> The decision has not affected Microsoft’s wider commercial relationship with the IDF, which is a longstanding client and will retain access to other services. The termination will raise questions within Israel about the policy of holding sensitive military data in a third-party cloud hosted overseas.
It's worth noting that even after finding out the "most moral" army is conducting mass surveillance, they're still happy to provide them services.
Are you seriously equating observing an area using satellites with indiscriminately monitoring everyone's calls, messages, and possibly hacking their devices?
Militaries do that too. Signals Intelligence has been thing since radios were used by the military. I bet you that in Ukraine the moment you fire up any RF emitter it's showing up on someone's spectrum analyzer. And if it's unencrypted or a broken encryption they'll probably be decoding and logging the transmission.
Given lackluster response to the recent attempts of the "democratic" governments to do very much the same to their own citizens, I daresay not many are particularly impressed.
Additionally, there is observation AI face tracking of all movements of Palestinians in the West Bank, who live under occupation. While other governments may also conduct monitoring of their citizens to varying degrees, the distinction is that they are monitoring citizens, not using monitoring to enforce military apartheid.
The West Bank is occupied by Israel and Israel has overall control, but it is broken up into a whole bunch of tiny administrative regions, some of which are administered by the PA and some of which are administered directly by Israel.
Perhaps the actual moral choice isn’t attacking blindly or mass surveillance of an occupied nation - it’s peace?
Regardless, the death toll in gaza (somewhere between 45,000 and 600,000) suggests that this mass surveillance isn’t being used effectively to reduce the death toll. It also doesn’t take mass surveillance to know that bombing hospitals and schools is going to kill innocent people.
You're assuming the objective is to lower the civilian casualties. From the statements of prominent Israeli ministers and the actual behavior of the bombardment it's pretty clear that, for the Israeli government, killing civilians is a feature, not a bug
> Regardless, the death toll in gaza (somewhere between 45,000 and 600,000) suggests that this mass surveillance isn’t being used effectively to reduce the death toll.
Keep in mind deaths published by the Gaza(Hamas) ministry of health do not differentiate civilian vs combatant deaths at all.
That’s true, but of the 65,063 deaths reported by the
GHM, at least 18,500 of them are children, 217 journalists, 120 academics, and 224 humanitarian aid workers.
And that 65k number does not include indirect deaths - i.e. deaths by starvation, or death from something that could have been easily survived if there were still hospitals instead of rubble. Which is where the 680,000 number comes from - the largest estimate of how many may have been killed directly and indirectly by this genocidal war.
> at least 18,500 of them are children, 217 journalists, 120 academics, and 224 humanitarian aid workers
From my understanding GHM numbers don't break these figures for those that are combatants either, the population overall is quite young and Hamas is known to use child soldiers as well. Journalists(along with doctors) in Gaza have even been themselves involved in holding hostages for Hamas[0]. There are many issues like this which significantly complicate separating combatant deaths from non-combatant deaths.
> And that 65k number does not include indirect deaths - i.e. deaths by starvation, or death from something that could have been easily survived if there were still hospitals instead of rubble.
The 65k is AFAIU not even advertised by the GHM as confirmed deaths(i.e. deaths with confirmed identities), it's an estimate from an organization(Hamas) which is highly incentivized to report the highest figures that are believable internationally. There are not any incentives for them to underestimate casualties since they use casualties figures for propaganda purposes and will use the highest figures they can come up with while maintaining some level of credibility.
It's also unlikely there are many deaths that can be attributed directly to starvation, while there may be food insecurity issues there is still sufficient aid reaching Gaza to largely prevent deaths from starvation. There are countries in the world where there is actual famine and pictures/videos from those places(i.e. those taken out in the open on the streets) look nothing like those from Gaza. Even organizations like the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs have been known to put out(and subsequently walk back) blatantly false information[1] to make it appear the situation is worse than it actually is.
> Which is where the 680,000 number comes from - the largest estimate of how many may have been killed directly and indirectly by this genocidal war.
Numbers 10x those put out by the GHM(which is already highly incentivized to inflate casualty figures) are not remotely credible.
IMO the figures put out by the GHM are likely within the correct order of magnitude, keeping in mind that those figures include combatant deaths. For a conflict like this which involves urban warfare(where similar conflicts historically have had very high casualties) such casualty figures certainly don't appear to be unusually high.
Claims of genocide made against Israel simply do not stand up to scrutiny. Civilian deaths are largely in line with what would expect for a war like this, especially one where enemy combatants are not in uniform and intentionally hide amongst the civilian population and fight from civilian areas(which is of course a war crime). There are strong incentives both internationally and domestically for Israel to minimize civilian casualties as much as feasible.
If intelligence from surveillance increases combatant deaths then it could be expected that the death figures like those from the GHM(which include combatant deaths) may rise even if the actual civilian casualty rate decreases.
> who knows better than the united fucking nations
The UN is one of the organizations that is heavily responsible for perpetuating this conflict, from promoting terrorism via UNRWA schools[0] to employing terrorists[1] and those who sympathize with terrorists[2]. These[3] sort of biased UN reports in general tend to be deeply flawed and do not stand up to even basic scrutiny[4].
> thinks murdering children is ok because heyyy some of them are child soldiers. Sounds good.
Do you really think 17 year olds can't also be combatants? The Gaza(Hamas) Health Ministry last I checked counts children as anyone below the age of 18.
Massive eyeroll. These stories you've linked to are overcooked propaganda, where any teacher who thinks palestinians are being treated poorly - because they are living in an apartheid state, essentially an open-air prison - is labelled as promoting hate or terrorism.
You could just as easily write a report about israeli schools teaching hate, and promoting terrorism if you sat in and heard how they teach a skewed version of the history of the conflict, or cherry pick teachers who's social media was angry in the wake of oct 7th. Harder story to sell to the ny times tho.
17 year olds can be combatants. Sure. So either all of the dead children are 17 year old combatants or you’re ok with some child murder. Exactly how much child murder are you ok with?
How much journalist murder are you ok with?
How much aid worker murder are you ok with?
How much collective punishment are you ok with?
All of these things are happening - there is no doubt - the only thing we’re debating is exactly how much has happened. Is there a number you wouldn’t be ok with? What specific percentage of the >65k dead would have to be innocent before you’d have a problem with it? 50%… 75%… 95%?
> These stories you've linked to are overcooked propaganda, where any teacher who thinks palestinians are being treated poorly - because they are living in an apartheid state, essentially an open-air prison - is labelled as promoting hate or terrorism.
The issue is far more complex than Palestinians being treated poorly, they are also treated poorly by their own rulers. Extremist ideologies are pervasive within Palestine, just look up any Palestinian opinion polling. That a very large percentage of Palestinians are taught and hold extremist ideologies is well documented. Also a military occupation is not equivalent to an apartheid state, Apartheid is segregation/discrimination based on race, the sort of discrimination you see under military occupation in regards to Israel is discrimination based on citizenship, which is a form of discrimination virtually all countries practice to various degrees.
> You could just as easily write a report about israeli schools teaching hate, and promoting terrorism if you sat in and heard how they teach a skewed version of the history of the conflict, or cherry pick teachers who's social media was angry in the wake of oct 7th. Harder story to sell to the ny times tho.
Those UNRWA teachers weren't angry in the wake of oct 7th, they were celebrating the attacks.
What percentage of the population of Palestinian governed territories(i.e. West Bank Areas A/B and Gaza) is Jewish...0%
What percentage of the population of Israeli governed territories is Muslim...around 20%
Seems pretty clear to me which side has the bigger problem with teaching intolerant ideologies.
> 17 year olds can be combatants. Sure. So either all of the dead children are 17 year old combatants or you’re ok with some child murder. Exactly how much child murder are you ok with?
My point was simply that casualty numbers are complex and that one can't simply equate Children to non-combatants/civilians.
> All of these things are happening - there is no doubt - the only thing we’re debating is exactly how much has happened. Is there a number you wouldn’t be ok with? What specific percentage of the >65k dead would have to be innocent before you’d have a problem with it? 50%… 75%… 95%?
There should be 0 civilian casualties, but those civilian deaths that do happen are almost entirely due to Hamas fighting from within civilian areas(which is of course a war crime). Unfortunately causing civilian casualties is part of the Hamas strategy[0]. When one fails to recognize the side is intentionally inducing civilian casualties then finding a solution will be much harder.
From a simple incentives analysis if one allows the strategy of using human shields to be an effective military strategy...then that would further incentivize combatants like Hamas to use human shields even more. The rules of war are deliberately written in a way that allows parties to conduct warfare, otherwise nobody would follow those rules of war. This is one reason why collateral damage is not considered a war crime while deliberately using human shields is a war crime.
Gaza Health Ministry only counts those that show up at hospitals. The first big Lancet study a year ago estimated 200k. I've seen more recent studies estimate higher, with an additional year of killings.
Also, Israel has attacked or destroyed most hospitals in Gaza. So the Health Ministry's counting is obviously hindered.
I don't believe that what you're saying is correct at all.
Only 34,344 of the GHM estimate are confirmed identities. The rest of either missing but presumed dead or gross adjustments. They are open about using "media reports to assess deaths in the north of Gaza".
The Lancet study published in January 2025 estimated 70,000 as of October, 2024. This is higher than the GHM estimate, but I can't find anything close to your 200k estimate.
So you may believe in your estimates, but they are many multiples larger than any other credible source that I can find... so it's odd to wave these figures around without any sources, links, etc.
It’s literally the same numbers as the posted ones, and exactly aligned with what I’m saying.
> The current official toll is 64,718 Palestinians killed in Gaza and 163,859 injured, since the start of the war on 7 October 2023
You may have been misled by the headline “X killed or injured”.. those are two different things, and we’re talking about the number killed.
I don’t know if those numbers are accurate (the article about the IDF solider claims it is), but I’m not even questioning that. The GP is claiming that an order of magnitude more people have been killed than even GMH claims.
> Halevi stepped down as chief of staff in March after leading the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) for the first 17 months of the war, which is now approaching its second anniversary.
> The retired general told a community meeting in southern Israel earlier this week that more than 10% of Gaza’s 2.2 million population had been killed or injured – “more than 200,000 people”.
The point is that we know 64,000 is almost certainly an undercount. Notably it hasn't changed much in the last year since the Hamas ministry of health collapsed.
The commenter above is correct in saying the bound of deaths is very likely between 45,000 and 600,000. We have good reason to suspect it was over 100,000 late last year. We won't know the actual number until an independent assessment can occur.
You are using the "more than 200,000 people" quote to imply that the GHM estimate of 64,718 is wrong, but it is completely in line with it. There is nothing about this revelation that suggests the existing estimates are too low. I don't know what I'm supposedly cherry-picking.
More explicitly: 64,718 killed + 163,859 injured =~ "more than 200,000 people"
I don't understand what basis you (and other commenters) have to suggest that these estimates are all wrong, you merely say "we have good reason". What reason?
GP here. The GMH number doesn’t include indirect deaths, i.e. all the deaths that happen because of war that aren’t bullets and bombs. Disease, famine, not getting cancer screenings or antibiotics because all the hospitals have been blown up… that stuff.
So while 680k (the current highest estimate) is probably higher than reality, god i hope it is, it’s also true that reality is probably much higher than the current GMH numbers.
“65,000 is the number of Palestinians are certain killed, including over, of which 75% are women and children.
In fact, we shall start the thinking of 680,000, because this is the number that some scholars and scientists claim being the real death toll in Gaza.
And it would be hard to be able to prove or disprove this number, especially if investigators and others remained banned from entering the occupied Palestinian territory, and particularly the Gaza Strip.”
The death toll could be that high. I hope to hell it isn’t. But we don’t know and won’t know until the killing stops. We do know that tens of thousands of innocent people have been killed, and at least 150,000 people injured.
I don’t think her statements aren’t even factual: the current estimates aren’t the confirmed identities, they include estimates for missing and presumed dead. You don’t think the GHM would publish larger estimates if 1/3 of every living person in Gaza was missing or dead? It’s hard to have an objective conversation when numbers are just made up.
I am not asserting a specific number. There have been between 65,000 and 680,000 gazans murdered by the idf directly and indirectly. I think it’s unlikely the number is as high as 680k, but there is absolute chaos on the ground, doctors and hospitals and records destroyed. We won’t know until the slaughter stops what number is real.
If you want to let the lack of a specific number hold you up while the killing continues, that’s up to you.
If you're basing this on the Lancet letter about indirect deaths, that's an estimate that includes future deaths that could be linked to past events of the war. So "have been" isn't the right tense.
It's also non-peer-reviewed, and based on rather arbitrarily picking a multiplier of 15x from a range of past conflicts' multipliers. One author described the figure as "purely illustrative" in a now-deleted tweet.
I mean sure, you are just asserting a range. It is also true that there have been between 0 and 2,000,000 gazans killed by the IDF, but this fact does not do anything useful in discussing the issue. (And just like the 680,000 gazans "murdered by the IDF" it is nearly impossible to be accurate, fabrication because it defies reality.)
Sure 0-2mil is possible, as is all the atoms in your body aligning and allowing you to step thru a wall.
But those who are well informed agree it the data supports a number above 45k, probably above 65k, and the highest estimate published is 680k. If we use a higher number we are just making shit up. If we use a lower number we are choosing to ignore a data point without a specific reason to write it off. “It defies reality” isn’t an actual reason - it’s just an assertion that it’s wrong. Neither is “wouldn’t the GMH cite higher numbers?” - how would you confirm that 1/3 of people in your city are still alive if people are scattered, communication is down, and an unknown number of people have fled?
but either way, the tens of thousands of innocents killed and the complete destruction of the infrastructure of gaza is appalling - and arguing about specific numbers is pretty pointless if we don’t agree on that.
You are missing my point. To me it seems like 680k is just making shit up. Why is this reasonable? I can't even find what this "data point" is based on, so I'm not sure what I am supposedly ignoring! Just say where it is coming from, that isn't a person throwing out a random number.
I would love to be "well-informed", but how can I get there with hearsay?
> Neither is “wouldn’t the GMH cite higher numbers?” - how would you confirm that 1/3 of people in your city are still alive if people are scattered, communication is down, and an unknown number of people have fled?
Once again, the 68k figure is not confirmed! This is already an estimate. The figure for confirmed identifies is much lower, around ~35k. So this is a totally false argument. I'm not saying the estimate is wrong, I'm just saying that if there was a reason for the estimate to be 1/3 of people in Gaza, that's what they would say.
While I agree the "who is more morally right" is owned to a higher degree by the Palestinians than the Israelis at the moment, I think people are missing a key shift in global politics.
Virtually all of the discourse on Israel-Palestine concerns moral righteousness or moral shame. I think the era of moral arguments in geopolitics is coming to an end, because the unipolar or Communist-Capitalist bipolar world combined with the Holocaust that enabled geopolitical moral arguments is basically dead.
It might just be my interest in global affairs spiking to avoid the constant bad news from the Trump administration, but I think we are entering a much more turbulent (and historically normal) period of realist/self-interest directed foreign policy. The US isn't around to be "good cop" (I can't emphasize the quotes around "good" enough).
I think this is why we are surrounded by the sense that authoritarianism is on the rise. The US won't care if you are democratic or authoritarian. The US won't care if you invade your neighbor if it doesn't disrupt them too much. Or the US just plain doesn't care at all.
So it's my general opinion that even if the Palestinians are more morally righteous in the great moral book-pounding, history-pointing, casualty-counting endless debate ... the era where that mattered has come to an end. Alas, I think we are entering a might-makes-right era of world politics, especially in the Middle East, and especially since the US has its own oil now from the Dakota shale fracking.
> Wouldn't the opposite be incredibly immoral? Attacking/bombing/etc without large scale surveillance would largely mean increased collateral damage.
The concern is who gets to decide what is or isn't a legitimate target? Today's heroes might be tomorrow's victims. I'd rather no one have that much power over others.
In 1945, about ~90k people died over 2 days from the Tokyo Firebombing. Do you think it would be difficult for any modern millitary - that intentionally wanted to cause as much collateral damage as possible - to greatly exceed that number?
Not sure what is your point. The Israeli military could throw a few atomic bombs and wipe out the entire population in Gaza. That they don't is a sign of restraint for you?
It shows the poster they responded to was wrong when they said "It would be pretty difficult for the IDF to increase their level of collateral damage.".
It wouldn't be difficult at all to increase collateral damage, just fight like they did during ww2 and collateral damage would skyrocket.
80% of buildings in Gaza are destroyed. There are well documented cases of arbitrary killings of civilians and attacks on hospitals. IDF is routinely demanding entire cities to be evacuated, knowing that not all people can comply with such an order. Multiple war crimes and crimes against humanity investigations have been opened by national and international prosecutors.
It is very obvious that the only restraint that the IDF is showing is that they do not kill every single civilian on sight.
Arguing that mass surveillance is not unethical but actually a way to save lives is pretty disingenuous, absurdly so considering how little the country wielding it cares about collateral damage.
Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics' population estimates, as of July 2025 - down 6% in one year since 2024, which is 10% below original forecasts for 2025:
You're spreading misinformation (quite likely unintentionally). No data has been released supporting the claim that the population has stayed the same, what was wrongly spread was a US intelligence assessment of expected population which was made before the October 7th attack predicting future population growth, and used by many people as if it had remained accurate despite all the killing,
Two things:
1. The death toll has shown that this is the most indiscriminate bombings (Biden's own words) and deaths of civilians in recent memory. So, you could argue the tech is aiding in killing key civil infra staff
2. Sure, they can surveil, let them do it on their own data centers. It's actually strange that they would put such data/tech on a 3rd party data center to begin with.
Per Wikipedia, the idea that the IDF is the "most moral army in the world" comes from Colonel Richard Kemp, a retired British army officer. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Purity_of_arms
It's a throwaway line Israeli officials have been using for a long time. I heard Netanyahou himself use it to describe the IDF and explain it can't possibly do wrong.
The problem with the Patriot Act was mass surveillance of people who didn't need to be surveilled. In this situation we are talking about a group of people with support for genocide in the double digit percentages.
I guarantee that if my grandparents were expelled from their homes, brutalised, or killed, their homes bulldozed and annexed by the occupiers, and for the past 2 years I was the target of the most brutal genocide since Rwanda, I would probably wish worse than death to my oppressors too. But let's not get sidetracked...
PS: It's also known that for Israel and its AI killing machines, "terrorist" is defined as "male between 14 and 45". Cannot get more "mass targeted" than that.
I think people don't tend to realise how authoritarian the internal structures of companies are.
They're effectively miniature dictatorships. Normalising removing services because a tenant does something you personally find disagreeable is fine in the moment, but what happens when it's someone you support? Like when they removed Office365 access for a member of the EU parliament.[0]
For me, this is more proof (not less) that I shouldn't rely on US tech giants. Not because I will be collecting data on a population to do god-knows-what with, but because someone believes themselves to be the moral authority on what the compute I rent should be doing and that moral authority can be outraged for the whims of someone completely random, for any reason.
>They're effectively miniature dictatorships. Normalising removing services because a tenant does something you personally find disagreeable is fine in the moment, but what happens when it's someone you support? Like when they removed Office365 access for a member of the EU parliament.
Not that I necessarily agree with what they did here, but I would like to point out that one alternative which has been employed previously would be to silently forward her e-mails to the NSA or state department. Refusing to offer their services is probably the most ethical thing that MS has ever done on behalf of the US federal government.
> is fine in the moment, but what happens when it's someone you support?
That's why I never find it "fine." It's only a matter of time before corporate power finds it's way to your hobby horse. I thought part of the "hacker vibe" was being highly suspicious of any form of authority.
Companies have a duty to ensure they don't provide services that would enable illegal behaviour. What the IDF is doing is illegal under international law and a crime against Humanity.
> because a tenant does something you personally find disagreeable
You do realize that the said tenant is massacring an entire population as we speak, right? Framing that as just something that's "disagreeable" is one hell of a euphemism.
The absolute bare minimum one can do is to not actively provide the technical means to carry out this atrocity, yet you claim it's only moral to do the exact opposite. This neoliberal fantasy that it's moral and good for society to let powerful corporations do whatever it wants is an absurdity not even worth refuting. But it's downright cruel and tone-deaf when it's used to justify taking part in an officially approved genocide.
I expect this to continue to be the conflict of responsibility and capability in the 21st century.
Alfred Nobel was known as a "merchant of death" for enabling the use of combat explosives that could do (by the standards of the time) preposterous damage to people, but his argument was that he just sold the dynamite; he wasn't responsible for the anarchists getting it and bombing something twice a week in New York. And even then, his conscience weighed on him enough that he endowed a Peace Prize when he died.
The story is different when the data conversion is being done on machines you own, in buildings you own, in a company you own (for practical reasons in addition to moral / theoretical; if someone wants to stop those computations, they're now going after your stuff, not trying to stop a supply-chain).
>"According to sources familiar with the huge data transfer outside of the EU country, it occurred in early August. Intelligence sources said Unit 8200 planned to transfer the data to the Amazon Web Services cloud platform. Neither the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) nor Amazon responded to a request for comment."
So was the data moved in August to Amazon (AWS)? I am sure the $3.8bn USD the US gives annually will pay for it anyway. Because it is given as a loan, no accountability is required if it were a grant to Israel, and then the US forgives the loan, so there's not payback or interest for borrowing.
This is off-topic, but I'd like to hijack your comment to remind everyone that your comment is _technically_ against the rules. I hope this particular example reveals that the rule against "RTFA" is misguided and should be changed or removed because it creates a culture where people are deliberately misinformed seeking only a summary in the comment section (if that) and some kind of hot take to fume about.
I agree but there are some dodgy links that make it through and a good way to lower risk is being hesitant to click random links, or at least not being the first person to do so.
Are you asking whether Microsoft engineers routinely poke around their customer’s private clouds (including ones used by foreign intelligence agencies) to make sure everything is kosher?
Well, MS reviewed previously, and said they've seen nothing wrong, now they are saying some employees (coincidentally, Israeli) might have not been all transparent ...
> The disclosures caused alarm among senior Microsoft executives, sparking concerns that some of its Israel-based employees may not have been fully transparent about their knowledge of how Unit 8200 used Azure when questioned as part of the review.
You think, that is plausible?
To me, Nope, it's just that, the money was too good.
Only after Guardian's report, they realized:
"Oops, we got caught, now do the damage control dance"
And here we are ...
