist publication that only cares about making money off people with misdirected anger by spreading hate. it has no value.
https://time.com/6966102/google-contract-israel-defense-mini...
This is not true, and is based on a misreading of the ICJ's judgement and of the relevant law.
https://rozenberg.substack.com/p/lawyers-letter-based-on-err...
> 72. In these circumstances, the Court considers that the catastrophic humanitarian situation in the Gaza Strip is at serious risk of deteriorating further before the Court renders its final judgment.
> 73. The Court recalls Israel’s statement that it has taken certain steps to address and alleviate the conditions faced by the population in the Gaza Strip. The Court further notes that the Attorney General of Israel recently stated that a call for intentional harm to civilians may amount to a criminal offence, including that of incitement, and that several such cases are being examined by Israeli law enforcement authorities. While steps such as these are to be encouraged, they are insufficient to remove the risk that irreparable prejudice will be caused before the Court issues its final decision in the case.
> 74. In light of the considerations set out above, the Court considers that there is urgency, in the sense that there is a real and imminent risk that irreparable prejudice will be caused to the rights found by the Court to be plausible, before it gives its final decision.
Basically, based on the facts on the harm coming to civilians in Gaza, and on reports of genocidal rhetoric being used in Israel and investigated by Israeli authorities, they find that there is a real and urgent risk that the citizens of Gaza will be subject to genocide.
This is not in any way based on the simple existence of an abstract right to be protected from genocide. It is about finding that there is a real, urgent, risk of genocide happening before the ICJ can issue a final decision.
[0] https://www.icj-cij.org/sites/default/files/case-related/192...
Every liberal democracy subscribes to the idea of civilian control of the military, so the distinction between civilian leadership and the military they oversee isn't a new or foreign concept.
Why would you assume MoD use = IDF use? Do you also assume everything the DoD contracts for is used by the U.S. Army?
tbh, I would expect most people assume that.
Just a few off the top
Of course, each and every one of these victims is a tragedy. There are also an additional few hundred people taken hostage, another war crime by Hamas. I don't intend to minimize the hurt or excuse the terrorists. But just as much, every civilian being killed in Gaza is a tragedy and inexcusable. And there are many times more civilians killed in Gaza, even by the most conservative estimates, than the victims in Israel.
Also, while the 30+k victims in Gaza (which also include Hamas soldiers) are indeed coming from Hamas itself, there are no better numbers. The Israeli media and even official sources sometimes quote these numbers, and all external organizations that have looked into them consider them credible. Not to mention, these are only those confirmed dead, each of them identified specifically (the Hamas Palestinian Health Ministry is publishing a list of the exact names of every victim, and not including unidentified dead or those who are missing in the numbers).
Israel has not published any list or even estimate of the casualties, except their claims for Hamas soldiers killed.
[0] https://www.timesofisrael.com/14-kids-under-10-25-people-ove...
[1] https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/israeli-inquiry-fi...
Had it been my workplace I would have wished for the same thing.
The obvious question here is "how old were these employees?". The article doesn't even bring it up.
https://www.twitch.tv/notech4apartheid/clip/BloodyExquisiteP...
https://twitter.com/taliaotg/status/1780432300548804637
Oracle is lucky TK took off for Google after he lost the cloud boss battle to Don Johnson in 2019. Also fortunate that Safra Katz (current Oracle CEO, previously vocal supporter of Israel) is smart enough to keep a low profile for the time being.
Best wishes to all personkind,
M.D.
p.s. Even Dang gets downvoted sometimes, although to be fair, he doesn't engage in this sort of thread. *Shrug*
A "hackaton" is an event where ivy league students compete to write sloppy code using APIs from different corporations. They also get branded t-shirts and free redbull (paid by said corporations).
Or maybe they want to quit and figured going out in a ball of fire would be more effective than resigning?
I have founded three startups and currently work as a self employed consultant and coach.
Good news is there should be some reqs opening up soon in Google Cloud for people looking for work.
“Yet you participate in society. Curious!”
You'd never see a any level of this **** for any conflict unless people are drafted
The difference between the Israel/Palestine conflict and most other conflicts that people bring up with “why aren’t protestors attacking this” (including the inverted side of the Israel/Palestine conflict: “why aren’t people protesting against Hamas?”) is the combination of widespread US disapproval for Israeli action in the conflict [0] with substantial ongoing US military assistance for the Israel. People aren’t protesting Israel, they are protesting US policy in support of Israel while Israel acts in ways that are opposed. This is in common with both the anti-apartheid movement in the US (where, again, US government support for South Africa was the target) and the Iraq War protests (where the US was a direct party to the conflict), though while substantial opposition to US policy was involved in both cases, neither (at least at the beginning of substantial protest) had nearly the level of domestic opposition as exists to Israel’s actions in Gaza.