Also, are those employees going to get fired? I doubt. But the protestor, standing up for something, did. Who is more damaging?
Oh right, the protestor, because, they ruined the big cake.
Did the unit that breach the contract lose anything? Nope, they got enough time to move their data safely, and will continue doing the same thing.
It's all evil entities feeding each other, for their own benefit.
>It's all evil entities feeding each other, for their own benefit.
let's please hear your complete list of evil entities, just curious who else it includes. you can go out in concentric circles from israel, or just start with the most evil worldwide and go till you get to israel and microsoft.
“I want to note our appreciation for the reporting of the Guardian,” [Microsoft’s vice-chair and president, Brad Smith] wrote, noting that it had brought to light “information we could not access in light of our customer privacy commitments”. He added: “Our review is ongoing.”
Its interesting that they seem to be saying they dont know the full details of how their customers are using Azure, due to privacy commitments.
I actually think understanding exactly how your customers do a thing is not an easy thing to be 100% sure of.
I've had sales, customer reps, even engineers and customers describe how a customer / they work ... and then I go and look and ... it's not how anyone said they work IRL.
There have been public reports by major news organizations on the subject of Israel using big tech companies to surveil the West Bank and Gaza, for a decade. This isn't an issue of customer privacy.
The difference is that pre-2023 it could at least have some plausible excuse of trying to detect terrorist activity. With Israel's current actions in Gaza, there is no longer any plausible excuse or defense for any security action Israel is conducting towards Palestinians.
Israel has a legitimate reason to want to try to intercept and detect terrorist activity, but given what they've been doing in Gaza for the past year and a half, they simply can't be trusted. They've lost all credibility and benefit of the doubt. So they can't expect other entities to help them do something they say is legitimate, because no one can trust them to do something in a legitimate and ethical way.
I think OP’s point is Israel’s legitimate surveillance needs have risen alongside their credibility crashing. This isn’t a simply reduced problem unless one has a horse in the race.
I understand that, and I am sympathetic to those needs to some degree. They do have increased legitimate surveillance needs. But they've lost all of their good will. Partnering with them is too morally and PR-ily hazardous.
I am not saying Israel is nearly as bad as Nazi Germany, but I think this argument is overall kind of pointless because one could easily have said that Nazi Germany had greatly increased legitimate surveillance needs after they invaded Poland.
> one could easily have said that Nazi Germany had greatly increased legitimate surveillance needs after they invaded Poland
This is an interesting comparison—thank you.
That said, did the Poles launch cross-border attacks on German civilians? The closest I can come up with is Bloody Sunday [1], which was an attack on ethnically German civilians, but not a cross-border incursion. (Granted, we can only observe this ex post facto, so your argument still stands.)
Israel's incursion into Gaza in October 2023 was more justifiable than Nazi Germany's invasion of Poland, yes. I wasn't trying to provide a full comparison between Nazi Germany and Israel, and I prefaced the sentence appropriately. My only point is that a nation having legitimate surveillance needs to protect their soldiers' and civilians' safety isn't a reason to support their surveillance efforts by itself.
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
Why would being cross-border matter when the entire land was previously Palestinian land before being handed over by colonial powers and then "won" in subsequent "wars" (read: massacres) on the barely-armed villagers living there? The Viet Cong, South Africa's ANC, the Suffragettes and civil rights movements all used violence for their causes. Hamas was established in 1984, by the generation that had grown up with the occupation in 1948. If your country was occupied and members of your family killed, would you be as careful to keep your resistance peaceful?
> Why would being cross-border matter when the entire land was previously Palestinian
That's how borders work. (Anything else is, by definition, a border dispute.) If the Armia Krajowa had bulldozed into Lithuania on the logic that they lost it due to foreign meddling, they would have tarnished their record. (Despite the claim being true.)
> Viet Cong, South Africa's ANC, the Suffragettes and civil rights movements all used violence for their causes
On their own turf. And as for the former, against military targets--nobody serious in the Viet Cong or USSR was plotting Al Qaeda-style attacks on the American homeland.
October 7th was a terrorist attack. It was plotted like a military operation. But so was 9/11.
> would you be as careful to keep your resistance peaceful?
Not particularly. But I'd want to be fighting an actual resistance. 7 October attack was a strategic failure. The only reason it might end in a draw is because Netanyahu surrounded himself with maniacs. Even then, permanent damage has been done to the viability of a sovereign Palestine.
(There is also a massive difference between something being understandable and something being justified.)
So the problem is that you don't believe Palestinians are on their "own turf", because Israel "legally" won it from the villagers there in 1948 after having the British install them to it. Got it. Once again, the Palestinian homeland is exactly where the kibbutz (which is a military camp and outpost) was, mere miles from Gaza, and all of the people involved were actively standing members of the IDF (i.e. the occupying army akin to the Americans in Vietnam). You keep calling it a terrorist attack while appearing completely clueless that it's a largely meaningless political term. We considered Nelson Mandela a terrorist while he was locked up for 30 years, and for the UK at least he was only removed from that list in 2013.
> Hamas was established in 1984, by the generation that had grown up with the occupation in 1948
Correction, Gaza was first occupied by Israel for a few months in 1956, then occupied continuously since 1967.
Regardless, by 1984, nearly half of the people in Gaza would have lived their entire lives under occupation, and the most would have lived at least half their lives under occupation.
Israel may have withdrawn from Gaza and forcibly removed their settlers, but they did not end the occupation since they created a naval blockade and control all entrance and exits from Gaza and decide what is allowed in for two decades
I'm not sure why you were downvoted. Israel's position is that the ended they occupation. The United Nations on the other hand, still considered Gaza occupied under international law this whole time.
The only way one could argue that it is no longer occupied is to say there wasn't a continuous Israeli military presence of boots on ground inside of Gaza. It was still being surveilled by satellite and the entire perimeter, people venturing too far at sea from the coast would be shot, drones would occasionally bomb people, everything and everyone going in and out was controlled by Israel (until Hamas tunnels were built), all cell phones allowed in contained surveillance technology, a fence with military outposts was constructed on the perimeter, and Israel bombed the one airport they tried to build.
So arguing it was "no longer occupied" after they pulled out the settlers is disingenuous, unless you're trying to argue that it couldn't be both an occupation and a concentration camp.
> when the entire land was previously Palestinian land
No such thing as Palestinian. Just Islamic Arab. Choosing to label yourself the same as one name for the land doesn’t make the land yours. But also - who do you think occupied the land previously?
Sure, that must be why the very text of the Balfour Declaration specifies "Palestine" and why coins from the 19th century have been proven to show the same. I'm afraid the hasbara isn't gonna work anymore.
Nah, it's pretty undeniable. But this is mainly because Nazi Germany was singularly more of a force for evil than any other nation or organization in many centuries. They were uniquely horrible. So it's hard for anyone to be as bad as they were.
Oh, don't worry, there's plenty of lost credibility to go around. Nobody's coming out of this situation smelling like roses, other than maybe some Israeli and Gazan peace activists.
At some point, when basically the entire world is saying one thing and only two countries (the US & Israel) are saying the opposite, you really need something strong to convince someone that basically the whole world is wrong.
This is some lame right-wing outlet whose front page contains things like:
>The assessment, shared exclusively with the Free Beacon, follows mainstream media claims that cuts to global health funding will endanger life-saving programs
While not mentioning that, yes, the Trump administration's USAID cuts absolutely will kill millions of people.
The rest is shitting on Democrats and supporting Trump. Obviously some right-wing site is going to say whatever they can think of to try to defend Israel's actions.
If this was how the world worked, we'd all be using Athenian democracy. There are plenty of things the whole world once believed that turned out to be wrong.
I see the war in radically different terms than you. It's not a battle between who has the better historical claim to the land. It's a religious battle. It's a battle between radical Islam and the secular west.
For a fuller treatment of the defense of Israel from a secular view point.
At least you're honest. This is why the vast majority of Westerners support Israel, its colonialism and its right to kill as many brown people as they can, they just don't say it out loud.
Isn’t it the inverse? Gazans voted for Hamas, and still support them per polls. Hamas’s charter is to destroy Israel in particular but also to subordinate women, subordinate all other religions, undermine Western powers, etc. Their goals and ideology are explicitly in conflict with liberal orders that support things like women’s rights, gay rights, free speech, freedom of religion, and so on.
Do you really think Hamas has killed more Israelis than Israel has killed Palestinians? Do you even know why Hamas exists? Do you have any idea how many years passed between the occupation in 1948 and massacres like the Nakba and Deir Yassin before Hamas was established? Also, no matter how much you want it to, your racism against brown people and fetishisation of "Judeo-Christian civilisation" doesn't justify killing them.
That's funny. In mid-October 2023 the narrative was "It doesn't matter who killed more" and now that so many Palestinians are dying - both by Israeli bombs and by Hamas rockets (1/3 to 1/5 fall back into the densely-populated Gaza strip) - the narrative is "Hamas has killed less Israelis than Israel has killed Palestinians".
The pro-Palestinian narrative adapts and changes as per the tides of war and the media. The Israeli narrative has remained consistent, even when it hurts.
Furthermore, your ideas about the colour of people's skin is an artifact of you dragging American racial issues into a place where they don't belong. The varied skin colours here favour neither side as darker or lighter.
No, the Palestinian narrative for those of us actually knowledgeable of history has not changed since 1948. As for Israel being consistent - how are those hostages doing? Cause it definitely doesn't care about any of them now (those it hasn't killed itself), and Netanyahu and others in the cabinet have admitted they want to occupy the land once more.
I'm not American, but you must be if you think racism magically stops outside of America. The racism most Americans and Zionists have towards brown people and the Islamophobia they have towards Muslims are some of their most prejudiced, and at least equal to any form of anti-Semitism you've ever experienced, but for some reason, you only believe in one of those. To be clear, "brown people" don't have to be "brown" just like black people aren't all black, it's a generic term that indicates a rough place of origin, and the point that you're clearly trying to obscure is that racism towards Palestinians is still racism no matter what colour they actually are.
You're right - such association with colour is not limited to Americans. I almost forgot being told about the slaves in the Gaza strip.
It turns out that Gazans call black-skinned Gazans "slaves". I've met black-skinned Bedouins but not black-skinned Gazans, and I don't know if the black-skinned Gazans are also Bedouins. I actually didn't know the word for slave in Arabic, but it was similar enough to the word in Hebrew that I was able to figure it out. I'd later have it confirmed. Not only do they called the black-skinned Gazans "slaves", they treat them as such as well. No lack of colour-motivated racism in the Gaza strip. Yes, I speak with Gazans in Arabic, and before October 7th I'd have conversations with them face to face.
As for Israeli racism - I think that we're the only country in the world who went out to help dark-skinned people immigrate en masse. Israel has a large Ethiopean community. I've had Ethiopean commanders in the army, and I work with quite a few Ethiopeans. I don't feel that they treat me in any unusual way, nor do I treat them in any unusual way.
I'm sure the Gazan friends you spoke to will be overjoyed you had face-to-face conversations with them before going online to advocate for their genocide, and that those conversations you had make them clearly savage enough to justify said genocide.
Are you really so wrapped up in your tech bubble in Tel Aviv that you can believe that? Here's some reading on a story even I knew off from the top of my head: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/feb/28/ethiopian-wome.... And here's the rest of it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racism_in_Israel. Israel is easily the most racist "Western" country in the world, ahead of even the modern US. Hmm, maybe a genocide against Israelis would actually be justified because Israelis are just racist savages that think black people should be forcibly sterilised against their will?
> I'm sure the Gazan friends you spoke to will be overjoyed you had face-to-face conversations with them while advocating for their genocide, and that those conversations make them clearly savage enough to justify said genocide.
Since October 7th I haven't seen any Gazans face to face, but we have spoken on the phone and on Telegram. And I've never advocated for their genocide, rather I've advocated against the genocide of Jews. Anybody who supports Hamas, their goals, or their idealogy supports the genocide of Jews. It's right there in the Hamas charter.
I'll say it clearly. There is no genocide of Arabs, or Muslims, or Palestinians, or Gazans in the Gaza strip. There are many Gazans dying, and many of them are children. Many of them are killed as a result of Israeli actions, and many of them are killed as a result of Hamas, Islamic Jihad, and other organizations' actions. Israel does not systematically target children, only Hamas benefits from dead children. They say it clearly themselves.
So in your warped logic, the few thousand combined killed by all of the groups you named are more evil than the 60,000 killed by Israel (likely 100,000+ after Israel finally lets the UN in) and the true cost of the genocide can be calculated. Also, Israel just accidentally ended up with a collateral damage rate of 50%, just like several medical doctors have attested to it accidentally sniping tens of kids and people waiting for aid, and accidentally shooting 300 bullets into the vehicle holding Hind Rajab. I suggest you wake up and start moving toward the right side of history, along with the UN, Amnesty International, Oxfam and virtually every other major human rights organisation, because very soon it'll be too late and history isn't going to forget active enablers and propagandists like yourself.
I can only tell you that when I was in high school decades ago, I shared a viewpoint that was similar to yours. But after watching history unfold in real time for the last 35+ years, my viewpoint has had to shift. And shift a lot it has. I have had to begin accept some uncomfortable truths that were not yet reaching me. I see them now.
Considering that your view point is bolstered by a vast ecosystem, I do wonder what propaganda are you thinking of that is responsible for my change in views? Like what do you think I tune into that promotes the viewpoint I hold? I'm asking because I'd love to know what is so that I can listen to more of it! Mine is very hard to find. So if you know where it is - please tell me.
I wouldn’t have believed this until a few weeks ago. I then stated finding a lot of social media posts where people at pro-Palestine / anti-Israel protests talk about their goals, and many of them flat out say it is to bring down America and end its “empire”. They seem to use the same phrases in talking about this - I wonder if they get a script to use from the nonprofits they are a part of.
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.
The first one seems to be after Microsoft's claim "and Microsoft has said it is reviewing a report in a British newspaper this month that Israel has used it to facilitate attacks on Palestinian targets".
The second one looks similar "Microsoft late last week said it was tapping a law firm to investigate allegations reported by British newspaper The Guardian".
The 3rd one seems to be a genuine example that Microsoft employees were reporting this specific contract violation concern - but I feel like there are more genuine examples I've heard of than just this one report.
The 4th one is a bit unclear, it seems to be a general complaint about the contract - not about specific violations of it.
Perhaps the more confounding question remaining is "what was so different about the report from The Guardian". It's not like these kinds of claims are new, or in small papers only, but maybe The Guardian was able to put together hard evidence from outside that allowed Microsoft to determine things without themselves going in breach of contract details?
> Perhaps the more confounding question remaining is "what was so different about the report from The Guardian".
I think timing. The world is finally ready to stop ignoring what Israel has been doing so it’s significantly easier for countries, companies, and even individuals to stand up, speak out, and take action.
I think it's the latter -- Microsoft was unable to look internally, or able to pretend they were ignorant. But the Guardian report was just too detailed to ignore.
I don't know if it's _true_, but it seems right? I don't want Microsoft to have this level of visibility into my usage of Azure, just like I don't want my phone provider to eavesdrop on my conversations. I'm no privacy ayatollah, but this seems like a reasonable amount of privacy from Microsoft
No, a Shah is a hereditary ruler (a King), whereas an Ayatollah is more like a Bishop (ie a religious leader, but not the top guy such as the Pope in Roman Catholicism)
Thanks for this one, putting in request to my manager to change my job title to data pope, since our titles are all meaningless anyway might as well have a fun one.
The whole point of confidential computing is that the cloud provider can't access your data and can't tell what you're doing with it. This is a must have requirement in many government contracts and other highly legislated fields.
I've personally never seen anything requiring confidential computing in anything. Is this required in the USA? I find that hard to believe, because the technology on a cloud level is still very beta-feeling. I think that Microsoft just never looked because they did not want to know.
They have services literally dedicated to things like health data records.
But you don’t even need to go that sensitive, literally any type of online service might run the risk of handling PII. Which is why CIS, NIST et al have security frameworks that cover things like encryption at rest.
But encryption at rest is not confidential compute. And Confidential compute is pretty new in terms of tech and i would be genuinely suprised if it's already required for some stuff. I am genuinely interested though, if you have any links about it please enlighten me.
> The disclosures caused alarm among senior Microsoft executives, sparking concerns that some of its Israel-based employees may not have been fully transparent about their knowledge of how Unit 8200 used Azure when questioned as part of the review.
Highly likely, or at least a bit naive -- Completely reasonable to have local staff for a contract this big, but Microsoft should have independently 'double-checked' sooner
The head of that Israeli unit met directly with the CEO of MS. I don't buy a second the execs at MS didn't know what was going on. Blaming the local contractors is just MS throwing people under the bus.
I've worked for big corporations for nearly 20 years, I've seen this more times then I can count. Higher ups always happy to turn a blind eye to a bad situation as long as it's making the company money, and then immediately throwing subordinates under the bus when it bites them in the ass.
The reality is that no one can tell whose ass it is safe to kiss now a days, so it’s all scandal driven actions. Unless someone can create a big enough scandal, no one is going to do squat.
That’s the best part, they cannot. Well, they technically can, but the answer from the company that runs chinese azure servers is gonna be “none of your business.”
> 11,500 terabytes of Israeli military data – equivalent to approximately 200m hours of audio – was held in Microsoft’s Azure servers in the Netherlands
The Israel Azure region wasn't launched until 2023, and AFAIK has substantially less services available than the others. I know Google's Israel region doesn't have as many GPU options, for example.
But why do you think the Netherlands govt was in anyway involved in this? I host some bsremetal in the Netherlands but I don't need to report to the government what I store..
I don’t necessarily expect them to know what resides within their borders, I merely expect them to act against atrocities. It is no accident that all this data was located in the Netherlands.
It was located in the Netherlands because the Netherlands has excellent privacy and data protection laws. It's the same reason so much cybercrime is traced back to Dutch servers.
Israel (like many governments) is very Microsoft Windows centric, so if I had to guess it wasn't chosen due to technical merits but instead based on existing business relationships.
Not sure about that. To many companies or individuals, it might make them choose another provider. Unless... they already are Azure customers, in which case they might probably want to avoid the cost of moving from a cloud provider
Yeah, not really. Kind of the opposite: they took action after investigation.
The assertion that Microsoft knew what it's customers were doing, that it was inspecting customer data and workloads, comes from ignorance of how cloud providers work.
False. Microsoft knew very well they had contracts with the IDF, it was announced in flowery PR all over the place, and at the beginning of the genocide there were protests against Microsofts' overt involvement.
This is just CYA. That it took Microsoft this long is incorrigible.
The issue that people have with Israel's actions is the death of civilians, not the death of Hamas, the widely recognised terrorist. I believe it also to be true that the IDF do not want to kill civilians, and that their target is only Hamas.
In which case, is it prudent to remove the IDF's ability to successfully target the correct people? Precise military intelligence is absolutely necessary for minimising civilian casualties.
> I believe it also to be true that the IDF do not want to kill civilians, and that their target is only Hamas.
I think it’s this second assertion that relies on facts not in evidence. Previous Guardian reporting on IDF use of compute for targeting indicated they were using it to increase, not decrease, the number of approved targets.
Quantity doesn't correlate with accuracy. OP's point was that surely having more intelligence means you are more accurate and thus less collateral damage.
Again, prior reporting on the IDF’s computational efforts do not indicate that less collateral damage was a driver - quite the contrary, the algorithm was being used to pad out targeting lists: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/apr/03/israel-gaza-ai...
You’re describing what ought to be, not what currently is.
Hamas is quite open about their desire to increase civilian casualties by deliberately using civilians as human shields(which is of course a war crime). It's clearly part of their overall strategy.
This shouldn’t be a controversial statement. It’s well documented that Hamas utilizes this strategy by their own statements. On the Israeli side it’s much harder to determine what tactics some (military) groups utilize.
Israel claims that they “don’t want to kill civilians” but historically have not substantially changed course when the killings became grotesquely excessive. It’s also arguably true that they have never even sincerely investigated any issues.
Israel just gets more aggressive in the murder and bombing.
Their source for deaths in Gaza is "CNN via IDF" but reading that article, it's actually an interview re: a specifically unconfirmed report from another news agency. Mixing that with data produced with very specific methodology, like they've done with the NIH data they're also using, seems like a bit of a faux pas.
Maybe that applied then but does it apply now?
Each of their soldiers wear cameras. They see it in hd anytime their soldiers shooting women, old men, children. I guess only their snipers are getting away with dropping civilians constantly (as many British and American doctors are testifying they saw in gazan hospitals).
And on top of this their drones target with visual data. So they see that too.
I think in this war the IDF has a very very good idea of how many civilians they killed. At some point it indicates that they have set targets they are striving to meet before the world stops them.
A 1:1 to 2:1 civilian to combatant ratio is reported by John Spencer, urban war researcher and chair at the Modern War Institute.
Spencer has said it will take years of research to confirm this ratio and how it was achieved. He considers it important to understand because the typical ratio in urban wars, including wars the U.S. has prosecuted, exceeds 6 innocent civilians killed per enemy combatant killed. Some urban wars see 12 innocent civilians killed per combatant killed.
I think all of these ratios are horrifying. A low ratio can't be considered either good or exculpatory, as to whether violations of international humanitarian law have occurred. Civilians always bear a disproportionate impact in all urban wars. The case studies that have been completed are worth reading.
It's so weird how people think the casualty rate in Gaza is high, it's actually incredibly low, virtually no other army in the world could achieve such a low collateral damage rate in urban warfare against guerillas.
The killings are not only direct hits with bullets. They are also blocking food, medicine and healthcare. Noone can survive without food. The goal is not to kill hamas, that was just the excuse, it is to clear the ground for new settlements.
I think the total reported deaths from food issues - as reported by Hamas mind you - are in the 1,000 range. Which is still a very small number for a war zone.
> The goal is not to kill hamas, that was just the excuse, it is to clear the ground for new settlements.
Israel has explicitly stated that this is NOT the goal, are you in a position to change their policy or something? I don't get how you think you can determine their goals for them, unless you are a member of their government (are you?).
Your stated goal doesn't even make any sense - why would they even need to "clear ground" in the first place? Just go live in those houses. And if you mean "kill people", then why are the deaths so low?
> issue that people have with Israel's actions is the death of civilians, not the death of Hamas
Would note that this issue has sufficiently polarised that there are thoughtful people in e.g. New York who think it’s an atrocity for even Hamas fighters to be killed. (Same as there are folks who think every Palestinian is safely presumed a terrorist until proved innocent.)
[edited to remove snark] there is a ton of evidence to the contrary, that the killing of civilians is intentional and systematic. that's why the ICC (finally) determined it is a genocide.
The ICC did no such thing, you're probably thinking of the ICJ, which also did no such thing according to one of the judges that ruled on that decision:
“I’m glad I have a chance to address that because the court’s test for deciding whether to impose measures uses the idea of plausibility. But the test is the plausibility of the rights that are asserted by the applicant, in this case South Africa” she told the BBC show HARDtalk.
“The court decided that the Palestinians had a plausible right to be protected from genocide and that South Africa had the right to present that claim in the court,” Donoghue said. “It then looked at the facts as well. But it did not decide—and this is something where I’m correcting what’s often said in the media—it didn’t decide that the claim of genocide was plausible.”
“It did emphasize in the order that there was a risk of irreparable harm to the Palestinian right to be protected from genocide,” she added. “But the shorthand that often appears, which is that there’s a plausible case of genocide, isn’t what the court decided.”
Donoghue’s term on the bench expired a few days after the court delivered its initial ruling on Jan. 26.
It is interesting to me that all this sweat and tears are spent deliberating over the use of a word in faraway courts while all of us can see with our eyes the horrors Palestinians are subjected to by the occupying IDF. "We didn't say there was a genocide! We acknowledged the plausibility of the possibility that potentially maybe an investigation might perhaps occur into the possibility of maybe Palestinians being able to experience a genocide by someone."
It reminds me of a conversation I had with an Israeli a few weeks back. He asked me, "if what Israel is doing is so bad, why does nobody stop it?"
A great question. I don't know. And the bodies of children continue to pile up.
If you want to redefine genocide to mean "a very bad thing" then go ahead, but doing so would hollow out the term.
There's nothing stopping people from discussing the events in Gaza as a tragedy and a war crime, but activists are intent on attaching the word genocide to this. Referring to it as a genocide has become a litmus test to be considered pro-Palestinian.
To be fair, the UN working group that declared it genocide was completely precise in how they defined it and the criteria they used. Totally fair to disagree either with the existence of that working group, their definition of genocide, or with the facts they cite as evidence, but to pretend it’s just a bunch internet activists playing rhetorical tricks is clearly subterfuge.
are you referring to "UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory"? Their report came out 10 days ago. This has been referred to as a genocide far longer than that
Nobody stops it because it's not worth it, for whatever you want to measure "it" by.
Israel-Palestine used to be really important, because it was a surrogate conflict for Western vs Arab control of the Middle East, and what that is really about is of course oil.
The Arab-Israeli wars of the 1950s/1960s were direct conflicts, but it became apparent that the West wouldn't let Israel lose because Israel represents the latent threat of Western invasion if the Arabs ever really turned off the oil spigot.
So the Palestinians became the thorn for the Middle East to keep Israel at bay, so you get strange bedfellows of Iran and Qatar (Sunni and Shiite) funding them, and Hezbollah in Lebanon.
But a funny thing happened over 75 years of relative stability of borders and global trade: the status quo established itself, oil price and supply was managed and stabilized, security agreements established and backed up (with the Iraq invasion of Kuwait). Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Israel in fact are effectively allies against Iran and Turkey.
And the US has its own supply of oil with Dakota shale oil. A FUCKTON of it. So strangely, the Arabian peninsula isn't afraid of the US. They are afraid of Iran and Turkey. And who has the best army to counteract Iran and Turkey?
Israel.
The Palestinians don't have a geopolitical use anymore. The Palestinians used to number around 400,000. Now? They number 4,000,000. That is ... not good. The Palestinians have no economy, and rely almost entirely on external aid. So the scope of a humanitarian burden on Arab sponsors has risen from 400,000 people to 4,000,000 people. AGAIN: the humanitarian burden has risen by a factor of 10, while their geopolitical value has DECREASED, almost evaporated.
And that is without the decreasing value of oil from EVs/alt energy and the long term specter of global warming.
The answer is simple - racism, same reason the Brits gave them the land in the first place when they knew it already had brown people on it that had been living there for almost a thousand years. How many deaths did it take for most Westerners and Western governments to start caring about Ukraine and start moving towards action? Barely a handful if any. How many deaths has Israel racked up since 1948 while the self-appointed human rights arbiters of the world wring their hands and say it's just not quite genocide yet?
The UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry (COI) is not a legal body, which would be the sort of body that is able to make a genocide determination. It also does not speak on behalf of the UN, given that it an independent commission of inquiry.
I am curious to see what the ICJ ruling in South Africa's case will be. That would be an actual legal body charged with making a genocide determination.
What part don't you understand? EVERYONE is Hamas, including the several kids that Western doctors have testified to being hit by snipers, and the little girl named Hind Rajab that they shot 300 bullets into. And the hospitals? Crawling with Hamas.
You can easily find telegram channels that show what regular Israeli soldiers are up to, they post it themselves like they're proud of it. Take a look at it and see what you think then.
Would you accept it even if it was shown? Or would you go on with adjacents to say how it is not evidence?
Get new points from the ITF. Maybe hold them to the a fraction of accountability that you throw around.
Proof? Or just what is convenient for you to believe?
If anything, quite the opposite. Think about this logically - why the need for expensive surveillance if your chief goal was to annihilate a population?
Genocide is not the same as extermination. The goal of expulsion is to obtain land. Surveillance programs facilitate ethnic cleansing by countering resistance.
For those looking for direct sources on the findings of genocide in Gaza, here are several key reports and legal conclusions from human rights organizations, international courts, and genocide scholars:
3. B'Tselem (The Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories): Published their conclusion that Israel is committing genocide.
* Report ("Our Genocide"): https://www.btselem.org/publications/202507_our_genocide
4. International Court of Justice (ICJ): Ruled in January 2024 that it is plausible Israel's acts could violate the Genocide Convention.
* Case Details: https://www.icj-cij.org/case/192
Beyond these formal reports, it's crucial to acknowledge that this has been one of the most documented atrocities in history, often livestreamed by Palestinians on the ground. Their testimonies have been consistent from the beginning, yet they are frequently dismissed until a non-Palestinian, "human" source validates their lived experience.
>why the need for expensive surveillance if your chief goal was to annihilate a population
A question suited for ITF and Netanyahu maybe? Ask them spend less. He gets to prolong this Genocide, then he gets to stay out of trial for his previous crimes. Maybe ITF is not in a hurry.
Inconvenient truth is that anyone who remained in Gaza, in active IDF ops area, is not a civilian. Civilians left these areas, or at least asked to leave many, many times. Unless it's a little child that's not capable of lifting a firearm, this person is Hamas at this point.
If you have better way to differentiate, I will happily pass it to IDF. Don't forget to mention about the last time you risked your own life.
>Civilians left these areas, or at least asked to leave many, many times.
Where to?
Hind Rajab ,literally a child, was brutally killed when fleeing their home, after being asked of course. The ambulance which came to rescue was blown up by the ITF. The Whole world has seen it all, ITF proudly displays it. Maybe it is time to update the Hasbara points.
>Don't forget to mention about the last time you risked your own life.
Why? ITF certainly risks many children's life, just for sport often.
Kid, civilians die in war zones, that's sad truth about world that you was born into. It sucks that this child was killed. Nobody in IDF or in any other army wants to kill civilians and children, btw unlike Hamas pigs that openly bragged about it, and benefit from every single civilian death in this conflict.
> Why
Because there's no shortage of armchair operators that know better how to make split second decisions in combat. Also, they never do anything wrong because they never happen to be in situation where you have to decide between bad and worse.
You listen to them and get off their land that you violently "persuaded" the British to give to you (see: the terrorism of the Irgun, who would eventually become the IDF) and the Americans to fund to the tune of trillions of dollars since 1948. That's the only real, ethical solution to this problem, fixing the cause. Anything else like a two-state solution is more practical now that the world has let 70 years pass by, but still not ethical. Of course Israel actually wants none of those since, as Netanyahu and several other cabinet members have admitted, they wanted to subsume Gaza (again) all along into its "greater Judaea" expansion project.
> I know this will be unpopular, but I'm just repeating what I've heard from the Israeli side [..]
It's war, this is the unfortunate truth and why we try to avoid war. Nobody really ends up winning in this.
> This doesn't justify killing civilians, but what do you do when civilians kill you?
Then point at which a civilian picks up a weapon to operate alongside Hamas, they have become Hamas and are no longer civilians.
> It's a nasty situation no matter which side you look at it from.
Yes. But a peaceful solution was almost impossible once Hamas performed their October 7 attack. The other day the UN members agreed to recognise Palestine as a state, and now the only thing left on Hamas' manifesto is the complete destruction of Israel [1]. I suspect Israel is not inclined to negotiate on that demand.
Well, I guess it would be equally unpopular to the Israelis to hear that the global majority and the Palestinians consider Israel as oppressors and occupiers, and Hamas as freedom fighters. And as one man's freedom fighter is another man's terrorist, it also brings focus into another interesting point - only certain western countries have designated Hamas as terrorists, while the rest of the world doesn't agree with that designation because, well Israel is a settler-occupier. Leave Hamas aside - is anyone here, whatever be your nationality, surprised that every Palestinian (including those in West Bank) is ready to fight (violently or non-violently) for their freedom, for their independence, when the Israelis are hell bent on oppressing them (by treating them as second class citizens), killing them or chasing them away from their homeland?
Remember, Israel has already colonised all of Palestine, for many decades now. They have the choice to integrate the Palestinians into their society, and make them equal citizens. Instead, they chose not to, because the religious fundamentalists right-wing in Israel, who have captured power of all Israeli institutions, don't want a secular state - they want Jewish state with a Jewish majority. That is why Israel chose to create an Apartheid society where the Palestinians are treated as worse than second-class citizens, to make them react violently and use that as an excuse to steal more of their land. That is why this genocide is happening under the Israeli-right - to turn the Palestinians into a small minority group that will not be a threat to a future "Jewish" state.
It is the IDF and Israel governments explicit goal, as stated by high up government officials and leaders, to eradicate all Palestians in Gaza. A cursory view into their own Hebrew media make this abundantly clear.
They are committing a genocide in both word and deed.
>I have ordered a complete siege on the Gaza Strip. There will be no electricity, no food, no fuel. Everything is closed. We are fighting human animals and we are acting accordingly.
Refusing to distinguish between random Palestinians and Hamas members is literally the entire problem
I have ZERO issue with the IDF killing Hamas. That's what you do in a war. But we have ample evidence that Israel and the IDF is not making any effort to not kill random Palestinians.
They made some stupid AI algorithm to feed data into in order to generate target lists. They accepted something like 10:1 "innocent palestinian":"literal terrorist" ratios. They have no qualms about killing a 10 innocent Palestinians to kill a single Hamas terrorist
> Refusing to distinguish between random Palestinians and Hamas members is literally the entire problem
Well, it is difficult to distinguish between the two when you’re hunting down terrorists who hide among civilians. But also, let’s not forget - the civilian population of Gaza VOTED for Hamas. In polls they still show support for Hamas even after October 7. There are videos of those civilians cheering in the streets while the naked bodies of raped / murdered women were paraded down the street by Hamas terrorists. I don’t think you can pretend “random Palestinians” are entirely innocent either.
It's very easy to distinguish a children from a terrorist, children are no terrorists, also, children didn't vote anybody. However, the IDF is killing thousands of children in the most horrible ways.
hey, man - I understand this is a stressful time for you. but you're not doing your people any favors by denying the suffering your government is causing. in fact, the bold faced unapologetic nature of these atrocities is why people are talking about sanctions (which is also likely why MS made this move - to avoid being caught up in sanctions)
We all know that's a lie. Israel has murdered the negotiators most interested in giving the hostages back. Qatar was the most recent miss, but they got Haniyeh in Iran and he was a known moderate (in the Overton window of Hamas)
It is not a lie. It is so extreme that it has merited its own Wikipedia page [0], but don't trust that, read the citations. Leaders[1] statements[2] have been chronicled calling for genocide. It is happening in both word and action.
Hamas’s charter explicitly calls for genocide, and the people of Gaza voted for Hamas, and still support Hamas per polls. They support that charter, its ideas, and the actions that result - such as the thousands of rocket attacks for over ten years, as well as the mass murder / mutilation / rape of October 7.
Fighting a war of self defense isn’t a genocide, right? If it is, then is every war a genocide? And if so does that word really provide any meaningful value, other than stirring up emotions?
I'm sure that it could, but this clearly hasn't happened yet. We still see lots of high-quality videos of buildings being bombed by Israel. That is possible only because Israel warns civilians away from such structures. In a war of aggression, such warnings would not happen, and such videos would not exist.
I would say yes. The question is what definitively makes it that. So far, all I see is subjective judgment. Even in official reports, when you go deep enough in official reports from various organizations, it feels subjective.
It's quite clear which group has genocidal intent, there's a Wikipedia page [0] for that as well. Groups like Hamas are quite open about their genocidal intentions, they even detail those desires in their charter [1].
You're right, Gaza was not occupied. It was an open-air prison where people are not allowed to enter or leave, aid was severely restricted, and the IDF adopted a policy of "mowing the grass" which was to cull the population periodically. That's worse, but I'm not sure that's the point you were trying to make.
And if you're only other point is to accuse me of something I never said about an event that was debunked several times, whereas the actual kidnapping and burning of Palestinian babies, women, children, and men is well documented and still ongoing, I think that's all we need to know.
> You're right, Gaza was not occupied. It was an open-air prison where people are not allowed to enter or leave, aid was severely restricted,
You can pin that as much on Egypt, an Arab and Muslim state, as you can on Israel.
> and the IDF adopted a policy of "mowing the grass" which was to cull the population periodically. That's worse, but I'm not sure that's the point you were trying to make.
I've heard the phrase mowing the grass. It clearly referred to the Hamas leadership. You can make up interpretations all you want, but I read the sources in both Hebrew (כן, אני מדבר עברית) and Arabic (وانا بحكي عربي كمان). I know exactly what was said, and what was meant. It's usually very clear.
> And if you're only other point is to accuse me of something I never said about an event that was debunked several times, whereas the actual kidnapping and burning of Palestinian babies, women, children, and men is well documented and still ongoing, I think that's all we need to know.
Israel does not deliberately target Palestinian children - there is no benefit to that. Do you know who does benefit when Palestinian children die? Hamas does. They say it clearly. If you really cared about children - Palestinian and Israeli - then you would not perpetuate the blood libel against the side that until recently went out of its way to protect children.
I guess time to buy more Oracle or Google stocks? They can easily provide more than needed, especially Oracle which is very friendly to Israel and Ellison is a big supporter of IDF (large donations to "Friends of the IDF" non-profit).
Here is a link in case anyone wants to donate https://www.fidf.org to this amazing organization.
Wow nice, I wish i could donate, but US Taxpayers already cover for me. What do the donors get? Like souvenirs? Funding Genocidal ITF to kill more children and bomb more hospitals has to have its perks.
I think Cloud providers should be common carriers. I don’t think that it is a good thing when a company can make an arbitrary decision and disable functionality that you have put millions of dollars and thousands or tens of thousands of person hours into.
I think that the only reasons that a cloud provider should be permitted to use to justify termination of service, are illegal activity (in the country of service), non-payment, or attempting to harm or disrupt the service.
I am in no way condoning anything that Israel is doing, just like I wasn’t condoning what people on Parler were saying when AWS axed them in 2021.
No matter how much you like what the people in charge are doing today or who they’re doing it to, sooner or later someone will take the reins who decides that you are the target.
Same with banks, credit card companies, etc. if you are incorporated and your business is to support commerce, you should keep your thumb off the scale.
I agree with you in most contexts, but "illegal activity (in the country of service)" is a tough one in the context of an invasion, a territorial dispute, or international espionage.
Before the current war, Hamas was the governing authority in Gaza, despite the Palestinian Authority being the internationally recognized one. Regardless, whether the surveillance was legal under Israeli law doesn't seem like the correct standard.
I think that if Azure offers their service in Israel it has to comply with Israeli law; I don’t see why that would not govern in this case.
If Azure were providing service to the US Government then that service would be governed by US law even if the employees using the service traveled abroad; the only exception would be if service was initiated by an employee in another country under the terms for the service provider in that country, but even then likely government has contracts with the provider that would shift jurisdiction back to the US.
The concept of common carriers in not a wartime concept. Should occupied Ukranians keep providing service to their occupiers on principle?
Aside from the common carrier concept, operating a significant war-supporting facility makes you a significant target. And I don't just mean a target for criticism. Datacenters risk a security threat on a whole new level if taking them out is important to war operations.
Would you criticize a commercial port in the Black Sea if it turned away Russian warships? Harboring Russian warships makes it extremely likely that your port could become the target of missile strikes. If you want to remain an innocent bystander, don't harbor combatants.
This is not a statement in support of any side of any war.
> I think Cloud providers should be common carriers. I don’t think that it is a good thing when a company can make an arbitrary decision and disable functionality that you have put millions of dollars and thousands or tens of thousands of person hours into.
Exactly! The IDF have put a lot of effort in to this genocide.
Look how carefully they worded that to make a carve-out for this very case: "in the country of service". As in, Gaza is now part of Israel, and according to Israeli laws, Israel is not doing any genocide on Palestinians.
Just to be clear: "illegal under international law" isn't good enough? It has to be sovereign entities' own laws? As in, a cloud provider should have no power to refuse service to any government?
What would happen in a hypothetical scenario where Microsoft cut off everything [1] they can for all of Israel - no Azure, no Office, no Outlook, no Exchange, no SQL Server, no Windows, no Xbox, no ...? Depending on how many things they can make unusable, I would imagine that this would be pretty bad, probably even causing some deaths because of affected infrastructure.
[1] Not sure what they could actually make unusable by revoking licenses, blocking logins, and whatnot. It probably also matters how quickly the effects are felt, Azure would be gone immediately but I am not sure how often Office checks whether its license has been revoked, if at all. If license checks make things stop working over weeks and months, it would still not be pretty, but it would provide at least some time to prepare and avoid the worst.
IDK but Mossad is quite possibly the world's most effective spy agency and SV software corporations rarely have effective safeguards to protect against rogue employees so we must conclude that there are many sleeper agents planted throughout major corporations on behalf of just about every intelligence agency in the world including but not limited to mossad.
I have not seen any hard evidence of this nor have i ever suspected a fellow employee at any of my employers of being a double-agent loyal to a state intelligence agency but it's easy enough to do that there must be hundreds, maybe even thousands of sleeper agents all over santa clara and redmond.
I could write things here about those officially reported deaths (not estimates, which are much higher, but no one really knows and very likely never will), or the internal diaplacement, but since there might be at least 1 Palestinian still alive digging in the rubble somewhere, literalists like you would still feel the need to overcorrect.
I thought the defeated tone of my post made it clear that it was not meant to be taken that literally. I guess not.
That's about the latest number from Gaza health ministry that stopped counting well over a year ago as Israel had destroyed all but one hospital. It doesn't even count the people left in rubble from destroying 80% of all buildings.
If you think that figure is remotely accurate despite the fact Israel has decimated all hospitals, leveled entire areas, wiped out entire families and is starving those that are still alive to do the counting, you're being naive, and that's a generous interpretation. Once Israel finally allow the UN in, that figure is going up by a factor of at least 2 or 3. The true cost of most genocides are only counted years after it's over, when it's too late.
Iraq lost 5% of its population to the US' illegal, criminal war, and Iraqi mothers are still losing children to the side effects of the DU that has been deposited all over its major cities.
So the atrocity continues in Iraq, even to this day.
Wow, they actually are pulling back. That is really surprising. Wonder if they see the winds changing on this issue and want to get on the right side of history. Big props to everyone at Microsoft who spoke out about this and risked or lost their jobs because of it. They kept that fire lit on their ass.
Last week a UN human rights commission found that Israel is carrying out a genocide. I think you're right that the winds have changed and now companies will shift their positions.
The word genocide has a legal definition, it’s not up for discussion or debate. What is happening in Gaza is a genocide according to genocide scholars.
If you're referring to the "International Association of Genocide Scholars" (IAGS), all it takes to join that organization is $30 and self identifying as a genocide scholar. Furthermore the resolution was passed with a total of 129 voting members, and about 107 voting in favor, out of over 500 total members.
Here's a letter from 514 verified scholars and legal experts calling on IAGS to retract their resolution, along with their rebuttal of the substance of the resolution:
> If you're referring to the "International Association of Genocide Scholars" (IAGS), all it takes to join that organization is $30 and self identifying as a genocide scholar.
They have certainly had some interesting members[0].
The definition of genocide is absolutely up for debate. And even legal definition (presumably you mean UN definition) is highly subjective, too. Less than 1% of Palestinians have been killed since Oct 7. Germany saw 10% of its population killed in WW2. France lost 4% in WW1. Why the former is a genocide but not the latter two is a pretty big hole in the logic behind the allegations of genocide.
What court? Presumably you're taking about the ICJ? It only stated that allegations of genocide is "plausible". The grandparent comment is about a human rights commission, not a court.
Also, the ICJ only has jurisdiction when states consent to its authority. And the UN security council can veto any decision. It's essentially a show court.
And again, people endlessly debate what is and isn't rape and murder. Judges and juries make the decision at the end of the day, and people still debate whether their decision was correct. If anything, drawing parallels to murder and rape only serve to highlight how subjective it is.
Legal definitions are often up for discussion and debate. That’s a large part of what lawyers do, in fact.
Anyway I have no comment on the specific claim being made here, I just really dislike it when discussion is stifled by saying “I’m right and no one can ever disagree”.
Rape? Like age of consent being different across regions and time? No nuance? Like how half the planet laughs when a boy gets molested by his attractive teacher and the other half calls it rape?
People absolutely do disagree and debate what is and is not rape, though. Legal definitions exist, but have loads of subjectivity. E.g. some argue that threatening to break up with a partner over lack of sex is coercion and thus rape.
Exactly. I think people socialized into certain conversational norms in politicized online spaces, ridiculously overestimate plausibility of the rhetorical gambit of going "gee, who's to say?" when attempted out in the wild.