(This is spreading
[0] https://news.gallup.com/poll/642695/majority-disapprove-isra...
I think that's a big stretch. Many/most Palestinians want "their" land back, and many/most might want Israel gone. But that is not at all the same as saying they want all Israelis killed. Some might want a one-state solution that gives them rights without necessarily infringing on Jews's rights, some might think that most Jews will have a place to go if they get their land back (with the settler-colonialism framing), etc. There are many valid things people can think that aren't "we want to kill all Jews".
(I'm purposefully writing Jews and not Israelis, because I assume we both agree that most would explicitly not want to kill the 2 million or so Israeli-Palestinians!)
Do you really expect a hypothetical Palestine to be any different?
Depends on a lot of factors. I think there is definitely a path by which a peaceful neighborly Palestine can be created, though it will likely take a long time.
And btw, many of these Arab neighbors now have peace with Israel, that has held for a long time. Including this week helping defend Israel against Iranian missiles.
Not something anyone would've thought possible in the past, now it's reality. A reality that Israel would do well to internalize, instead of thinking of itself as a lone state surrounded by enemies.
Egypt had 66,000 Jews before 1948. A peace agreement was reached in 1979. Yet almost none came back to live in Egypt. Jews and Israelis were very afraid to live in Egypt after the peace.
Only in recent years A-Sisi started to do some work to replenish synagogoues and care for the country's very long Jewish legacy, probably as part of his policy against extremism.
A Two-State solution could work in some constellation. a one state solution I see as leading to massacre and banishment of most of the Jews in the land.
I doubt that you can provide evidence for your biased statements with full context of the history of Zionism and its crimes against the natives of the region.
"Islam saved Jewry. This is an unpopular, discomforting claim in the modern world. But it is a historical truth." - David Wasserstein https://jewishstudies.stanford.edu/events/david-wasserstein-...
"Islam saved Jewry. This is an unpopular, discomforting claim in the modern world. But it is a historical truth." - David Wasserstein https://jewishstudies.stanford.edu/events/david-wasserstein-...
In practice we've seen that the oppressed usually don't go on a massive revenge killing spree. Take for example the end of slavery in the US, or the end of apartheid in South Africa. Were all the white people murdered in revenge? No, even though many probably deserved it.
I'm sure most Palestinians would be open for having a single country with equal rights and no apartheid from the river to the sea shared with the Israelis. Israel will never accept this because they want to maintain their apartheid and white supremacy.
The Israelis have every reason to continue to be worried about palestinian terrorism. A one state solution would involve them losing control of the government. Maybe the palestinians that would make up the majority would be nice to the Israelis, but I really really doubt that based on the way theyve treated the israelis over the past century. They certainly would attempt to institute sharia law which is probably enough of a reason for Israelis to reject a one state solution.
> If elections were held today, Fatah would lose to Hamas 17 to 34 percent.
https://www.fdd.org/analysis/2024/03/22/poll-hamas-remains-p...
They are also the party that won the last (and only) election held by Palestinians, as well as the current rulers of Gaza.
Their explicit goal is to kill every Jew in Israel, and they have acted it out in the genocidal 10/7 massacre.
So not only do Palestinians support a party that promotes the genocide of all Jews in Israel - by all available evidence, this party is currently the favorite to control a Palestinian state.
Not to mention there's pretty solid ground to believe that if Fatah (Hamas's only viable rival) controlled a Palestinian state, they'd also support the genocide of Jews. Just look at the education they provide to West Bank children, describing Jews as subhuman monsters that must be eradicated.
If someone would have told me 5 years ago that in just a few years, Google employees would be accused of anti-semitism, or any -ism, really, I would have never believed it. They were on the frontlines "punching nazis" and fighting rising fascism here in US, and here they are, being accused of anti-semitism, themselves.
Rank-and-file Googlers in the US tend to be young (<30) and from those universities or their like. Certainly seems to be the case in this article.
[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/videos/comments/3rucs2/yale_sjws_sc...
One case I remember, for instance, which illustrates this drone control well was the bakery incident at Oberlin college. At some point during the discovery, there was an email from an "organizer" how they will unleash the students. I thought that a rare case of controller putting in writting and acknowledging how the whole mechanism works.