I think one strength of the liberal academic tradition is that whether it's philosophy, whether it's law, you get introduced to the "whose to say" archetype early on and get inoculated against it. It's not just that the concepts are well enough established that they're resilient against such skepticism, but even in cases of uncertainty, routine amounts of conceptual uncertainty are not a deal-breaker to investigating and understanding urgent moral issues.
A real argument in the negative would be along the lines of "here's how food truck inspection policies are tied to well-established norms that better explain the outcome of famine than intent to destroy". A not real argument is spontaneous, mid-debate discovery of the transience of linguistic meaning, discovered just in time to skirt the question of genocide.
The trouble with this form of skepticism is it can only ever be hypothesized, never actually consistently embodied by real people. Long before navigating to hacker News, you would look at your computer and be paralyzed by fundamental puzzles like "what is electricity", "what is information", "is there really an external world" and so on. It wouldn't have been discovered mid conversation about genocide.
I think you actually, without intending to, raise the reason why this is an exceptionally powerful point. Given the diversity of academic opinion on so many fundamental subjects, consensus on any topic is extraordinary.
I actually don't agree with you that "legal definitions" are as hotly debated or that the existence of debate in general negates consensus on specific topics. And I do think one important point with genocide scholarship is regarding muddying the waters with tom-ay-to/to-mah-to approach to definitions. Treating definitions as inherently transient is an important instrument in normalizing cultural acceptance of genocides when they're unfolding in real time, which is why that tactic is targeted by so much scholarly criticism.
Also - many many institutions have declared that what’s happening is a genocide, and unfortunately that hasn’t changed anything. (Perhaps naive of me to believe that it would change anything)
But here we have UN and other twisting it to fit a situation that clearly weren't meant to be covered by it.
Because if the war in Gaza can be called a genocide so can almost every single other major war!
Also it is absolutely ridiculous to call a war that is started by one side, and one that only that side can end, a genocide against the same side that started it!
This is indeed a big obstacle to credibly calling the Israel-Palestine conflict a genocide. Germany lost ~10% of it's population in WW2. France lost 4% in WW1. Less than 1% of the Palestinian has been killed since Oct 7.
Heck, the US Revolutionary war saw the British perpetrated genocide against the Colonists if the military actions following Oct 7 count as a genocide.
Do you honestly think it is correct to use the same word that we use for the 500 000 innocents that were clubbed to death in Rwanda?
The boys that were transported by buses into the woods of Srebrenica and gunned down?
The millions that starved to death in Ukraine during Holodomor?
to use the same word for a war, ome that they can end tomorrow just by uttering a credible claim about wanting to release the hostages?
Because if Gaza is a genocide, then we must also talk about the genocide of the Germans in 1944 and 1945. But for some reason we don't call it a genocide when somebody forces someone else to stop them.
Except when that someone else is Israel.
This fits a broader pattern BTW:
Hamas executes possible the worst sexual terrorism since the rape of Nanking in 1937: not a word about war crimes.
Israel hit a legitimate target hidden in civilian hotspot: waRcRiem!
Surrounding countries have various apartheid laws: nothing to see.
Israel being a democracy where every citizen can vote, be in the government, be a judge in the Supreme Court: apArthEid!
In this case you're believing the emperor. Remember the "terrorist check in list" that was just a calendar? Israeli propagandandists don't even have the respect to make up plausible lies anymore.
I think the debate (/question) is whether it is Israel’s goal to eliminate the entirety of the Palestinian people. That does not seem to be the case, which is where the “not genocide” argument comes from.
Now I understand that the UN has specific criteria, etc. But the most famous genocide was the systematic execution of millions in gas chambers. This is not akin to that, is what people are arguing.
Anyone who watches Israeli news/media in Hebrew knows that Palestinians are not considered human in the Israeli society. Israel dehumanizes and genocides the Palestinians with the intention of wiping them off the face of the earth.
It is perhaps important, also, for genocide scholarship to survey the ways proponents rotate through various forms of apologetics. Not that I would wish it to be the case but the last few years are rich in case studies for how people debate and communicate about genocide, and it's attempts to muddy definitional waters that make it so important to have strong scholarship and scholarly consensus.
A long way of agreeing with your point, I suppose.
It definitely depends on the proximity to the genocide itself. Plenty of Americans easily call what happened with the Uyghurs in China a genocide. And if they know about, the genocide in Sudan a genocide as well. But when it comes to Israel it's a real reluctance. Will definitely be interesting to see how this time is viewed through history. It's close enough to western culture that it will likely stick around and just be something that happened in a poor country that gets forgotten.
It has changed quite a bit here in the US too, even among the Jewish population. Our synagogue is very divided on this, mainly between the young and the old.
The statistics bear this out, millennials on down are very against this.
Within the last year a true overall majority of the American Jewish population are opposed to what Israel is doing to Gaza. I expect this trend to continue.
The truest supporters of Israel in America have always been Christian (for both insane and cynical reasons).
“There you are, Mr. Netanyahu! Just who do you think you are, killing thousands and flattening neighborhoods, then wrapping yourself in Judaism like it’s some shield from criticism? You’re making life for Jews miserable, and life for American Jews impossible!” - Jewish character on the latest South Park, a show created and run by two Jewish people.
Also ”It’s not Jews vs. Palestine, it’s Israel vs. Palestine!”
If a country was killing thousands of people and saying it was to make people like you safer, might you not be inclined to point out it's having the opposite effect?
Perhaps we'll have to agree to differ, but I think American Jews being like "not in my name" sends a more politically effective message than "what are you talking about, psycho murderer?".
tbf I'm not primarily interested in what's a good look.
I think we're stuck and have to agree to disagree but the message sent is at least indistinguishable from the message of a self-interested sociopathic community with no moral concerns beyond their own. When I do things I at least try to make it discernible from psychopathy.
I don't really want to get into the A word thing, but your position makes more sense to me from a perspective of being anti-Jewish, rather than pro-Palestinian. From the latter perspective, I think it's better to challenge Israel's narratives than embolden them.
I'm glad you realize how silly that word has become. In reality, groups of people via culture or whatever other mechanism do generate certain things that are undeserving or deserving of censure. For example, due to cultural reasons, 1930-1940s Germany produced a high preponderance of Nazis, so we destroyed them.
I'm not suggesting cultural destruction is possible or desireable (maybe it is, but it's not my purview), but if a culture is producing a large preponderance of murderous ethnic supremacists it's time to sound the alarm bells. This entire thing wouldn't have been possible if that community didn't make it so.
This is especially compounded given that this group feels above critique from outsiders. That is a dangerous concoction and unfortunately the end result is wanton murder and redirection of resources to abet it. I think we're all about sick of the killing now. With great power comes great responsibility to be a moral agent.
I think word is sometimes used as a cudgel to derail reasonable discussion. I still think it has its place and at this point, yeah I'm going to say you're unambiguously an antisemite.
Sorry Joe, I guess we didn't frame the discussion of a checks notes horrific genocide done and abetted by and on behalf of a cultural and ethnic identity helped or hurt you specifically enough.
I was directly referring to your closing line saying ”It’s not Jews vs. Palestine, it’s Israel vs. Palestine!”. Given that about half of Israelis are Arab in origin, and about a fifth are proper Muslims, the objection of Palestinians is not to Israelis but to Jews. The video I linked demonstrates the common mode of thought in that part of the world.
You linked audio of a phone call from a Hamas terrorist, as evidence that "Palestinians don't discern Jews and Israelis". I hope you can see the irony there.
There's also, I think, an irony that antisemites and Zionists are united in their their efforts to conflate Jewishness with the actions of the Israeli state. I think it's a welcome development that Parker / Stone / Sheila Broflovski aren't going along with it.
Very true. I've gone on dates with a couple Jewish women over the past two or three years & they've all staunchly supported Palestine which surprised me a bit.
That's a fair point. My gut reaction is that people will default to tribalism, but I think this has been a different situation than most others (and going on a lot longer).
I think it’s surprising because Israelis are very loud in their support for Netanyahu. Yeah, there are protests but it polling suggests that the overwhelming majority of Israelis support Netanyahu.
Over 60% of Israelis believe there is nobody innocent in Gaza. That’s like the core operating principle of the Netanyahu-Smotrich-Ben Gvir government. The Israeli street is thoroughly behind the Genocide and the polling has been showing this for over a year.
I can understand your skepticism, but this is an example of what is termed “normal human conversation,” where people share their personal experiences. Quite often, one will find people sharing stories without the backing of statistical evidence.
My boomer Jewish stepmother surprised me when I saw her recently - complete U-turn from last year’s “all Palestinians are human animals” to “Netanyahu is a war criminal”.
Politics is weird. With the Biden administration there was lots of lip service given in opposition to the slaughter in Gaza while at the same time they were shipping unprecedented amounts of weapons to the IDF.
Now with Trump they state that they have max support for Israel while it seems like all of Europe is turning away from unconditional support for Israel and a massive change in the typical rhetoric around media in the US. That’s odd.
As someone who's been boycotting Microsoft in line with the BDS movement, I welcome this (belated) move, but seeing Bill Gates on stage laughing (maybe nervously) at Ibtihal Aboussad's (now validated) protest still makes me uneasy about a guy who I previously followed and liked to a reasonable extent, and I'll still probably hold off on watching his most recent documentaries. It makes me wonder how comfortable you have to be (as a supposed philanthropist, no less) with the deaths of tens of thousands of brown kids to laugh in a situation like that. Hell, even Ballmer had the sense to keep a straight face.
> how comfortable you have to be (as a supposed philanthropist, no less) with the deaths of tens of thousands of brown kids to laugh in a situation like that
Laughing at someone yelling on stage can be entirely orthogonal to what they’re saying. (And it’s not like that outburst did anything.)
The article you're commenting on quite literally mentions that employee pressure, of which Ibtihal Aboussad's was the most vocal and memorable in the media, played a significant role in the decision.
> article you're commenting on quite literally mentions that employee pressure
Fair enough. I’m not buying it—the timeline doesn’t work, and the broader literature on disruptive protest is mixed, leaning towards negative.
What clearly swung the odds was the Guardian reporting on the frankly brazen meetings Microsoft executives decided to take. Without that reporting, this wouldn't have happened. With that reporting and absent the employee protests, this would have still likely happened.
Does that "literature" include history itself? I can't think of a single movement for good in history that accomplished its goals without pissing people off. Resisting any form of power tends to result in that power - and the many supporting it - getting quite upset by definition.
> can't think of a single movement for good in history that accomplished its goals without pissing people off
Disruptive protest takes the form of interrupting ordinary peoples' lives. (In contrast with targeted protest, which seeks to directly disrupt the problematic conduct.)
They are effective at raising awareness of an issue and rallying the base. Among those who are already aware and have not yet committed to a side, however, they tend (broadly) to decrease sympathy.
> Resisting any form of power tends to result in that power - and the many supporting it - getting quite upset by definition
Of course. I'm talking about broader views.
Sympathy for Israel went up after the Columbia protests because (a) nobody was surprised that there was a war in Gaza and (b) folks breaking into a building and disrupting public spaces doesn't naturally elicit sympathy from undecideds. (It also crowds out coverage of the actual war.)
Military spy agency involved in ongoing war stores 11.5PB of data, Microsoft commissioned external review founds no evidence that military spy agency is using said data to target and harm people, only to backtrack after media breaking more project details? Come the fuck on. What’s the point of these performative external reviews? Just thugs hired to say whatever their customer wants them to say.
Wow! This is fantastic news, I wouldn't have bet on Microsoft ever doing something like this. I pray it's just the start and other American companies start to do the same.
> The project began after a meeting in 2021 between Microsoft’s chief executive, Satya Nadella, and the unit’s then commander, Yossi Sariel.
This seemed completely glossed over in the article (never revisited beyond this) but seems to imply that Satya must have at least known something about what was happening?
Or was he mislead, told partial truths, or something?
Very curious who within Microsoft knew anything about what was happening.
I am seeing several kneejerk "Microsoft bad" reactions here, which HNers don't do for many other companies. I encourage many of you to read what is written.
They listened to their internal staff and stakeholders and public pressure, and did terminated the contract instead of ignoring it or doubling down.
The Guardian last month reported a meeting between Microsoft CEO and Unit 8200. That means this comes from high level and they did not cancel because of protestors but because of media publicity.
I really wonder if a company like microsoft has any real concern over people tweeting negative things about it. It seems like companies are finally realizing a lot of it can just be ignored, but with microsoft specifically, what’s the risk? Who in a position to deny ms enough money that they’d care or even notice is going to decide to do it based on people protesting?
Yes, unfortunately this is what happens when you have people who are constantly critical of Microsoft based on what they know of the company from the 90s and 00s, it devalues genuine modern criticisms and makes all criticism meaningless.
> this is what happens when you have people who are constantly critical of Microsoft based on what they know of the company from the 90s and 00s
There are more than a couple of us who have Office or Teams imposed on us. There is plenty to complain about that is current and most definitely valid.
Have you used a modern Microsoft OS? They are somehow worse than they were in the 90s and 00s. I don’t remember having to agree to sell my personal information in the 90s or having advertising baked into the start menu in windows xp.
I agree that in-OS advertising for a paid product is dumb, but a) I thankfully still use Windows 10 which doesn't have those, and b) those are ultimately UX concerns, not ethical. And no, Microsoft doesn't sell your data no matter how many in tech subscribe to that conspiracy theory.
Last time I installed windows 11 in a VM I had to agree to at least 3, possibly more, un-skippable Eulas that required me to agree to share my personal information. Maybe they aren’t selling it outside of MS, but MS is such a giant company if they are using it for ads I don’t see the distinction.
The distinction is consent, and it's a pretty big one, because it's the difference between Microsoft sharing it among their services (they don't need to sell it to themselves) for the reasons outlined in the EULAs, and companies that aren't Microsoft using it for whatever reason they want. You can be assured they're following the EULAs because the consequences of not doing so would make them vulnerable to millions if not billions in fines if only one sufficiently motivated individual, like an ex-employee, leaked the evidence.
More targeted (i.e. relevant) ads are really not the evil many make them out to be. Ads in a paid product are also not quite evil, but they are incredibly idiotic and a step backwards. Either way, makes no difference to me because at this rate it seems my next OS will be a Windows-like Linux distro anyway.
I appreciate the nuanced and intelligent analysis of the situation. Admittedly I haven’t thought about it very deeply because as it appears you agree Linux has made operating systems commodity at this point, at least to moderately technical users, so I really see no benefit to using any MS OS at this point.
The problem here is thinking that the only form of protest anyone ever engages in is tweeting things. Some people stop supporting companies they disagree with, both individually and, if they're able, with their own company.
Not just some people - a lot of people, and an increasing amount of people in the last year or so, including whole countries like Ireland, Spain and Slovenia. See the BDS movement/website/Facebook pages. As a lifelong Windows user I've been seriously considering moving to a Linux distro for my next desktop. I'll need to dig into the news some more, but this decision more than likely means I can stick with Windows.
But that’s my point - who will do that? Who is going to go to their company’s CEO and convince them to put in the massive amount of effort to switch cloud providers? Who is going to say “I don’t think we should use Teams anymore” and actually be able to switch to something else? I have no idea if microsoft even cares about retail customers anymore, but are there really enough people who are going to boycott microsoft products (I honestly don’t know what those products even are) over this?
I just don’t think they have anything to worry about. I personally think it’s good what they’re doing here, but I guess I’m too cynical to believe they are doing it out of the goodness of their hearts, and I don’t think the real reason is that they’re worried about bad publicity.
Some people like me are running a company and are still picking out their tech stack. I don't like Microsoft, and that absolutely affects how likely I am to use their services. My situation might not be that common but PR surely still matters some.
> are there really enough people who are going to boycott microsoft products
Maybe not, but some is better than none, and I'll continue to push more people to do it, rather than tell them nothing they do matters.
> over this?
Maybe it's not just this. Maybe this is the straw that breaks the user's back. Or maybe the next thing is.
My point was to address your belief that they're too big for anyone to make any difference. That isn't true, and the belief that you or any other citizen can't make a difference is their biggest advantage.
(I put this last because I know what HN will say to this, but: are CEOs and other executives not people too? Can they not make principled moves either?)
> (I put this last because I know what HN will say to this, but: are CEOs and other executives not people too? Can they not make principled moves either?)
Not sure what you mean by "what HN will say to this", but for me the answer is clear - they are, they can, and they often do. As do their employees - or at least they push in the direction which is better aligned with their values.
That's fair. For the record, I recently dumped windows for linux and won't ever buy/use a microsoft product again if I can help it, and I will encourage others to do the same, but that decision had nothing to do with politics.
I don't think I actually disagree with anything you've said. I am just very cynical, and while I want to believe like you do, I find it very difficult.
edit: "Can they not make principled moves either?" - Yeah, they _could_, but does that _ever_ happen at companies as big as microsoft?
You know a boycott movement is effective when Israel has tens of lobbies like the IAF that are dedicated entirely to passing legislation to make it illegal. Germany has already passed it and the UK is unfortunately looking very close.
You are right that with the Trump administration (well, bipartisan support), US companies don't have to worry about any adverse political action by cooperating with Israel. Negative publicity from the common people also won't adversely affect their bottom line. But they do have to worry about the legal aspects - the US is one of the few countries actually having laws against genocide / war crimes. Trump may be ready to bomb the Hague and the ICC, but we know he can't bomb US courts for any similar proceedings against any US or foreign firms ...
Trying to pin support for israel on one side and not on the entirety of the us government at all levels is either profoundly naive or profoundly dishonest.
Well, Biden was claiming that "there is no genocide" while approving the building of (future) concentration camps for the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians, while Trump is worried only about the "optics" but is fine as long as a "beautiful resort is finally built in Gaza", after herding the Palestinians into these new "refugee centres" (i.e. the concentration camps) and from there to Egypt (who has been promised to be made the future gas hub for Europe) to complete Israeli occupation of Gaza. I'll leave it to you to decide whether I am being naive or dishonest or who planned the genocide and who is complicit in it - Here's the "propaganda" sources based on which I am making these assertions:
I guess that one needs some help to transfer "swiftly" 8000 Terabytes of data. At 1 Terabit per second it would take about 18 hours.
8000*8 Tb / 60s / 60 / 24 = .740740...
24 h *.740 = 17.76 h
But is 1 Tb/s a thing?
I think this has been another case of "Never underestimate the bandwidth of a station wagon full of tapes hurtling down the highway" (Andrew Tanenbaum, 1981). Maybe rack units of disks? For very important data I would pay for the privilege of removing my disks at a very short notice.
AWS Snowball can be used to get data out of S3. They copy it onto portable devices, ship them to you, and you can copy the data off without saturating your DirectConnect bandwidth.
or it means that they met with Unit 8200 to see if there was common ground that would rationalize keeping the contract and their tech being used for a way that respected human rights, dignity, and a coherent strategy to getting to that place,
I want to believe this is true, but it would only be true if they cancel all the contracts they have with Israel that enable the genocide, rather than just the ones that have made the most noise. Otherwise it's just PR, not ethics. In other words, a lot is resting on the "some" in that quote.
That's a funny way to say "they fired staff that vandalized company property, broke into the CEO's office, and used an internal company website to publish and promote anti-company propaganda".
That will get you fired from bussing tables or washing dishes, let alone a six-figure job at MS.
Edit: Source on the last one; the first two were widely reported on in media:
I feel like interrupting a CEO's speech at a big conference is pretty well understood to be a social indicator of a high level of insubordination. I suspect the protestor knew that too.
The consequences were appropriate, even if I might share some of the protestor's concerns.
Interrupting a speech? Yes. It demonstrates a lack of maturity, decorum, and is completely unprofessional. Someone who pulls these shenanigans is unworthy of the role they were hired for. This isn't high school anymore. They were hired to perform productive work not be disruptive and play pretend activist.
You lost me at "pretend activist". This person put their job on the line for what they believe in, and in a public enough way that complete strangers are discussing it on the internet. That's real activism.
You are trivializing what they did. This is not that they were in a meeting with the CEO and accidentally spoke interrupting him. They started yelling disrupting the CEOs speech at a large event. Name a single company that wouldn't fire someone for that.
US corporate culture has a stronger sense of hierarchy than many other countries. It is an environment where one can get fired quickly and suddenly and that instills a lot of obedience and discipline (if not outright fear) in employees.
Oh, it was an event with custoners invited? Yeah, that's grounds for dismissal anywhere, I'd think. Even in countries with strong labor laws you could just show the court the video recording of an employee doing willfull sabotage.
If I did what the protestor did at an internal all-hands or summit I would expect to get canned as well. You can't go up yelling and interrupting the CEO. In an internal all-hands/summit situation you need to maintain decorum, if you have a point you wait until a QA session, then express your displeasure.
Half the jobs I’ve worked, I’d be immediately fired if I interrupted a CEO’s speech. The other half, I’d be in serious trouble and I’d be first on any layoff.
You’re going to base an opinion on a third-hand story? That might not even be true just to illustrate a point?
I know a guy that passed BillG in a hallway and said, “hey, Bill, how’s it hangin’?” (Saw him do it; I was mortified.) Just a bottom-tier IC at the time. 20 years later, he still works there. Still an IC, though, so make of it what you will. :-)
So there, now you have another folksy anecdote to balance things out.
You might have 1A rights as an American but it seems to me the manner in which this person protested would be grounds for termination in many jurisdictions.
1A doesn't apply to private entities anyway. 1A protects against government prosecution for your speech, and the government may make no laws "abridging the freedom of speech."
But your employer? They can put whatever rules and restrictions they want on your speech, and with at-will employment, can fire you for any reason anyway, at anytime.
You can say whatever you want, but you aren't free from the consequences of that speech.
This comment sums up well how the spirit of the law is not being upheld, given that the biggest players in government, finance, and the corporate world are working together hand in glove.
>”Corporations cannot exist without government intervention”
>”Some privates companies and financiers are too big to fail/of strategic national importance”
>”1A does not apply to private entities (including the above)”
>”We have a free, competitive market”
I find it very difficult to resolve these seemingly contradictory statements.
I'm not sure you know what "beyond the pale" means. You probably shouldn't look into the history of the suffragette or civil rights movements, for your own sanity.
That’s a pretty low bar for “beyond the pale.” Company PR isn’t some sacred thing and these people paid a hefty price for their protest. They should be praised for their bravery even if you disagree with their message.
When did I say they shouldn’t expect consequences or that it wasn’t a fireable offense? The whole point of this discussion is that cries for people to “protest properly” are ridiculous and designed to make protests ineffective.
Clearly I get that their jobs and more were at risk, hence why I said they were brave. The only thing unclear is where you got the impression I thought otherwise.
There's a couple of sub links off of that one. Not sure if that's what GP was referring too but there is mention in there of employees being terminated related to protests
I would also like to read the source for the last claim of that statement. The break-in is well established in multiple sources, and also documented on Wikipedia (citing one of those sources). CNBC also add that they planted microphones (using phones) as listening devices.
"In the aftermath of the protests, Smith claimed that the protestors had blocked people out of the office, planted listening devices in the form of phones, and refused to leave until they were removed by police. " (https://www.cnbc.com/2025/08/28/microsoft-fires-two-employee...)
Some people seem to think rioting and vandalism are acceptable behaviors.
It's important that people engaging in such activity are dealt with swiftly and justly. Such behavior further encourages violence and destruction as acceptable behaviors in society, which they are not.
Rioting and vandalism are unacceptable...until they aren't and are instead necessary.
Is everyone so quick to forget that the rights we have today in the US were won through violence after all other methods failed? The 40 hour work week we enjoy today was also won through blood.
Now, in this case between employees and Microsoft I'd agree, no, vandalism wasn't necessary at all.
But when it comes to defending our rights and freedoms, there will come a day when its absolutely necessary, and it's just as valid of a tool as peaceful protest is in enforcing the constitution.
It's a difficult question, because obviously violence is out of line for protests about many topics, while just as obviously necessary for some.
I think think that violence or vandalism in this case was unwarranted, but there are some other in this thread who believe otherwise.
I guess that I'd say that, probably, vandals/criminals should always be punished, because they're doing clearly illegal things... and it's up to the protestors to judge whether the cause they're supporting is really worth going to jail for. If sufficient numbers of people feel that, you have a revolution.
(And also, a separate issue, whether the violence is actually going to benefit their cause. It probably won't.)
I certainly don't think that we should be in a position where courts are are judging certain crimes as forgivable because of their cause, while supporters of other causes get the full weight of the law for similar actions. I think the vandals on Jan 6th should get the same punishment as, for instance, similar vandals during BLM.
There’s been a couple studies showing that disruptive protests (blocking roads, yelling at people entering buildings, etc) cause public support for their cause to decrease or even increase opposition.
If the ideas are good then support will build through effectively communicating those ideas. Being noisy is fine but there’s an obvious line that selfish activists cross. The sort of people who want their toys now and don’t want to patiently do the hard work of organically building up a critical mass. So they immediately start getting aggressive and violent in small groups. Which is counter productive.
I think the people is just more vocal, not that the protest changed its opinion, but now they have an excuse, violence, to go against the cause they did not like.
"Violence" like stoping the traffic. If that is violence...
The classic "an effective protest is one that is neither seen nor heard". Which is just ahistorical. Civil rights in the US was not passed because black folks explained to white people that they are people deserving the same rights as them. I hate this white washing of history as a series of peaceful movements that everyone agreed with.
The other side of this is that the people doing the protesting have to have the fortitude to accept judicial punishment. If the punishment is out of whack WRT the crime, then you get popular support (e.g. a year in jail for sitting at a lunch counter). But the current situation where folks can break the law and then suffer no consequences? F that noise.
Sitting at a lunch counter was illegal and the punishment was widely viewed as too light for the protesters. Like the racist violence going on right now, people of color were framed as disturbing the peace and disturbing a private business. There were called animals and criminals. Like I said, buying the white washed version of history where everyone was on the right side.
There is nothing wrong with being seen or heard. Instead it is that being violently disruptive tends to lose you support.
You are posing a false dilemma where the only thing a person can do to voice there opinion is to destroy or disrupt things.
That's not true though. Instead you can simply voice your options. You can put out manifestos, publish articles in the newspaper, post to social media, or even talk to people in person.
All those methods are how speech and ideas are normally distributed in a normal society. And if people aren't convinced by what you say, then it is time for you to get better arguments.
If you think being violently disruptive loses you support you should look at any equality movement. I'm not posing a false dilemma, I'm saying that when peaceful means are not working then violence will follow. "A riot is the language of the unheard".
The idea that everyone can just be convinced with a good argument is a nice fantasy but just never true in reality. You've also rigged the game since you can just dig in your heels are refuse any argument and just say "get better arguments". It's a situation no one else can win. If people could so easily be convinced that different people deserve the same rights then we wouldn't have had to spend over a century trying to get them.
The United States has a history of rioting, vandalism, and violence. The Boston Tea Party comes to mind. The more important question is the contexts in which it is unacceptable, and who should be given the authority to swiftly deal with it - an authority that will itself require the ability to commit violence.
It’s amazing how many discussions I’ve had in the past decade about how people are supposed to “properly” protest (I.e. in a way that commands as little attention as possible) and how few I’ve had discussing the merits of what people are protesting about.
Except of course Jan 6th, which somehow normalized the belief that the 2020 election was stolen AND gaslit a ton of the country into thinking the violence that occurred did not and therefore doesn’t need to be critiqued.
This admin is truly adept at labeling all forms of dissent or disagreement as unacceptable actions that make discussing the issues at hand impossible.
They've been raising the alarm for months. If this extreme action is what it took Microsoft to look into genocide and then terminate the contract, it was absolutely the right call
Not that you're implying this, but making an "absolutely the right call" does not in any way shield one from consequences.
Heck, it's usually because one will be punished that doing the right thing is in any manner noble. Otherwise it's just meeting minimum expectations as a human.
> The project began after a meeting in 2021 between Microsoft’s chief executive, Satya Nadella, and the unit’s then commander, Yossi Sariel ... In response to the investigation, Microsoft ordered an urgent external inquiry to review its relationship with Unit 8200. Its initial findings have now led the company to cancel the unit’s access to some of its cloud storage and AI services.
"Some" ... Microsoft's chief executive was involved in cementing a collaboration for a secret military / intelligence project with an AI component, to spy on people against whom a genocide is ongoing by their colonial occupiers. This only "ended" when the public became aware of it, for political and (possibly) legal reasons, clearly indicating that they would have continued with "business as usual" if the public hadn't become aware of it. What other Israeli projects are Microsoft hiding and supporting, that possibly aids Israel's genocide, is what concerns me ...
What concerns me is that Project Nimbus is a public project that is still actively being enabled by Google and Amazon. Secret projects are one thing, but largely meaningless, because companies, people and governments have shown they don't even care when they're in the open.
> To be fair in 2021 you'd be laughed out of the room (or be in a DSA conference) if you called what was happening in Palestine a "genocide".
you have a very narrow historical lens if you think a DSA conference in 2021 is the only place that has treated allegations of genocide seriously.
I'd recommend reading through [0] which has a very nice chronological timeline.
for example, way back in 1982 the UN General Assembly voted to declare the Sabra and Shatila massacre [1] an act of genocide. it was carried out against a Palestinian refugee camp in Lebanon, by a militia allied with the Israeli military, and during the Israeli invasion of Lebanon:
> In February 1983, an independent commission chaired by Irish diplomat Seán MacBride, assistant to the Secretary-General of the United Nations, concluded that the IDF, as the then occupying power over Sabra and Shatila, bore responsibility for the militia's massacre. The commission also stated that the massacre was a form of genocide.
there's also a long history of "well...it's not genocide, because genocide only comes from the Geno region of Nazi Germany, everything else is sparkling ethnic cleansing" type of rhetoric:
> At the UN-backed 2001 Durban Conference Against Racism, the majority of delegates approved a declaration that accused Israel of being a "racist apartheid state" guilty of "war crimes, acts of genocide and ethnic cleansing". Reed Brody, the then-executive director of Human Rights Watch, criticised the declaration, arguing that "Israel has committed serious crimes against Palestinian people but it is simply not accurate to use the word genocide", while Claudio Cordone, a spokesman for Amnesty International, stated that "we are not ready to make the assertion that Israel is engaged in genocide"
Yes, Microsoft was right in theory for firing the protestors, but wrong in practice because Microsoft should have listened to their employees before it got to the point they felt they had to mount a protest to get executives' attentions.
> did terminated the contract instead of ignoring it or doubling down
This was after they ignored it and doubled down for almost 3 years*. What was the total gain in profits and how many Palestinians died during that time? You’re going to ignore the full cost because they did the least they could do almost 3 years later?
* if the starting line is set to October 2022 attacks, if not how long were they making money off this contract?
In other comments replying to another user you dismissed "criticisms from the 90s", but I think that's not entirely justified. If the bad things they did in the 90s are still having bad effects today, and they built their success on those bad things, then it's not really enough just to stop doing them; they would need to actively try to right those past wrongs.
However, even in the present, the increasing intrusiveness of their update schemes, forcing people to have a Microsoft account even to install Windows, shoving AI into people's faces at every opportunity, etc., would all count as reasons I think they are bad. Also I tend to think in general that simply existing as a giant corporation with large market share is bad.
To be clear, I also think that Apple, Google, Amazon, etc., are also very very bad. I think I'd agree that these days Microsoft is on the lower end of badness among these megacorps. However, that's partly just because it's become somewhat weaker than it was at the height of its badness. You could argue that this isn't "badness" but something like "ability to implement badness" but I see those as pretty closely tied. Basically the bigger a corporation becomes, the harder it has to work to avoid being bad.
So the criticisms from the 90s that I mentioned in my other comment? Yeah, I prefer to live in the modern world. It isn't Microsoft that needs to be hit with antitrusts in 2025. It's Apple and Google. Live moves on, and in 2025, Microsoft is one of the more ethical tech companies around, unless you're one of the many sheltered people in tech that think targeted advertising is manifest evil that's on par with enabling a genocide.
I'm 40. For me, the modern world didn't just start in 2019. And the list is additive. The fact that Microsoft has been on it since the 90s doesn't stop me from also listing Google, Apple, and Amazon.
Modern by definition means the modern day, I'm not sure what 2019 was but we don't get to redefine terms for our own use. The list is only "additive" if the criticisms still apply. Your presumably best example was a corporate strategy from the 90s. Companies, just like (most) people, change. 2025 Microsoft is pro-Linux and a much better force for good than most other tech companies, yet almost invariably I find the people triggered by the mention of Microsoft tend to be relatively quiet about and/or active consumers of Apple, Amazon, Google et al.
I think you're selling this too far with "one of the more ethical tech companies around" and "a force for good". You'll have to clarify what exactly that comparison is based on.
I'm not a total fan of Apple here but it's weird to contrast them with Apple in this case when they don't enable a genocide (having a closed ecosystem is a UX decision compared to genocide). You mention that Microsoft is now "pro-Linux", but if that's your measure, many other tech companies contribute significantly more to the Linux kernel.
https://lwn.net/Articles/1031161/
With respect to anti-trust, some of their bundling decisions absolutely deserve to be scrutinized (e.g. Teams).
Furthermore, Microsoft is still doing business with the IDF. If your bar is "enabling a genocide" (presumably by being in contract with the IDF), I don't think that's changed too much, just the most egregious example of cloud services in service of that are being challenged (Unit 8200 stuff). It looks like that work is now moving the AWS though.
You're right, I was operating on the assumption this was the last of their ties before I'd properly read the article and looked into the issue, unfortunately it looks like it's still on the boycott list until they actually divest from Israeli military at the least. Apple is therefore not as unethical as the genocide-enabling companies (and isn't one of them to the best of my knowledge), but it's still far more unethical than most people in tech tend to acknowledge - their pricing practices are akin to price-gouging, including 2-3x markup on like-for-like hardware and locking you into their own accessories before the EU forced them to standardise, and the whole "walled garden" ecosystem was never anything but an excuse to limit what consumers can do with their software/hardware. They almost single-handedly raised the prices of mobile phones for the vast majority of people because other manufacturers saw what their consumers were letting them get away with. And that's before we even get started on the sweatshops.
Their laziness, greed and business acumen have left us in the position that the world's dominant personal OS is insecure, unreliable and running a protection racket with virus detection (and virus writers)
This is an ongoing rolling clusterfuck, and is entirely due to MS
That's a very dishonest framing. The article contains some not particularly subtle relativizations in various places, e.g., “ability to use SOME of its technology,” which make it clear that Microsoft is not reacting decisively here in any way, but is trying to muddle through somehow and make a few publicly visible concessions.
Furthermore, why do you think the reactions are knee-jerk? That implies a rather biased attitude on your part.
Yes it’s a good thing AND we don’t need to be celebrating companies when they finally do the bare minimum.
Nobody with any semblance of ethical, just or just plain being a basic good corporate citizen would say.. oh yeah mass surveillance of the comms of a whole population for money is in any way acceptable or ok. This shouldn’t be a tech side note this should be a total meltdown front page scandal. What a disgusting abuse of power by all involved.
But the question is do you want to actually reward behavior that is just less bad than before? Or should that reward just be in the form of less punishment? I agree the consequences should get better in relative terms, but I don't think bad behavior should be rewarded with a positive response, even if the behavior is less bad than before.
It's like, if someone steals a million dollars and then steals a thousand dollars, you don't reward them for making progress.
What kind of pressure campaign are we talking about here? And what kind of reward? Are we now buying Microsoft products because Microsoft's cloud storage is no longer allowed to be used in genocide, only Office and email? That's absurd. What this is about is public opinion, and that takes years and decades to change. And that's a good thing. If you change your tune after every Microsoft PR release, it's not you who's holding the carrot and the stick, it's Microsoft.
I disagree that we shouldn't give them their props when companies finally give in, because most are still not doing that (see Project Nimbus). The problem here is that we don't even know they have done the bare minimum yet, since this is only one contract and to my knowledge they have several, including still actively working with the IDF.
If we tally up all the good things Microsoft did and weighed them to some of the bad things, it'd be like weighing a few grains of sand versus Mount Olympus.
Are they going to rehire the employees they fired for being against this and Microsoft's support of the genocide now? It's more than just mass surveillance, and their leaders need to be held accountable.
I'm confused what this really means. Countries don't store their really secret things in Azure. So what do we think the source of this surveillance was?
> I'm confused what this really means. Countries don't store their really secret things in Azure. So what do we think the source of this surveillance was?
Why wouldn't countries store secret data in Azure, Google Cloud and AWS services? I think that this is quite common.
I think you're misunderstanding my question. I'm not saying "this story is bogus," but rather I'm saying that this sort of data is probably not the kind of data which is acquired through really secret means. Perhaps it was purchased from providers, or some other less-secret method.
Well, to their credit, they've also seen that IBM, Volkswagen and Ford were still allowed to do plenty of business with no repercussions whatsoever (that I know of).
"Unit 8200 had built an indiscriminate new system allowing its intelligence officers to collect, play back and analyse the content of cellular calls of an entire population"
During the troubles in Northern Ireland all the phones were tapped. IRA supporters knew this, so would frequently discuss fake bombing plans over the phone, sending the authorities on a wild goose chase.
>Unit 8200, the military’s elite spy agency, had violated the company’s terms of service by storing the vast trove of surveillance data in its Azure cloud platform
reliance of everything/everybody on cloud platforms already mind-boggling.
One can extrapolate it further - in a near future conflicts both sides may have their data, weapons control systems, etc. running inside the same Big Cloud Provider ... in this case would they need actual physical weapons systems? or may be it would be easier to just let those weapons control systems duke each other out in the virtual battle space provided as a service by the same Big Cloud Provider.
"Google and Amazon, both of which already hold the $1.2 billion Nimbus contract with the Israeli government, originally received a preliminary tender for the supercomputer but ultimately withdrew from contention."
My first reaction was "good on Microsoft". Then I read how it was only after a Guardian report exposed this was happening that MSFT took action. They were perfectly content to provide the services so long as it wasn't widely known.
Every single one of these companies that have enabled the genocide should be help accountable. Maybe some are trying to claim plausible deniability.
--
For those looking for direct sources on the findings of genocide in Gaza, here are several key reports and legal conclusions from human rights organizations, international courts, and genocide scholars:
3. B'Tselem (The Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories): Published their conclusion that Israel is committing genocide.
* Report ("Our Genocide"): https://www.btselem.org/publications/202507_our_genocide
4. International Court of Justice (ICJ): Ruled in January 2024 that it is plausible Israel's acts could violate the Genocide Convention.
* Case Details: https://www.icj-cij.org/case/192
Beyond these formal reports, it's crucial to acknowledge that this has been one of the most documented atrocities in history, often livestreamed by Palestinians on the ground. Their testimonies have been consistent from the beginning, yet they are frequently dismissed until a non-Palestinian, "human" source validates their lived experience.
Israel is now damaged goods. You interact with them at a reputational cost. It's only going to get worse as they don't seem to want to stop the genocide.
Kicked out? Is that what you call the One Million Plan and all the other plans like it? They were imported there because that's been the MO of the state of Israel since the Irgun and Haganah first envisioned it.
It's not a "trope" but well documented history. The Edict of Expulsion (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edict_of_Expulsion) was issued in England in 1290 and was repeated across most of western Europe for the next several hundred years. And I'm assuming/hoping you don't deny all the atrocities against Jews from the early-mid 1900s in the same region.
And it's pretty telling that you chose to say this to me and not the comment I replied to.
They are predominantly so. Ashkenazi Jews are from Eastern Europe. Sephardic Jews are from Spain. Zionism as a movement was started in Europe by Europeans. Israel is a European colony state.
Don't fool yourself, you are repeating antisemitic slurs. The Jews in Israel never left, and Zionisim is something like 2,000 years old (it's as old the Babylonian exile). Israel is as far from "colony state" as you can get - it's literally the opposite, it's an example of the native people getting their own land back.
On genetic terms, the Palestinians are virtually identical to Semitic Jews.
There's been plenty of slander to try to say they're more arab, but they're essentially close cousins.
Which leads one to believe, perhaps a large amount of the jews in the region simply moved on with the times with the new religion taking hold.
Essentially Israel/Palestine is a fight between cousins, and one side's inlaws who never actually came from the region but converted elsewhere.
So converts vs converts. Do the local converts have a say over the foreign converts?
The idea that land rights can be derived from the bible or spans of 1000s of years is silly, but the ongoing ethnic cleansing of Palestine going back to 1945 is within living memory.
I think you missed my point. I'm trying to say a people split, some left, some stayed. The part that left is now doing violence on the part that stayed, claiming ownership of the area.
The goal of the genetic stuff is to point this split out, not delineate races.
Sadly though, this conflict is full of racism. The Gazans are described as "Arabs" and therefore undeserving of the land. If it turns out the Gazans are not Arabs, but also locals to the region, then what does that mean?
> There was never a country called Israel until 1948. It was always Palestine.
Palestine was never a country before 1948, immediately prior to 1948 there was a British Mandate[0] with the name Palestine, but this mandate included land that would eventually turn into countries like Jordan(which just so happens to be a country with a Palestinian majority population). After 1948 and before 1967 the West Bank was annexed by Jordan and Gaza was occupied and administered by Egypt.
The idea of a nation called Palestine is arguably a more recent invention than the nation of Israel.
It's the same people, on the same land, practicing the same religion, speaking the same language, with the same alphabet, with the same capital, with the same place names, with the same cities, with the same core texts, with the same national holidays.
But that's somehow nothing? At this point you'd have to actually work hard to figure out what's not the same.
Israel is an example of anti-colonialism, where the original inhabitants of the land were able to take it back from invaders.
It's amazing how everything you say above is proveably false.
They are not the same people. Modern day Palestinians share more ethnic heritage with the land's original inhabitants than European Zionist settlers.
The religion of the region has been different throughout time. Judaism is one religion of that region, and not the only nor even the first.
The language is not the same. Modern Hebrew that is spoken in Israel diverges significantly from the original Hebrew, which is more closely spoke by Yemeni Jews, for example.
Everything else is in your list is done by fiat, as even the the UN and the vast, vast majority of the world do not recognize Jerusalem as the capital.
Israel is the last major European colony and it's an anachronism that will go down in history as the final failed attempt at Western Imperialism.
Israel was not formed by displacement. That's a common misconception. Jews bought lands all across Palestine in early 1900's, with bodies such as the JNF. The displacement ("Nakba") came in 1948, during the Israeli War of Independence (started by the Arabs in Palestine and abroad), and even that mostly concerned areas which participated in the war. Areas that remained peaceful integrated into Israel (today's Israeli Arabs, 23% of the population).
It wasn't started by the Palestinians. Israelis conduced ethnic cleansing operations against civilians to displace them, including biowarfare and well poisoning. It continues today, in Gaza and in the West Bank.
The article you linked refers to events during the war of 1948, when Israel was already formalized. It's establishment up to that point was primarily based on lawful acquisition, not expulsion. When it turned to an all out war, then yes, expulsion took place.
They have been deliberately displaced by Israeli's apartheid government giving Jewish people around the world a "right to return" to Israel. Except unlike the Palestinians, they were never from Israel in the first place so the term "right to return" as used by Israel is nothing but colonialist propaganda.
So you think the Jews imported by the One Million Plan and the tens of others like it were "displaced"? There's a reason that the multiplicity of Jews in Israel today are American and European immigrants with no connection to the land whatsoever.
It’s all just the ‘hopes and prayers’ of the left anyway. When someone doesn’t give a damn (like Israel right now), all the public shaming is just another version of the UN’s strongly worded letter.
Yes, the shameless and evil generally aren't to be reasoned with, in which case things will come to a head and there are other ways to stop genocides. See for example, the Nazis.
> No. You're just factually wrong. This is a made-up statement with no truth to it.
Arab colonisation of the middle east and north africa is documented history.
> Arab Jews were living peacefully side by side in Palestine before the European Zionist colonizers started coming in the 19th and 20th centuries.
You can look up historical incidences of Arab violence against Jews at any time you like. Palestine was partitioned into Jordan/Arab state/Jewish state for this reason, much like India and Pakistan was.
It's interesting how you have to go back about 1,000 years in order to try to make your false equivalency.
At no point in the plan for the partitioning of the Arab world was the safety or peace of peoples living there a consideration whatsoever. It was a convenient way to get the Jews out of Europe for the antisemites that lived there and to give the West a vassal colony to continue to serve its imperial purposes in the Middle East for destabilizing lest the Arabs otherwise unify.