[1] https://thehill.com/opinion/judiciary/448711-oberlin-college...
> Raimondo replied saying she would “unleash the students” if she was not convinced “this needs to be put behind us.”
It would be interesting to find out who is unleashing the Googlers in this case...
(No comment from me on the truth or otherwise of that sentiment, I'm just pointing out this isn't exactly a new thing.)
> At an Amazon shareholder meeting in May, anti-Nimbus Amazon employees said they will support a resolution requesting a third-party investigative report on whether “customers’ use of its products and services with surveillance, computer vision, or cloud storage capabilities contributes to human rights violations or violates international humanitarian law.”
That seems like a fairly basic request?
It seems like in a lot of areas, in the last 6 months we can't even have a conversation about what is going on without anything except 100% support for Israel being labeled as "anti-semitism" which is really dangerous to do.
We don't even expect that level of blanket support for the actions of our own government. We should be able to critically look at what is going on regardless of who is doing it without trying to hand wave it away with a single word.
I'm not saying they're antisemitic. I'm not qualified to render that kind of judgement. You can easily argue that the ADL isn't either --- the ADL has problemicized itself in a bunch of ways too in the last few years. But you probably shouldn't be shocked when people make that claim; it's a common one.
"Anti-semitism" is a hatred of Jewish people or discriminatory attitudes towards them.
There is a large contingency of Jewish people who believe Jews are better than other people (this idea is at least one of the beliefs underpinning the existence of Israel).
Calling Jews who push back against this narrative anti-semitic is like calling white people who oppose white supremacy anti-white.
(I don't know what I believe about JVP! My confidence in any assessment is very low. What I do know, though, is that if I were doing persuasive work, like, say, getting a ceasefire resolution passed in my municipality, I would do my best to keep JVP's name off the enterprise.)
For a clearer example of this phenomenon, unrelated to JVP, see Jewish Currents, also frequently cited in discussions to insulate arguments from accusations of antisemitism.
The prime difference between trad-wives and groups like JVP, I think, is that trad-wives advocate for trad-wifery because traditional gender roles appeal to their values or interests, rather than out of a sense of social justice and equity (which are likely not important to them).
However, I'm not at all shocked that there are Jewish people who find JVP problematic, and I'm not sure where you got that idea.
I'd guess something like 50% of practicing Jews in the diaspora hold beliefs that Jews are intrinsically better than non-jews, and perhaps a sizeable minority of non-practicing Jews as well. This is based on my own experiences growing up in a Jewish community as well as the arguments used by Zionist Jews in support of Israel. The Jewish school I went to literally taught that Jews had a more legitimate claim to peace and safety in Israel than the Palestinians, by virtue of being the chosen people.
Reducing all criticism of the ethno-state that results from such beliefs to anti-semitism is an underhanded tactic that twists the meaning of the word in order to manipulate public opinion.
I don't know too much about JVP as they don't have presence in my country, but I just did some reading (including their core values[1] which are far from anti-semitic) and found a lot of the same tired arguments: their "admin" lives in lebanon (not said: one of 18 admins on their facebook page), it's a front for non-Jewish antisemites to rally under the banner of Jewishness (not said: their board and leadership are all Jewish), they said "XYZ" which can be interpreted as antisemitic (not said: either an anti-semitic person or even a plant said something while claiming to represent the group, or what was said was a criticism of mainstream Jewish Zionism taken out of context)
Add to that a lot of the same criticisms typically levied at leftist groups, some of which may actually be good-faith, fair criticisms, but unrelated to anti-semitism.
I certainly agree there can be Jewish anti-semites, but they're much more likely to gravitate to the right than the left.
[1]: https://www.jewishvoiceforpeace.org/about/#mandate
edit: I'll say this one additional thing: I've personally observed a high correlation between Jews who call anti-Zionist advocates anti-semitic, and Jews who secretly or not-so-secretly have a belief that Jewish people are inherently better than non-Jews (and for many this goes down to ethnicity, I'm not talking just about spiritual practice). To me, it seems like they're generally oblivious to how similar beliefs (by any group that holds them) are a type of problematic prejudice, and critical of leftist Jews because they represent a threat to those deeply-held beliefs of supremacy.
Whoah, wtf? I don't care what your background is: no, not OK.
I had a relatively straightforward non-normative point to make about how controversial JVP is, which you can easily Google to verify. I wasn't even here to tell you you were wrong: you asked a question, it had a straightforward answer, I provided it. My answer was not out of left field: the ADL literally has a page on JVP, up in the first page of search results on Google.