Every other government in the Middle East with few exceptions are now, at this point, similarly vassalized and serve the same purpose, and any chance at deviation from that plan has been met with violence of an unsurpassed level with Israel serving as the foothold for that. The minor tribal violence you are alluding to, which was not targeted specifically at Jews, but part of general tribal spats that include Muslim on Muslim violence as well, pales in comparison to the technologized and politicized mass genocial violence in the Middle East that Israel has enabled and actively campaigned for (Iraq, Syria, Iran) for decades.
Don't tell me anything about the actions of the West or Israel in the Middle East aim for peace or reduction of violence. Jews were not spared from violence in Israel during its formation as well, with documented attacks against them in Iraq and Egypt to spur them to flee from the Arab countries to the "safety" of Israel. The Middle East was a much safer place for everyone, including Jews, before Israel was formed.
Arab colonisation being many years ago doesn’t mean it didn’t happen and doesn’t make arabs native. Here’s the Hamas leader talking about how they’re Arabs: https://x.com/eyakoby/status/1971056308939092028
> any chance at deviation from that plan has been met with violence of an unsurpassed level
Really? I thought it was because Arab leaders keep trying to destroy Israel. I think I got that impression from Arab leaders continuously saying they were going to destroy Israel, and 'the Jews' in the time between the writing of the Koran and the creation of the modern state (also still 'the jews' if you listen to Arab media).
Syria used to be Christian. Lebanon had a significant Christian population. Egypt was Egyptian and Iran was Zoroastrian. All fell after arab colonisation.
Judea became Palestine after the war in 115. Most of the population remained, stayed jewish, converted to christianism (which was just another jewish branch back then), or to one of the many other cults in the region. Their descendants are today's Palestinians. The fact that Samaritans, who are mentioned in the Bible, are still there is a good proof of this.
People didn’t refer to themselves as Palestinians until the 1960s. You can confirm this for yourself very easily.
The Arabs that lived in what is now Palestine simply called themselves Arabs, the same way that Arabs in Israel call themselves Arabs. British Palestine and Ottoman Palestine were multi ethnic states.
You say "the Jews" but you're leaving out that there are Arab Jews and European ones. Arab Jews have lived in Palestine for hundreds of years alongside other Arabs peacefully in coexistence.
The arrival of Zionist European Jews was a phenomonen of the 19th and 20th centuries.
The Zionist Jews that came from Europe brought with them a supremecist ideology that, in their eyes, justified all forms of violence committed against the Muslim, Christian, and yes, Jewish Palestians that opposed their colonization.
I don't know what you're making or misrepresenting in your statememt about Jordan and Jerusalem, but Jews have always lived in Jerusalem since the Muslims first took control of it 1400 years ago when Umar ibn El-Khattab brought back in Jews who had been expelled by the Christian rulers prior to that.
Jews have always prospered under actual religious Muslim rule, whether in Palestine, Spain, Morocco, Iran, or otherwise. Zionism is what drove a rift between Muslims and Jews in past two centuries, as prior to this there never was one.
"The Jordanians immediately expelled all the Jewish residents of East Jerusalem.[54] Mark Tessler cites John Oesterreicher as writing that during Jordanian rule, "34 out of the Old City's 35 synagogues were dynamited. Some were turned into stables, others into chicken coops.""
Which is why Palestinians should never get East Jerusalem as their capital, it's simply not theirs, not even in the nebulous way that the West Bank is.
This:
> Jews have always prospered under actual religious Muslim rule, whether in Palestine, Spain, Morocco, Iran, or otherwise. Zionism is what drove a rift between Muslims and Jews in past two centuries, as prior to this there never was one.
Is not true, as even a cursory view of the history will reveal endless massacres of Jews by Muslims.
This is completely in the context of the formation of Israel in 1948.
Also, you are lying about "endless massacres of Jews by Muslims". This is not, has never been, and continues to not be, true whatsoever.
Arabs and Muslims didn't even have antisemitism before Zionism existed. You can only look to times after Zionism with its supremeist ideology to find hostility from Arabs and Muslims specifically targeting Jews for being Jewish. It simply did not exist and they have coexisted for nearly the entirety of the history of Islam. Only when Europeans came down into the Middle East and they segmented and separated the society did this occur.
Avi Shlaim [0], an Israeli and also Arab Jew, talks extensively about the peaceful coexistence Muslims and Jews had for hundreds of years in the Middle East prior to Zionism.
Zionism tried to force a wedge between Arab Jews and Muslims that simply wasn't there beforehand.
I'm as against the genocide as you can be, but what you are saying is historically completely inaccurate. Discrimination against Jews is old, older than Israel or Zionism. The arguments against the land theft and genocide are strong enough without the hyperbole.
Serious question, what do you think is their own land? And what exactly makes you think it is their land?
Are you aware that most of the Arabs of the Holy Land came around the same time period as the Jews? There were Arabs living here previously, of course, as were there living here Jews. Half a century before the British mandate, Jerusalem was already Jewish majority.
> where they've lived for thousands of years.
The only reason that Jews in the West Bank are called settlers is because the Jews were ethnically cleansed from the West Bank in 1948, and that territory was free of Jews for 19 years. Other than those 19 years, the Jews had been here far longer than the Arab colonizers had been.
Palestine is not in Arabia but in the Levant, which was conquered by Arabs from the Byzantine Empire in the 7th c. as part of the Arab-Byzantine wars, and came under the Rashidun Caliphate, the first incarnation of the Arab Empire (which also conquered parts of Europe, BTW, not to mention that people in Morocco or Tunisia speak Arabic for pretty much the same reason people in Peru or Mexico speak Spanish). Warfare in the Levant obviously preceded the crusades by centuries and millenia, and included not only European conquests such as Greek and Roman, but also Persian and Arab conquests.
While it is true that modern Zionism originated in Europe, most Jews living in Israel have no European ancestry whatsoever. Most Jews in Israel have a recent ancestry in the Middle East and North Africa.
Even Ashkenazi Jews of a recent European ancestry (who are a minority in Israel) have genetics pointing to Middle Eastern ancestry. While it is hard to tie any group to ancient Jews, it isn't unlikely that Jews of all origins as well as Palestinian Arabs have ancient Jewish ancestry.
Just as European nationalism excluded Jews as Europeans, Arab nationalism excluded Jews as Arabs, and if there's any group that identifies as Jewish-Arab today, it is vanishingly small.
What Zionism is has not only changed considerably over time, but now, as in the past, there's great disagreement among those considering themselves Zionist on what it means. For example, as recently as a decade ago you could find a small but not negligible group of Israelis who identified as Zionsists yet were in favour of a single multi-national (or non-national) Jewish/Arab state, i.e. the same position was regarded as both Zionist and anti-Zionist by different people simultaneously. Today, many (perhaps even most) of those identifying as Zionists favour a two-state solution.
Even political Zionism is minimally defined as supporting "a home for Jews in Palestine"[1] Not only does it not require any ethnic exclusivity nor even for a national identity, it doesn't even require an independent state in the contemporary sense. Some of those who identify as Zionist take it to mean only that Jews should be able to live with some form of self-determination in Palestine, and so when they hear "anti Zionist" they take it to mean supporting the expulsion of Jews, which, of course is not what many of those who identify as anti-Zionist want. When some anti-Zionist hear the term Zionist, they take it to mean support of an exclusive ethno-national Jewish state, which, of course, is not what many of those who identify as Zionist want. The term could mean something very different to different people, to the point that the same political position can be called Zionist by some and anti-Zionist by others, which makes the term mostly useless.
I read that Wikipedia link as affrming my definition of "Political Zionism"
It focused on a Jewish home ... centred on gaining Jewish sovereignty ... and was opposed to mass migration until after sovereignty was granted
A racial state, I contend.
Definitions are only one part - apartheid is a description of what Israel has achieved, "Political Zionism" is a good candidate to describe the underlying ideology.
However you look at it, it is a catastrophe without a likely, of foreseeable, happy ending. Even the state of happiness the South Africans achieved looks elusive
It does not have to be that way. Jewish people could be secure in Israel and live in peace there, but the Israeli state seems unable and unwilling to make the compromises to bring it about.
A Jewish home isn't necessarily an exclusively Jewish home. My country is the national home of the English people, but it isn't a national home for that people exclusively (although some wish to change that). And while it certainly sees to me that the situation in Israel can best be described as apartheid, I don't see the point in using a term such as "political Zionism" that is also used by people who identify as its supporters to mean the opposite of what you say it is. I.e. some people support a binational Jewish-Arab state in the name of political Zionism. If different people have wildly different interpretations of a term - interpretations that go as far as being on opposite sides of the core issue - that term becomes useless.
As to Zionism having an explicit ethnic meaning, that is obvious and non-surprising. Political Zionism was formed in Europe at a time of ethnic and national awakening (and as a result of centuries of oppression against Jews and other ethnicities), and further shaped in the time of national struggle against colonialism and multinational empires. At least until the sixties (if not the nineties), ethnonationalism of ethnic minorities was seen as a progressive position against conservative multi-ethnic/national empires. You can see traces of such "left-wing nationalism" not only in Israel (obviously, I'm not referring to its current ruling coalition), but also in Ireland and in Asia. Ideological (rather than pragmatic) support of a Palestinian state - which is just as "racialised" as a Jewish state - is also a form of that. If you want a "feel" for that in the US, think Malcolm X or the Back-to-Africa movement, and especially Marcus Garvey, who was expressly inspired by Zionism and Irish nationalism.
Of course, even as early as the 1920s and the rise of right-wing nationalism, many on the left recognised that left-wing, "emancipatory", nationalism can quickly turn into right-wing, oppressive, nationalism and warned against that when it came to Zionism as well as other national movements of the time. I think they ended up being proven right in almost every case (including the famous examples of Israel and India), but emancipatory nationalism did play an important historical role in decolonialism, and in the case of Israel, it also helped save the lives of many Jews fleeing the horrors of oppressive nationalism (mostly in Eurpoe, but later also in the Muslim world).
But imagine Black Nationalism had succeeded and become oppressive on a national level, how hard it would have been to talk simply about "Black Nationalism", and how it would have meant different and probably opposite things to different people.
What term do you think would be useful specifically to describe the very widespread tendency in much of Israeli society to view Jews as inherently superior and deserving of favorable treatment by the state? Jewish supremacy, maybe?
This is such a perversion of the history of the holy land that I don't even see fit to correct any of it. Any reader here is welcome to read about the Muslim conquests, of which the Muslims are extremely proud.
In fact, part of that pride is calling it an the Arab conquest, even though the colonizer - Salah AlDin - was a Kurd and not an Arab.
Jews are an ethnicity and are genetically the same. Even those from Europe and those from Muslim countries (who now live in Israel after getting kicked out of Muslim countries). Stop making stuff up.
Ohhh and Muslims didn’t treat Jews “peacefully”. They were second class citizens and often massacred. Read some history.
No, Jews of today are ethnically quite diverse and have mixed significantly. There are several recognized heritages of Jews of today with known populations from North Africa, the Middle East, Iran, and also Europe. I don't deny the "Jewishness" of anyone, but say "The Jews" as if this covers all of them is wrong. There are huge swaths of Jews today that are anti-Zionist and consider Israel an abomination on religious grounds. That it is a religious goal to have a nation of Israel is a new idea driven by Christian Zionists more than Jewish ones and the political, areligious Jewish Zionists enjoy their support and will play any role to achieve their own goals. The recent newly emerging religious Jewish Zionists are a divergence from mainstream Judaism and a recent development that relies on a lot of creative interpretation and ignorance of Jewish religious texts.
And yes, Muslims and Jews lived over 1000 years far more peacefully than any time before. Jerusalem and the rest of the Palestine was at peace under Muslim rule except for the Crusades which, surprise, came from Europe.
Why do you think Jewish people are mixed? Could it that occupiers, like invading Islamic Arabs, drove them away and they mixed over time with others? Regardless of that, it is Jewish people and their culture that are indigenous to the Levant. Not the Islamic Arabs who call themselves Palestinian.
> That it is a religious goal to have a nation of Israel is a new idea driven by Christian Zionists more than Jewish ones and the political, areligious Jewish Zionists enjoy their support and will play any role to achieve their own goals.
It is literally a religious goal of Hamas and the people who voted for them (Gazans) to destroy a religion (Judaism) and to commit genocide. It is literally in their charter. They voted for it. Meanwhile, the nation of Israel has a population that is over 20% Islamic Arab and they are thriving. The reality seems to me to be the opposite of what you’re stating here.
> Jerusalem and the rest of the Palestine was at peace under Muslim rule
It seems to me like you are pro colonization when the rules are Islamic and when the suppressed are Jewish. But not in the reverse? Israel is a democracy. Surely that is preferable to a religious supremacist rule?
Other commenters are right, but I'll point out another fallacy you're pushing here.
The current situation is like somebody commits a murder. Then the community rounds up a posse and goes out to kill the murderer. Then kill the murder's family, their neighbors, the residents of the next neighborhood over, raze the neighborhoods and then take all the land for themselves.
Justice means penalizing the guilty parties, not everyone in their geographical/social group. Your definition of Justice is leaky.
But isn't that what Hamas did? Broke into homes and burned babies to death? Beheaded people? Pulled fetuses from pregnant women? Shoot up clinics and murder the entire staff and patients?
Nothing Hamas has done justifies what Israel is doing to Palestinian civilians, because collective punishment is a war crime. "But they did it first" is not a valid excuse, especially when trying to excuse mass starvation and bombing population centers.
Is it collective punishment or just really difficult to successful take down terrorists, destroy their weapons, and free hostages when they hide among civilians in a highly dense place? How would you suggest a country like Israel could definitely put an end to Hamas so their citizens are not experiencing risk? And how do you separate the “civilians” from Hamas when they voted for Hamas, support them today, and so on, knowing full well what their goals are (religious supremacy and genocide)?
Taking your post at face value (which nobody should), the argument would be to punish Hamas, and not run around shooting children in the head, or setting up snipers near hospitals or UN Aid stations - both things which are confirmed by foreign doctors and aid workers.
> Taking your post at face value (which nobody should),
The crimes of Hamas are well documented, not only by Israel who admittedly might have some bias, but also by several in the OSINT community before Hamas realized their mistake and started deleting.
You questioning it only tells us you don't know much about what happened.
> the argument would be to punish Hamas, and not run around shooting children in the head,
Exactly like we dealt with the nazis and not a single child was hurt, right?
Or maybe take "war 101" and "war 201" and learn a thing or two about both why the laws of war explicitly bans using civilians as shields and also explicitly point out that human shields can be ignored. (Yes, it does. Feel free to look it up, and as homework, consider why the laws of war points this out ao explicitly. Here is a link, I don't expect you to have tje laws of war bookmarked: https://ihl-databases.icrc.org/en/ihl-treaties/api-1977/arti...)
> Broke into homes and burned babies to death? Beheaded people? Pulled fetuses from pregnant women?
It's important to note that these things never happened, and you're still repeating them years later. The only baby that died on 10/7 was a 10 month old hit by crossfire.
I have no idea of the third, and though I feel sure it's wrong judging by the rest of what you have said, I feel obligated to check. Try it.
There are videos made by the Hamas attackers on October 7, using their own cellphones. There are recordings of cell phone calls by the same terrorists: "Dad? I killed a f**g jew just now!".
I suggest you seek out more information. Frankly this is not even under debate - there are videos from Hamas and from Gazans showing what happened. There are surveillance cameras showing them setting shelters on fire with children inside. Grenades thrown into living rooms with families. Dead women paraded around naked in the streets of Gaza (how did their clothes come off?)? Female hostages with blood on their crotch (hint: rape).
Yes, and they are. If Israel really wanted to just commit a genocide or specifically target civilians, they would have been able to act much more quickly and cause a lot more collateral damage. Is there really any doubt about this? They could have literally leveled the entire city with a munitions from air.
Getting away from the debate around your details (most of which didn't happen) ...
A singular terrorist event is not the same as an multi-decade occupation, on-going theft of land, discrimination, annexation plans, and - not least - a 2 year long genocide of tens of thousands of civilians.
> There is no place in this world for genocide. Particularly from a country that preaches "never again". Nothing you can say will change my opinion on that.
I'm not trying to change your opinion on that. I'm in complete agreement with you on that subject.
I am showing you that the accusations of genocide against Israel are beyond ridiculous. They are manufactured to favour the side that 1) provides oil, and 2) is in idealogical conflict with the United States. Most countries of the world either need oil or are similarly in an idealogical conflict with the US.
Just for example, the United Nations report that slanders the Jewish State about committing genocide starts off with this prose: "On 7 October 2023, Israel launched its military offensive in Gaza, which included airstrikes and ground operations". Does that sound like a logical summary of that day's events?
So, despite all the testimonials and video evidence to the contrary, the findings of the world's leading association of genocide scholars, despite Jewish holocaust experts, despite my own conversations with doctors on the ground ... you seek to label accusations of genocide as "beyond ridiculous" from one sentence in a UN report?
> the findings of the world's leading association of genocide scholars,
Like IAGS whose findings were widely reported until it turned out the biggest qualifications for its 500 expert members was that they had paid a $30 membership fee? And whose openly accessible member list included "Adolf Hitler"?
The emperor has no clothes and no amount of reports from the royal court of UN will change that:
It is plain for everyone to see and the emperors naked butt is disgusting.
It is also insulting to actual victims of actual genocides.
You people really are unhinged. I guess verifiable reports on the ground, from people I trust, isn't enough for you either. Literal eyeball witness accounts won't be enough for you. Mass graves won't be enough - obviously fabricated.
When this is over, people like you should be forced to go to those graves and the destruction and be made to reflect and be educated.
Just like people are now sent to Auschwitz.
You're the flip side coin equivalent of Holocaust deniers. My condolences on where you've ended up in life. Bye.
This has not been a single terrorist event. Hamas has been shooting rockets at us for almost two decades before the October 7th attacks. They are still shooting rockets at us, some have fallen yesterday and today. And I'm not even talking about the rockets shot at us from other Muslim nations, such as Yemen, that just proves that this is a Muslim against Jewish war and not an Israel against Hamas war. 19 Israelis were injured in a rocket attack from Yemen yesterday.
And how could you oppose both the occupation and annexation plans? Annexation is an end to occupation, no? I also think that the occupation has been going on for far too long, though I fault UNRWA and the PA for that as much as I fault Israel.
> Justice means penalizing the guilty parties, not everyone in their geographical/social group. Your definition of Justice is leaky.
I disagree. Your definition of justice inadvertently prevents justice. Holding Hamas accountable for the thousands of rocket attacks and the mass murder / mutilation / rape of October 7 means hunting down all of them, getting rid of their weapons, and freeing hostages. You can only do so with some degree of collateral damage since they’re hiding in civilian populations.
But also, “civilian” is debatable. It’s this same population that voted for Hamas despite their charter explicitly calling for religious genocide. It’s the same population that supports Hamas even after the mass murder / mutilation / rape of October 7, according to multiple polls. It’s the same population that has so many times turned a blind eye to the actions of Hamas.
You are thinking of "Palestinians" as a collective group, synonymous with a group of extremists who have done horrible things
Just as most of the citizens of Iran are victims of an Islamic totalitarian government, just as many Germans were victims of the fascist dictatorship that took hold of their nation, most human beings living near the southeast bit of the Levantine Sea are victims of actions outside their control.
They're collectively paying the price for horrific violence on both sides of an ugly, tragic conflict that they have no power over.
Giving those victims some sovereignty and peace would not be "rewarding" extremists, it would be taking a tiny step towards sanity.
So, do we owe Germany an apology after we obliterated it to stop the nazis?
Or is it kind of logical that when you vote actual genocidal maniacs into power and cheer for them as they return from murder and rape, you hide the hostages they took and refuse to do anything to stop them, then maybe you aren't completely innocent?
Can you make this a bit clearer for me? Quantify it? How much hardship should someone endure to make up for voting for Hamas? Losing a home? A limb? A friend? A child?
What a delightful selection of specific incidents.
In just the past two weeks Israel attacked a half dozen of its neighboring countries.
Israel itself is a belligerent Western colony that has been ethnically cleansing Palestine since the 1940s.
It is the obligation for an occupied people to resist their occupiers, and according to the UN that is up to and includes violent resistence. The entirety of Palestine has been increasingly under occupation since Israel's inception.
Countless UN resolutions highlight Israels belligerence time and again with only the US and its subservient states like Micronesia voting against the overwhelming voice of the whole rest of the world.
Israel is an evil apartheid genocial settler colonial state that has brought nothing but further war and bloodshed to the region, and nothing Zionists state can change that fact.
Lebanon’s - hezbollah has fired rockets into Israel on oct 8th 2023
Iraq - fired rockets in solidarity of Gaza
Yemen - fired rockets in solidarity of Gaza
Syria - fired rockets in solidarity of Gaza
Iran - fired the largest array of ballistic missiles to Israel after Israel bombed an consulate in Syria where Hamas and hezbolla were congregating
Qatar - that’s the only country that didn’t physically attack Israel, but they did finance Hamas for the past decade, and operate a global information war against Israel via Al Jazeera
Israel only survives as a vassal state of the US. Without US aid, political cover, and unconditional military support, they cannot exist. It is being made illegal to boycott Israel in the US, given them artificial economic advantages, and they receive a surprising amount of US government contracts especially in security and data related tech. They exploit the few remaining Palestinians for their own manual labor with unfair wages in their aparteid state.
All of what you said does nothing for the region as they continue to expand their own borders by stealing more and more land from their neighbors (they recently took MORE land from Syria as the new government took shape). Their achievements are marred by their vicious genocide of the Palestinian people in Gaza and increasingly genocidal behavior in the West Bank as well. Of course you'll economically prosper if you consider stealing and occupying a legitimate right of yours. They achieve all of this by bringing bloodshed and war to the region, which they call for from the US time and time again.
How many times has Bibi Netanyahu gone before Congress to pull the US into another war in the Middle East? The US foots the bill to weaken their neighbors so they stand out more. That's not an economic achievement to be proud of or boasting about.
They can have all the startups they want, but they have the worst human rights record of any country currently, with the largest number of condemnations in the UN of any other country but always vetoed by the US. When you don't have to worry about being judged the same as other countries, then you are free to develop your country without worry about petty things like human rights violations as long as Uncle Sam foots the security bill and sends over more contracts.
Israel and those who unconditionally support it are complicit in its genocide.
"Palestine" have declared themselves to be at war with Israel.
Syria is at war with Israel since decades.
Lebanon has been shooting rockets at Israel and preparing ground attacks. Yemen (or rather the Houtis) keep firing at Israel.