I'm not interested in litigating the intellectual vices of "practicing Jews" writ large.
Read that way, I can see why he thought the ADL statement on JVP might be relevant and accurate (it certainly does accurately represent the views of a number of people within the Jewish community, though I think many also use the allegations of anti-semitism tactically to distract from legitimate criticism of the actions wrought by an attitude of ethno-religious exceptionalism).
To be fair, as a descendant of Jewish holocaust survivors myself, I'm glad there's a high-profile group that makes it their mission to bring light to actual anti-semitism when it occurs, but unfortunately the ADL is influenced by actors I believe to be operating in bad-faith and has strayed from their mission in order to hand-wave away legitimate criticism of actions stemming from prejudice that exists within the Jewish community.
The Jewish community is by no means unique here; there are elements of prejudice within every demographic, and I'd wager that a near-majority of practitioners of every religion have an attitude of exceptionalism, though Judaism is unusual in having religious practices very tightly coupled with an ethnic identity that often excludes practitioners of Judaism-the-religion who aren't considered ethnically Jewish, or are an unconventional kind of ethnically Jewish (see [1] and [2]).
But I suppose to someone less familiar with the topic, criticism of prejudice that exists within a minority population can be hard to distinguish from prejudice against that minority population, so I can understand what seemed like a strongly oppositional reaction to my earlier post.
If anyone is this deep in the thread and wants modern perspectives by well-respected scholars, Gabor Mate (a holocaust survivor himself) and Noam Chomsky (another Jew who has been unfairly accused of anti-semitism and holocaust denialism by the ADL) have spoken extensively about related issues.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racism_in_Jewish_communities#J...
[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racism_in_Jewish_communities#S...
I don't know what I think about JVP other than that they're not a mainstream organization. I went down a grim rabbit hole of reading about their advocacy to evangelical churches and the whole "Zionism Unsettled" thing. Look, there's nothing wrong with being resolutely leftist. It's just that it's not reasonable to argue that a resolutely leftist organization is representative of American Jewish people, or that it can insulate other activists from charges of antisemitism when it itself is continuously subjected to those same charges.
About ADL, I probably mostly agree with you, that they haven't navigated the distinctions between anti-Zionism and antisemitism well, and, like other antiracist activist organizations, diluted their credibility with mission creep and capture. Like Rationalwiki, I read ADL things for the receipts they bring and disregard the analysis.
This thread, too, is deeply cursed, and I don't mean to try to "win" any arguments here; there's no such thing, especially on this topic. I'm just clarifying what I dropped in here to say.
Actually Gabor Mate and Noam Chomsky are just really good examples of what I'm talking about, right?
Like: if an activist said something, and a normie person objected to it, and you came back with "Noam Chomsky says this is just fine to say", you wouldn't expect that to persuade the normie. That doesn't make Chomsky wrong! It just makes him not all that rhetorically useful.
Same deal with JVP.
Sorry I think you lost the plot here. Can you give me a noteworthy example of such a person or group?
See the person that posted here he'd find it odd for someone to request photos of a white family because white only families are sus
As for US police training in Israel, once again, you show your own profound ignorance, or outright dishonesty, by stating this is a "risible" claim. US police training in Israel has been well documented, and pretending that there aren't any carryover effects of that training is itself the "risible" claim. https://www.amnestyusa.org/updates/with-whom-are-many-u-s-po...
[1]: https://www.newsweek.com/white-supremacist-richard-spencer-f...
However, If I were an employee at Google, and my company had begun serving DoD / IDF against my wishes - then, I would have a better chance of changing this from inside the company than from outside. So, speaking out internally against taking on undesirable customers seems like a more effective tactic than quitting.
But, by protesting in the way they did, they've likely ensured that they will no longer be inside the company.
As a more practical matter, there is significant amount of technology transfer between Israel and the US, and Israel also is also a friendly and militarily capable country in a region where America doesn’t have many allies.
Also, does America provide much aid to Israel? I don’t think they do.
The national interest should be the collective interests of citizens, you're right. I don't think that what's actually sold to us as "national interest" is that in any meaningful sense, though.
But also, those Jewish citizens of US are, well, citizens of US. It's not that it's wrong for them to also have some interests wrt Israel, but why should it be of any concern to the rest of this polity?
Losing a $1.2B contract for Amazon or Google due to subterfuge is nothing.
Wonder how the US government would respond though, especially since Israeli government is one of their most highly regarded allies (highest amount of foreign aide, critical trade partners). Would the people who inserted exploit into Project Nimbus be prosecuted for espionage?