Are these the examples you want to show about Israel being bad?
Edit: Tunisia hasn't been attacked. The influencer convoy was attacked by their own flare and media claimed ot was a drone until every OSINT researchers pointed out it was a flare not a drone.
Palestine has been illegally occupied by Israel since its inception. It is not AT WAR. It is resisting occupation.
Israel has been the single most belligerent nation in the middle east, attacking and antagonizing their own so-called allies for its entire existence.
Israel is responsible for attacking the British (King David Hotel), the US (USS Liberty), all of its neighbors, and even others more distant (Tunisia). It in their nature to antagonize their neighbors because they WANT conflict. They occupy lands that once belonged to Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, and Syria. They aspire to occupy far greater regions. They are not interested in peace, only on expanding their borders. They continue to build settlements on what little land people still call Palestine. They are committing a recognized genocide in Gaza. Resisting and stopping this is not just a right, but a mandatory action according to the genocide convention.
If not for the US support of Israel, it could never act with such impunity.
> They occupy lands that once belonged to Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, and Syria. They aspire to occupy far greater regions. They are not interested in peace, only on expanding their borders. They continue to build settlements on what little land people still call Palestine.
Palestine is a relatively recent term. Long before that, the ancestors of today’s Jews occupied this region. We’re talking about the literal Bronze Age. The land NEVER belonged to Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, or Syria.
1400 years ? it was a creation of the second world war, but anyway regarding neighbors you mean other than bombing iran, syria, yemen, lebanon I believe in all these cases israel attacked first and thats in the past 12months. I think your point was meant to be more that Israel has a right to defend its self and I think most people and countries would back Israel in that right if the response had been proportionate. instead theyve killed record numbers of journalists(worst in history https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/ng-interactiv...), 70% of the dead are women and children (https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cn5wel11pgdo), more than a thousand are dead due to starvation directly caused by Israel, this isn't how wars are fought.
The modern state of Israel with its present borders were a creation of the Second World War. But if you go back in time to ~1000 BC, Jewish people occupied the entire region (much broader than just Israel), and they are the only surviving indigenous people of the region. This isn’t even controversial. Virtually all historians and scholars acknowledge this because there is literal physical evidence in the buildings at Temple Mount and elsewhere, which are all dated back to that time.
1400 years ? it was a creation of the second world war, but anyway regarding neighbors you mean other than bombing iran, syria, yemen, lebanon I believe in all these cases israel attacked first and thats in the past 12months. I think your point was meant to be more that Israel has a right to defend its self and I think most people and countries would back Israel in that right if the response had been proportionate. instead theyve killed record numbers of journalists(worst in history), 70% of the dead are women and children (tried adding links but doesnt seem to let me), more than a thousand are dead due to starvation directly caused by Israel, this isn't how wars are fought.
The point is a conflict that the victim can choose to end anytime they want isn't a genocide, no matter how UN tries to twist one of the legal definitions into something that can be interpretated as one.
You seem to be unaware of all the Palestinian hostages Israel has been taking for decades. Thousands of people locked up without trial or charges, many of them children. Please educate yourself.
Why do you use the term "completely innocent teenagers" only for Israelis? Are Palestinians teenagers guilty because of their ethnicity? Why do you ignore the many, many documented instances of torture in Israeli prisons, and the fact that the man who runs that prison system, Itamar Ben Gvir, idolizes a mass shooter who murdered Palestinians and has been convicted for supporting terrorism?
The people at the Nova festival wasn't throwing rocks at police or military when they were abducted. Neither were they trying to smuggle bombs, slash throats, stab elderly or any of the other things Palestinian Arabs get locked up for.
That is what I meant by completely innocent.
edit:
Also, any reason why you mention Ben Gvir but not the many Palestinian Arab leaders who says worse?
Any reason you don't mention the hundreds of thousands of Israelis who fill the street to protest its current government and the absolute lack of anyone who protests Hamas in the streets of Gaza?
You just ignored the fact that the people Israel rounds up haven't been charged with a crime, let alone convicted. Israel rounded up 1500 people this month simply because they were Palestinian and live in a particular village.
There is no justification for Israel's occupation and apartheid of Palestine. The attacks on civilians are unjustifiable as well but the trigger for them wasn't random - Hamas never would have come to power if Israel didn't occupy Palestine, let alone fund Hamas with the explicit stayed goal by Benjamin Netanyahu to divide Palestinian politics.
Look to Israel, the source of decades of suffering for everyone in the region, including its own citizens whom it exposes to retaliatory violence in response to the violence it delivers to its neighbors.
That would be a valid point if they were guilty of "occupation and apartheid of Palestine" and the situation wasn't just a military administration of land that has been unclaimed since 1917 and the collapse of the Ottoman empire.
Yes, I know you're deeply steeped in Israeli propaganda, that doesn't mean you have to function as a mouthpiece for it.
Hopefully you have decades left in your life. One from now, I would be immensely grateful if you emailed me and let me know your perspective on your past-self's defense of genocide.
Of course there is a difference. And if you did some kind of scoring exercise you may be able to say that one entity is objectively worse than the other. But so what? That score does not justify the killing of innocent people by either side.
The article is discussing "mass surveilance" of millions of phone calls per day. Whatever scenario you're trying to describe isn't at all reflective of what's being discussed here.
At least, not without the Palestinians being virtually wiped out, cause that's how long we'll be waiting for Israel to do the right thing. We don't even know for sure how many are dead, but the vast majority of deaths during genocides are counted after it's over, least of all when there's so much rubble and so many whole families have been wiped out.
it's a jing jang thing.
soon there will be some one else who will be a tastier roast.
but as an Israeli im really impressed they were able to use so much compute before someone checked their activity report.
I mean this was not just parking space they were using, stakes were high!
it's 2025 and (still) money talks.
Have you not seen any news coming out of Gaza for the past two years? It's a desolate flattened lunarscape. Israel never had any intent of avoiding civilian deaths. Quite the contrary in fact and they still have their eyes on the West Bank.
> It's a desolate flattened lunarscape. Israel never had any intent of avoiding civilian deaths.
So you think they managed to destroy so many buildings and only killed ~65k people (about half militants) out of 2 million by not avoiding civilian deaths? If half the buildings are destroyed, we would expect a million dead if there were no efforts to avoid civilian deaths.
Do you think Israel makes no efforts to avoid civilian deaths? If you were presented with easily verifiable proof that they do avoid it (via both their own reporting, international reporting, and Palestinians themselves), would you retract your statement? Are there any facts which would change your mind? I ask because these facts are easily accessible, and I'm happy to provide them with many sources, but only if providing them isn't a total waste of time because it's become a pseudo-religious belief.
They don't actively civilian deaths, they just don't particularly care about them for pragmatic reasons, because killing a million people is much less plausibly denial genocide that wouldn't fulfil the former conspiracy theory and now publicly-stated gaol of Netanyahu to subsume Gaza into the rest of former Palestine. Is that not enough evidence for you? Besides that, if you truly believe Israel's version of events that at least 30,000 of those people were "militants" (the ANC and Viet Cong were also militants and terrorists), do you really believe it's possible to get a ~50% collateral damage rate when you care about innocent civilians? Also, the 60K figure has been stuck there for a long time in an ongoing genocide and famine. Once the dust settles and Israel has let the UN in, that figure will go up by a factor of at least two or three.
> do you really believe it's possible to get a ~50% collateral damage rate when you care about innocent civilians?
You should look up civilian death rate in previous wars, even recent ones. Civilian deaths typically outnumber combatant deaths by a factor of at least 2:1, often more like 6:1, and sometimes more.
Who else? The people actually holding the hostages, perhaps.
Because you surely mistakenly implied here that All Gazans categorically are responsible for the hostage-taking and "deserve" to be killed as a consequence of that.
Your use of language betrays your feelings. You are disgusting.
Why would anyone in Palestine, including Gaza, care about helping the people who have occupied them since 1948, with the help of the Brits and funding of the US?
No, it's just been so isolated that only Israel can control who and what goes in and out, to the point NGOs have described it for decades as the world's biggest open air concentration camp. I don't condone the horrible things Hamas did (that were actually proven and not later disproven hasbara, like the rapes), but I'm also not arrogant enough to tell an occupied people how they should be resisting their occupiers, especially when the target is a military outpost (which is essentially what the kibbutz was) mere miles from Gaza and being used as a base largely by standing members of the IDF and their families (i.e. the occupying force). Desperate people take desperate measures, who knew? The Irgun and Haganah probably should have thought about that before they violently persuaded the British into giving them a "homeland" that already had a people - including Jews and Christians - living in relative peace on it for almost a thousand years.
> This war that European Jews started in 1948 when they decided to attack and invade Palestine spans 2 continents, and more if you include the various attacks elsewhere.
This is extremely ignorant. Jews have lived in Israel continuously for 3000 years. The modern Zionist migration, which started in the late 19th century (far from the first such movement for the Jews, and far from the last we've seen globally for all peoples), was met with violence by the Arabs with pogroms and organized violence starting in the 1920s. It was the Arab nations who attacked the Jews in 1948, not the other way around, and both Jews and Arabs were displaced in the war. Prior to then, there was no land "stolen" by Jews, just land legally purchased from Arab landowners. We'll ignore the fact that the Muslim caliphates and Ottomans stole the land in the first place and focus on the modern conflict. We can also ignore the repeated mass-murders / pogroms of Jews throughout Israel and the rest of the Arab/Muslim world in the 19th, 18th, 17th, 16th, and prior centuries, since acknowledging that Jews were repeatedly killed in Safed and elsewhere would require you to acknowledge they existed there and were oppressed by the people and dhimmi laws of the Muslim empires.
The Arabs were and are the equivalent of the xenophobic Trump supporters in the US - they didn't want Jews coming in, buying land, working and thriving, etc. Do you also support violence against non-white migrants in the west?
No, it isn't ignorant, it's history, and pointing to other historical examples of colonialism and imperialism doesn't make modern colonialist states legitimate. Romans lived in the UK over a thousand years ago, but that wouldn't give their descendants in modern Italians the right to occupy the UK, and us native Brits would be well within our right to fight back any invading and occupying force whether the invading and occupying force likes it or not. Muslims, Jews and Christians lived in relative peace in Palestine for almost a thousand years before the British put Israel there.
The British not only didn't put Israel there, they actually fought against the Jews and supported the Arab armies in 1948, after previously restricting Jewish migration during the Holocaust (contributing to many Jewish deaths). Modern Zionism began 30 years before the Brits took control.
Thank you. Although I have no personal interest in the outcomes of this conflict, it is astounding to see how these basic historical facts are not only unknown to so many people who hold strong opinions on the Israel-Gaza conflict, but also outright denied. I guess this must also be how Holocaust denialism was ever a thing.
Do you also suggest Jewish families get back land and businesses that they lost in countries in the region in the process?
Because more Jews were squeezed into Israel than Arabs who were squeezed out.
These Jews also lost everything.
And unlike Israeli Arabs who at least from the declaration of Israel got an invitation to stay there as citizens, this option was not offered to the Jews of surrounding nations.
Furthermore, if you want to go back in history, note that Israel was not originally suggested because of WW2 and Holocaust, but decades before because of Muslim harassment of the Jewish minorities in their countries.
Just like Pakistan was created as a national home for Muslims to protect them from Hindus.
Feel free to see for yourself and also to ask why absolutely nobody in UN or the "unbiased" media or schools has told you this before...
"Squeezed"? I think you mean invited. Assuming you're not being disingenuous, which is unlikely given your other comments and clear hate for Palestinians, maybe you should look at the One Million Plan and the many similar movements by Israel to import tens of millions of Jews into the area since 1948, and the many atrocities like Deir Yassin that forced Palestinians out. Israel has been a long time in the making, since the time of the Irgun and Haganah at least, and none of the current situation is accidental.
The amount of intelligence to suggest there will be an attack on specific places at specific times is contextual and not comparably equal.
Every time I hear or read that expression, I stop taking the comment seriously because it attempts to shut down dialogue with a cute, esoteric phrase instead of fostering a discussion about a serious retrospective.
This isn't evidence of a false flag attack. If I don't change the oil in my car because I'm lazy then my motor seizes I didn't "purposefully destroy my own car"
Yes, Netanyahu thought that pulling out of Gaza completely, giving them money and allowing them to hold jobs in Israel would improve their economic standing enough to make them docile enough to not attack. He was obviously wrong.
And preferring them to the PLO in the wake of the second intifada was reasonable. All Palestinian groups claim to want to kill all Jews, but at that point in time the PLO had actually done it for decades. For the record, the PLO still has the pay-to-slay program...
Netanyahu preferred Hamas to the PLO in order to guarantee that no unified Palestinian movement might arise. The way to do that, according to Netanyahu, was to strengthen the Islamist Hamas in Gaza at the expense of its rival, the Fatah-dominated PLO in the West Bank.
“Anyone who wants to prevent the creation of a Palestinian state needs to support strengthening Hamas,” said Netanyahu at a Likud party meeting in 2019. “This is part of our strategy, to divide the Palestinians between those in Gaza and those in Judea and Samaria.”
Israel, despite its PR, never actually took its foot off Gaza conpletely, continuing regular unprovoked cross-border killings of civilians within Gaza, among other means of exercising control and preventing economic development and activity (though for preventing economic activity specifically, other means were more significant, mainly the intermittent blockade before 2007 and the full blockade from 2007 on.)
A little humility would be in order here. "I am not aware of this" is quite different than "there is no evidence whatsoever." The latter comment implies you are aware of the reporting and issues and have carefully weighed them.
This is something that has been discussed in major Israeli media publications.
You couldn't know (but you could have guessed) this but as an Israeli I'm well aware what appeared in major Israeli media publications and this didn't.
"Microsoft changes company slogan to 'Allah Akbar Surveillance for the Future of Glorious Jihad"
"Microsoft Pledges Billions of Dollars to Help Hamas Rebuild Tunnels That Were Used to Invade Israel".
I wonder how the Jewish employees at Micro$oft don't quit en masse...I guess people need income/have families to think about, but still... Preventing Israel from using MS tech to protect itself from terrorist attacks is pretty disgusting. Highly recommend Douglas Murray's (extremely disturbing and sad) book "On Democracies and Death Cults: Israel and the Future of Western Civilization" (warning: includes horrific accounts of extreme violence against Israeli civilians)
> I wonder how the Jewish employees at Micro$oft don't quit en masse...
I suspect the sensible ones are keeping a low profile and praying for it all to be over, much like the Palestinians (except they are starving in a wasteland not working for Microsoft).
> Microsoft told Israeli officials late last week that Unit 8200, the military’s elite spy agency, had violated the company’s terms of service by storing the vast trove of surveillance data in its Azure cloud platform
What's the protocol when a client stores data that violates their terms of service? Delete it immediately? Retain it until the client can retrieve a backup? Deny access until they sign a new contract?
I suspect that really depends on the content. What does Microsoft do when it's CSAM? They can't legally posses it but can't legally delete it because that would be destroying evidence. I'm sure there's a process.
There was an interesting point in the earlier article on this, where Microsoft tried to push their Israeli employees under a bus. They claimed their Israeli employees had lied to them about the use of Azure for war and civilian harm because they held more allegiance to their army than to Microsoft.
Now obviously, this was a lie, but the implication is staggering: Microsoft can't trust it's own employees in Israel, and believes they're lying to the mothership! And if microsoft can't trust them, surely no one else should either!
Unrelated, I knew I recognised that name, thank you for everything you do, I've made a few commits to T4P myself in the last few months and can't imagine the regular work that must go into it.
The op did not say Jews, he said Israelis. Apparently a poll by Haaretz found that 47% of respondents wanted to "kill every man, woman, and child in Gaza." 87% wanted complete expelsure of all Palestinians. So, the op is not quite right to say majority explicitly want to kill children, but regardless, it is frankly gross that you heard a criticism of a nation and immediately jumped to islamophobia.
For what it's worth, I agree about the Islamophobia. However, the OP in question does have a consistent track record of collectively blaming Jews (particularly whichever ones they think are Ashkenazi) for everything going on in Israel (which, notably, is not majority Ashkenazi). Their adjacent response reflects this.
(It's sad that I have to say this, but to ensure that my position on I/P is clear: Israel is committing war crimes and is currently litigating a campaign that isn't justifiable on strategic much less basic humanitarian terms.)
It's bizarre to me to see people litigating ethno religious debate on this tech forum. The continued existence of racism into the 21st century baffles me. It's so obviously irrational to be racist I'm especially surprised to see it represented here.
Wtf? You can't post like this here, and we've banned this account.
I suppose I'd better add that yes, we have banned accounts for posting the reverse as well. Religious flamewar is not allowed here, regardless of which religion people have a problem with. Neither is using HN primarily for political/ideological and/or nationalistic battle, which this account has been doing egregiously—enough so that I'm surprised we didn't ban it earlier.
some muslims believe it is acceptable to kill children. These are individuals.
The israeli democratically elected government feels it is acceptable to children, and has, for the past two years employed a campaign of systematic destruction against the palestinian children.
The majority of citizens agree with this. That’s… I don’t know how to describe it.
I think a significantly more parsimonious explanation is that Israel is an extremely flawed democracy, and that its political leadership (namely Netanyahu) are not directly accountable to the public will.
Polling in Israel appears to reflect this[1].
This is a recurring theme in MENA politics: even the most democratically "colored" countries in the region consistently put political preservation over long team regional interests. Israel's recent version of this is arguably the most despicable in terms of outcomes, but it's not particularly unique.
> The decision has not affected Microsoft’s wider commercial relationship with the IDF, which is a longstanding client and will retain access to other services. The termination will raise questions within Israel about the policy of holding sensitive military data in a third-party cloud hosted overseas.
It's worth noting that even after finding out the "most moral" army is conducting mass surveillance, they're still happy to provide them services.
Doesn't every army conduct "mass surveillance"? What do you think all those satellites with cameras are doing orbiting the planet?
Wouldn't the opposite be incredibly immoral? Attacking/bombing/etc without large scale surveillance would largely mean increased collateral damage.
Are you seriously equating observing an area using satellites with indiscriminately monitoring everyone's calls, messages, and possibly hacking their devices?
Militaries do that too. Signals Intelligence has been thing since radios were used by the military. I bet you that in Ukraine the moment you fire up any RF emitter it's showing up on someone's spectrum analyzer. And if it's unencrypted or a broken encryption they'll probably be decoding and logging the transmission.
> bet you that in Ukraine the moment you fire up any RF emitter
The assertion was that "every army" is doing it, not that it's happening in active warzones.
Given lackluster response to the recent attempts of the "democratic" governments to do very much the same to their own citizens, I daresay not many are particularly impressed.
Additionally, there is observation AI face tracking of all movements of Palestinians in the West Bank, who live under occupation. While other governments may also conduct monitoring of their citizens to varying degrees, the distinction is that they are monitoring citizens, not using monitoring to enforce military apartheid.
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And not in a war zone, even. (West Bank is governed by Israel.)
The West Bank is occupied by Israel and Israel has overall control, but it is broken up into a whole bunch of tiny administrative regions, some of which are administered by the PA and some of which are administered directly by Israel.
Gee i wonder what happens if Israel just let the west bank be. Wait…i know what will happen
Rocket factories, like the one that was discovered week ago https://www.ynetnews.com/article/bjbqu9qolx
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Perhaps the actual moral choice isn’t attacking blindly or mass surveillance of an occupied nation - it’s peace?
Regardless, the death toll in gaza (somewhere between 45,000 and 600,000) suggests that this mass surveillance isn’t being used effectively to reduce the death toll. It also doesn’t take mass surveillance to know that bombing hospitals and schools is going to kill innocent people.
You're assuming the objective is to lower the civilian casualties. From the statements of prominent Israeli ministers and the actual behavior of the bombardment it's pretty clear that, for the Israeli government, killing civilians is a feature, not a bug
> Regardless, the death toll in gaza (somewhere between 45,000 and 600,000) suggests that this mass surveillance isn’t being used effectively to reduce the death toll.
Keep in mind deaths published by the Gaza(Hamas) ministry of health do not differentiate civilian vs combatant deaths at all.
That’s true, but of the 65,063 deaths reported by the GHM, at least 18,500 of them are children, 217 journalists, 120 academics, and 224 humanitarian aid workers.
And that 65k number does not include indirect deaths - i.e. deaths by starvation, or death from something that could have been easily survived if there were still hospitals instead of rubble. Which is where the 680,000 number comes from - the largest estimate of how many may have been killed directly and indirectly by this genocidal war.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casualties_of_the_Gaza_war
> at least 18,500 of them are children, 217 journalists, 120 academics, and 224 humanitarian aid workers
From my understanding GHM numbers don't break these figures for those that are combatants either, the population overall is quite young and Hamas is known to use child soldiers as well. Journalists(along with doctors) in Gaza have even been themselves involved in holding hostages for Hamas[0]. There are many issues like this which significantly complicate separating combatant deaths from non-combatant deaths.
> And that 65k number does not include indirect deaths - i.e. deaths by starvation, or death from something that could have been easily survived if there were still hospitals instead of rubble.
The 65k is AFAIU not even advertised by the GHM as confirmed deaths(i.e. deaths with confirmed identities), it's an estimate from an organization(Hamas) which is highly incentivized to report the highest figures that are believable internationally. There are not any incentives for them to underestimate casualties since they use casualties figures for propaganda purposes and will use the highest figures they can come up with while maintaining some level of credibility.
It's also unlikely there are many deaths that can be attributed directly to starvation, while there may be food insecurity issues there is still sufficient aid reaching Gaza to largely prevent deaths from starvation. There are countries in the world where there is actual famine and pictures/videos from those places(i.e. those taken out in the open on the streets) look nothing like those from Gaza. Even organizations like the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs have been known to put out(and subsequently walk back) blatantly false information[1] to make it appear the situation is worse than it actually is.
> Which is where the 680,000 number comes from - the largest estimate of how many may have been killed directly and indirectly by this genocidal war.
Numbers 10x those put out by the GHM(which is already highly incentivized to inflate casualty figures) are not remotely credible.
IMO the figures put out by the GHM are likely within the correct order of magnitude, keeping in mind that those figures include combatant deaths. For a conflict like this which involves urban warfare(where similar conflicts historically have had very high casualties) such casualty figures certainly don't appear to be unusually high.
Claims of genocide made against Israel simply do not stand up to scrutiny. Civilian deaths are largely in line with what would expect for a war like this, especially one where enemy combatants are not in uniform and intentionally hide amongst the civilian population and fight from civilian areas(which is of course a war crime). There are strong incentives both internationally and domestically for Israel to minimize civilian casualties as much as feasible.
If intelligence from surveillance increases combatant deaths then it could be expected that the death figures like those from the GHM(which include combatant deaths) may rise even if the actual civilian casualty rate decreases.
[0] https://www.cnn.com/2024/07/19/middleeast/gaza-neighborhood-...
[1] https://www.pbs.org/newshour/world/how-one-un-leaders-mistak...
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> who knows better than the united fucking nations
The UN is one of the organizations that is heavily responsible for perpetuating this conflict, from promoting terrorism via UNRWA schools[0] to employing terrorists[1] and those who sympathize with terrorists[2]. These[3] sort of biased UN reports in general tend to be deeply flawed and do not stand up to even basic scrutiny[4].
> thinks murdering children is ok because heyyy some of them are child soldiers. Sounds good.
Do you really think 17 year olds can't also be combatants? The Gaza(Hamas) Health Ministry last I checked counts children as anyone below the age of 18.
[0] https://www.newsweek.com/your-tax-dollars-are-being-used-tea...
[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2024/01/28/world/middleeast/gaza-unr...
[2] https://www.telegraph.co.uk/global-health/terror-and-securit...
[3] https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/un-geneva-inquiry-israel-gaza-...
[4] https://unwatch.org/un-watch-rebuttal-legal-analysis-of-pill...
> from promoting terrorism via UNRWA schools
Massive eyeroll. These stories you've linked to are overcooked propaganda, where any teacher who thinks palestinians are being treated poorly - because they are living in an apartheid state, essentially an open-air prison - is labelled as promoting hate or terrorism.
You could just as easily write a report about israeli schools teaching hate, and promoting terrorism if you sat in and heard how they teach a skewed version of the history of the conflict, or cherry pick teachers who's social media was angry in the wake of oct 7th. Harder story to sell to the ny times tho.
17 year olds can be combatants. Sure. So either all of the dead children are 17 year old combatants or you’re ok with some child murder. Exactly how much child murder are you ok with?
How much journalist murder are you ok with?
How much aid worker murder are you ok with?
How much collective punishment are you ok with?
All of these things are happening - there is no doubt - the only thing we’re debating is exactly how much has happened. Is there a number you wouldn’t be ok with? What specific percentage of the >65k dead would have to be innocent before you’d have a problem with it? 50%… 75%… 95%?
> These stories you've linked to are overcooked propaganda, where any teacher who thinks palestinians are being treated poorly - because they are living in an apartheid state, essentially an open-air prison - is labelled as promoting hate or terrorism.
The issue is far more complex than Palestinians being treated poorly, they are also treated poorly by their own rulers. Extremist ideologies are pervasive within Palestine, just look up any Palestinian opinion polling. That a very large percentage of Palestinians are taught and hold extremist ideologies is well documented. Also a military occupation is not equivalent to an apartheid state, Apartheid is segregation/discrimination based on race, the sort of discrimination you see under military occupation in regards to Israel is discrimination based on citizenship, which is a form of discrimination virtually all countries practice to various degrees.
> You could just as easily write a report about israeli schools teaching hate, and promoting terrorism if you sat in and heard how they teach a skewed version of the history of the conflict, or cherry pick teachers who's social media was angry in the wake of oct 7th. Harder story to sell to the ny times tho.
Those UNRWA teachers weren't angry in the wake of oct 7th, they were celebrating the attacks.
What percentage of the population of Palestinian governed territories(i.e. West Bank Areas A/B and Gaza) is Jewish...0%
What percentage of the population of Israeli governed territories is Muslim...around 20%
Seems pretty clear to me which side has the bigger problem with teaching intolerant ideologies.
> 17 year olds can be combatants. Sure. So either all of the dead children are 17 year old combatants or you’re ok with some child murder. Exactly how much child murder are you ok with?
My point was simply that casualty numbers are complex and that one can't simply equate Children to non-combatants/civilians.
> All of these things are happening - there is no doubt - the only thing we’re debating is exactly how much has happened. Is there a number you wouldn’t be ok with? What specific percentage of the >65k dead would have to be innocent before you’d have a problem with it? 50%… 75%… 95%?
There should be 0 civilian casualties, but those civilian deaths that do happen are almost entirely due to Hamas fighting from within civilian areas(which is of course a war crime). Unfortunately causing civilian casualties is part of the Hamas strategy[0]. When one fails to recognize the side is intentionally inducing civilian casualties then finding a solution will be much harder.
From a simple incentives analysis if one allows the strategy of using human shields to be an effective military strategy...then that would further incentivize combatants like Hamas to use human shields even more. The rules of war are deliberately written in a way that allows parties to conduct warfare, otherwise nobody would follow those rules of war. This is one reason why collateral damage is not considered a war crime while deliberately using human shields is a war crime.
[0] https://www.cnn.com/2024/06/11/middleeast/sinwar-hamas-israe...
Even the Gaza Health Ministry claims only 68,000, so I presume that your 600,000 is a typo.
Gaza Health Ministry only counts those that show up at hospitals. The first big Lancet study a year ago estimated 200k. I've seen more recent studies estimate higher, with an additional year of killings.
Also, Israel has attacked or destroyed most hospitals in Gaza. So the Health Ministry's counting is obviously hindered.
I don't believe that what you're saying is correct at all.
Only 34,344 of the GHM estimate are confirmed identities. The rest of either missing but presumed dead or gross adjustments. They are open about using "media reports to assess deaths in the north of Gaza".
The Lancet study published in January 2025 estimated 70,000 as of October, 2024. This is higher than the GHM estimate, but I can't find anything close to your 200k estimate.
So you may believe in your estimates, but they are many multiples larger than any other credible source that I can find... so it's odd to wave these figures around without any sources, links, etc.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/sep/12/israeli-ex-com...
Or maybe that man is a hamas spy, right?
It’s literally the same numbers as the posted ones, and exactly aligned with what I’m saying.
> The current official toll is 64,718 Palestinians killed in Gaza and 163,859 injured, since the start of the war on 7 October 2023
You may have been misled by the headline “X killed or injured”.. those are two different things, and we’re talking about the number killed.
I don’t know if those numbers are accurate (the article about the IDF solider claims it is), but I’m not even questioning that. The GP is claiming that an order of magnitude more people have been killed than even GMH claims.
Nice cherry-picking
> Halevi stepped down as chief of staff in March after leading the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) for the first 17 months of the war, which is now approaching its second anniversary.
> The retired general told a community meeting in southern Israel earlier this week that more than 10% of Gaza’s 2.2 million population had been killed or injured – “more than 200,000 people”.
The point is that we know 64,000 is almost certainly an undercount. Notably it hasn't changed much in the last year since the Hamas ministry of health collapsed.
The commenter above is correct in saying the bound of deaths is very likely between 45,000 and 600,000. We have good reason to suspect it was over 100,000 late last year. We won't know the actual number until an independent assessment can occur.
You are using the "more than 200,000 people" quote to imply that the GHM estimate of 64,718 is wrong, but it is completely in line with it. There is nothing about this revelation that suggests the existing estimates are too low. I don't know what I'm supposedly cherry-picking.
More explicitly: 64,718 killed + 163,859 injured =~ "more than 200,000 people"
I don't understand what basis you (and other commenters) have to suggest that these estimates are all wrong, you merely say "we have good reason". What reason?
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GP here. The GMH number doesn’t include indirect deaths, i.e. all the deaths that happen because of war that aren’t bullets and bombs. Disease, famine, not getting cancer screenings or antibiotics because all the hospitals have been blown up… that stuff.
So while 680k (the current highest estimate) is probably higher than reality, god i hope it is, it’s also true that reality is probably much higher than the current GMH numbers.
The Lancet article the GP is probably referencing is probably this one: https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6...
Unfortunately not a typo:
https://www.un.org/unispal/document/press-briefing-francesca...
“65,000 is the number of Palestinians are certain killed, including over, of which 75% are women and children.
In fact, we shall start the thinking of 680,000, because this is the number that some scholars and scientists claim being the real death toll in Gaza.
And it would be hard to be able to prove or disprove this number, especially if investigators and others remained banned from entering the occupied Palestinian territory, and particularly the Gaza Strip.”
The death toll could be that high. I hope to hell it isn’t. But we don’t know and won’t know until the killing stops. We do know that tens of thousands of innocent people have been killed, and at least 150,000 people injured.
I don’t think her statements aren’t even factual: the current estimates aren’t the confirmed identities, they include estimates for missing and presumed dead. You don’t think the GHM would publish larger estimates if 1/3 of every living person in Gaza was missing or dead? It’s hard to have an objective conversation when numbers are just made up.
I am not asserting a specific number. There have been between 65,000 and 680,000 gazans murdered by the idf directly and indirectly. I think it’s unlikely the number is as high as 680k, but there is absolute chaos on the ground, doctors and hospitals and records destroyed. We won’t know until the slaughter stops what number is real.
If you want to let the lack of a specific number hold you up while the killing continues, that’s up to you.
If you're basing this on the Lancet letter about indirect deaths, that's an estimate that includes future deaths that could be linked to past events of the war. So "have been" isn't the right tense.
It's also non-peer-reviewed, and based on rather arbitrarily picking a multiplier of 15x from a range of past conflicts' multipliers. One author described the figure as "purely illustrative" in a now-deleted tweet.
I mean sure, you are just asserting a range. It is also true that there have been between 0 and 2,000,000 gazans killed by the IDF, but this fact does not do anything useful in discussing the issue. (And just like the 680,000 gazans "murdered by the IDF" it is nearly impossible to be accurate, fabrication because it defies reality.)
Sure 0-2mil is possible, as is all the atoms in your body aligning and allowing you to step thru a wall.
But those who are well informed agree it the data supports a number above 45k, probably above 65k, and the highest estimate published is 680k. If we use a higher number we are just making shit up. If we use a lower number we are choosing to ignore a data point without a specific reason to write it off. “It defies reality” isn’t an actual reason - it’s just an assertion that it’s wrong. Neither is “wouldn’t the GMH cite higher numbers?” - how would you confirm that 1/3 of people in your city are still alive if people are scattered, communication is down, and an unknown number of people have fled?
but either way, the tens of thousands of innocents killed and the complete destruction of the infrastructure of gaza is appalling - and arguing about specific numbers is pretty pointless if we don’t agree on that.
You are missing my point. To me it seems like 680k is just making shit up. Why is this reasonable? I can't even find what this "data point" is based on, so I'm not sure what I am supposedly ignoring! Just say where it is coming from, that isn't a person throwing out a random number.
I would love to be "well-informed", but how can I get there with hearsay?
> Neither is “wouldn’t the GMH cite higher numbers?” - how would you confirm that 1/3 of people in your city are still alive if people are scattered, communication is down, and an unknown number of people have fled?
Once again, the 68k figure is not confirmed! This is already an estimate. The figure for confirmed identifies is much lower, around ~35k. So this is a totally false argument. I'm not saying the estimate is wrong, I'm just saying that if there was a reason for the estimate to be 1/3 of people in Gaza, that's what they would say.
While I agree the "who is more morally right" is owned to a higher degree by the Palestinians than the Israelis at the moment, I think people are missing a key shift in global politics.
Virtually all of the discourse on Israel-Palestine concerns moral righteousness or moral shame. I think the era of moral arguments in geopolitics is coming to an end, because the unipolar or Communist-Capitalist bipolar world combined with the Holocaust that enabled geopolitical moral arguments is basically dead.
It might just be my interest in global affairs spiking to avoid the constant bad news from the Trump administration, but I think we are entering a much more turbulent (and historically normal) period of realist/self-interest directed foreign policy. The US isn't around to be "good cop" (I can't emphasize the quotes around "good" enough).
I think this is why we are surrounded by the sense that authoritarianism is on the rise. The US won't care if you are democratic or authoritarian. The US won't care if you invade your neighbor if it doesn't disrupt them too much. Or the US just plain doesn't care at all.
So it's my general opinion that even if the Palestinians are more morally righteous in the great moral book-pounding, history-pointing, casualty-counting endless debate ... the era where that mattered has come to an end. Alas, I think we are entering a might-makes-right era of world politics, especially in the Middle East, and especially since the US has its own oil now from the Dakota shale fracking.
> Wouldn't the opposite be incredibly immoral? Attacking/bombing/etc without large scale surveillance would largely mean increased collateral damage.
The concern is who gets to decide what is or isn't a legitimate target? Today's heroes might be tomorrow's victims. I'd rather no one have that much power over others.
It would be pretty difficult for the IDF to increase their level of collateral damage.
In 1945, about ~90k people died over 2 days from the Tokyo Firebombing. Do you think it would be difficult for any modern millitary - that intentionally wanted to cause as much collateral damage as possible - to greatly exceed that number?
Not sure what is your point. The Israeli military could throw a few atomic bombs and wipe out the entire population in Gaza. That they don't is a sign of restraint for you?
It shows the poster they responded to was wrong when they said "It would be pretty difficult for the IDF to increase their level of collateral damage.".
It wouldn't be difficult at all to increase collateral damage, just fight like they did during ww2 and collateral damage would skyrocket.
The point is that they could do similar attacks to the Tokyo firebombing (or much worse), but choose not to.
Yes, that is a sign of restraint, obviously.
80% of buildings in Gaza are destroyed. There are well documented cases of arbitrary killings of civilians and attacks on hospitals. IDF is routinely demanding entire cities to be evacuated, knowing that not all people can comply with such an order. Multiple war crimes and crimes against humanity investigations have been opened by national and international prosecutors.
It is very obvious that the only restraint that the IDF is showing is that they do not kill every single civilian on sight.
The only thing it's a sign of is that the Israelis face restraints from political and PR pressures that did not apply to bombing Tokyo.
Arguing that mass surveillance is not unethical but actually a way to save lives is pretty disingenuous, absurdly so considering how little the country wielding it cares about collateral damage.
Holy crap you’re totally right
>Attacking/bombing/etc without large scale surveillance would largely mean increased collateral damage.
That would only be true if your goal was not to completely obliterate the population you are attacking and bombing, as Israel has demonstrated.
Since the Oct 7 attacks the Palestinian population has not shrunk. War deaths have roughly equalled births.
Are you claiming that the IDF is trying their hardest to kill all the Palestinians they can, and that this is the best they can do? Really?
I'm too late to edit my previous reply, but wanted to add a few sources so here we go -
Fact checking services debunking the claim of population not shrinking since October 2023:
https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2024/dec/06/instagram-...
https://www.aap.com.au/factcheck/gaza-population-growth-proj...
Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics' population estimates, as of July 2025 - down 6% in one year since 2024, which is 10% below original forecasts for 2025:
https://www.pcbs.gov.ps/portals/_pcbs/PressRelease/Press_En_... (3rd section of page 2; though the whole document is worth reading)
You're spreading misinformation (quite likely unintentionally). No data has been released supporting the claim that the population has stayed the same, what was wrongly spread was a US intelligence assessment of expected population which was made before the October 7th attack predicting future population growth, and used by many people as if it had remained accurate despite all the killing,
Two things: 1. The death toll has shown that this is the most indiscriminate bombings (Biden's own words) and deaths of civilians in recent memory. So, you could argue the tech is aiding in killing key civil infra staff
2. Sure, they can surveil, let them do it on their own data centers. It's actually strange that they would put such data/tech on a 3rd party data center to begin with.
Where does "most moral" come from?
Per Wikipedia, the idea that the IDF is the "most moral army in the world" comes from Colonel Richard Kemp, a retired British army officer. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Purity_of_arms
It's a throwaway line Israeli officials have been using for a long time. I heard Netanyahou himself use it to describe the IDF and explain it can't possibly do wrong.
https://x.com/IsraeliPM/status/1745501858611786029?lang=en
> It's worth noting that even after finding out the "most moral" army is conducting mass surveillance, they're still happy to provide them services.
Well, why wouldn't they? It's Microsoft, they're not exactly stewards of privacy.
"Finding out" in the "shocked! shocked!" Casablanca sense.
The IDF's "Wolf" system have been well known for years.
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2024/apr/19/idf-facia...
I mean, there are other reasons to not provide them services. Really, mass surveillance is quite low on the list.
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How so? The Patriot Act was arguably the kick-off of the state of constant mass surveillance that is ubiquitous today.
Arguably? I think its confirmed. The re-approval of the act under multiple administrations is horrifying.
The problem with the Patriot Act was mass surveillance of people who didn't need to be surveilled. In this situation we are talking about a group of people with support for genocide in the double digit percentages.
I guarantee that if my grandparents were expelled from their homes, brutalised, or killed, their homes bulldozed and annexed by the occupiers, and for the past 2 years I was the target of the most brutal genocide since Rwanda, I would probably wish worse than death to my oppressors too. But let's not get sidetracked...
PS: It's also known that for Israel and its AI killing machines, "terrorist" is defined as "male between 14 and 45". Cannot get more "mass targeted" than that.
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I think people don't tend to realise how authoritarian the internal structures of companies are.
They're effectively miniature dictatorships. Normalising removing services because a tenant does something you personally find disagreeable is fine in the moment, but what happens when it's someone you support? Like when they removed Office365 access for a member of the EU parliament.[0]
For me, this is more proof (not less) that I shouldn't rely on US tech giants. Not because I will be collecting data on a population to do god-knows-what with, but because someone believes themselves to be the moral authority on what the compute I rent should be doing and that moral authority can be outraged for the whims of someone completely random, for any reason.
[0]: https://www.aurasalla.eu/en/2025/05/26/mep-aura-salla-micros...
>They're effectively miniature dictatorships. Normalising removing services because a tenant does something you personally find disagreeable is fine in the moment, but what happens when it's someone you support? Like when they removed Office365 access for a member of the EU parliament.
Not that I necessarily agree with what they did here, but I would like to point out that one alternative which has been employed previously would be to silently forward her e-mails to the NSA or state department. Refusing to offer their services is probably the most ethical thing that MS has ever done on behalf of the US federal government.
> is fine in the moment, but what happens when it's someone you support?
That's why I never find it "fine." It's only a matter of time before corporate power finds it's way to your hobby horse. I thought part of the "hacker vibe" was being highly suspicious of any form of authority.
Companies have a duty to ensure they don't provide services that would enable illegal behaviour. What the IDF is doing is illegal under international law and a crime against Humanity.
> because a tenant does something you personally find disagreeable
You do realize that the said tenant is massacring an entire population as we speak, right? Framing that as just something that's "disagreeable" is one hell of a euphemism.
The absolute bare minimum one can do is to not actively provide the technical means to carry out this atrocity, yet you claim it's only moral to do the exact opposite. This neoliberal fantasy that it's moral and good for society to let powerful corporations do whatever it wants is an absurdity not even worth refuting. But it's downright cruel and tone-deaf when it's used to justify taking part in an officially approved genocide.
I expect this to continue to be the conflict of responsibility and capability in the 21st century.
Alfred Nobel was known as a "merchant of death" for enabling the use of combat explosives that could do (by the standards of the time) preposterous damage to people, but his argument was that he just sold the dynamite; he wasn't responsible for the anarchists getting it and bombing something twice a week in New York. And even then, his conscience weighed on him enough that he endowed a Peace Prize when he died.
The story is different when the data conversion is being done on machines you own, in buildings you own, in a company you own (for practical reasons in addition to moral / theoretical; if someone wants to stop those computations, they're now going after your stuff, not trying to stop a supply-chain).
>"According to sources familiar with the huge data transfer outside of the EU country, it occurred in early August. Intelligence sources said Unit 8200 planned to transfer the data to the Amazon Web Services cloud platform. Neither the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) nor Amazon responded to a request for comment."
So was the data moved in August to Amazon (AWS)? I am sure the $3.8bn USD the US gives annually will pay for it anyway. Because it is given as a loan, no accountability is required if it were a grant to Israel, and then the US forgives the loan, so there's not payback or interest for borrowing.
All: Please actually read the article before posting conclusions based on the headline or a quick skim. Most of this thread is confused.
Articles should probably come with a similar delay that comment replies do, to prevent comments in the first few minutes after it's posted.
This is off-topic, but I'd like to hijack your comment to remind everyone that your comment is _technically_ against the rules. I hope this particular example reveals that the rule against "RTFA" is misguided and should be changed or removed because it creates a culture where people are deliberately misinformed seeking only a summary in the comment section (if that) and some kind of hot take to fume about.
I agree but there are some dodgy links that make it through and a good way to lower risk is being hesitant to click random links, or at least not being the first person to do so.
> The decision brings to an abrupt end a three-year period in which the spy agency operated its surveillance programme using Microsoft’s technology.
Are we supposed to believe Microsoft was unaware of the contents but decided to terminate coincidentally when reports of what they're doing came out?
Are you asking whether Microsoft engineers routinely poke around their customer’s private clouds (including ones used by foreign intelligence agencies) to make sure everything is kosher?
Well, MS reviewed previously, and said they've seen nothing wrong, now they are saying some employees (coincidentally, Israeli) might have not been all transparent ...
> The disclosures caused alarm among senior Microsoft executives, sparking concerns that some of its Israel-based employees may not have been fully transparent about their knowledge of how Unit 8200 used Azure when questioned as part of the review.
You think, that is plausible?
To me, Nope, it's just that, the money was too good.
Only after Guardian's report, they realized:
"Oops, we got caught, now do the damage control dance"
And here we are ...
Also, are those employees going to get fired? I doubt. But the protestor, standing up for something, did. Who is more damaging?
Oh right, the protestor, because, they ruined the big cake.
Did the unit that breach the contract lose anything? Nope, they got enough time to move their data safely, and will continue doing the same thing.
It's all evil entities feeding each other, for their own benefit.
>It's all evil entities feeding each other, for their own benefit.
let's please hear your complete list of evil entities, just curious who else it includes. you can go out in concentric circles from israel, or just start with the most evil worldwide and go till you get to israel and microsoft.
Thanks, but no, thanks.
If you can give me a counter, why these actions are not evil, I'm all ear.
"Routinely"? No.
When the customer is indicted by the Hague for crimes against humanity? Yes, it's difficult to imagine a more clear-cut case of professional ethics.
“I want to note our appreciation for the reporting of the Guardian,” [Microsoft’s vice-chair and president, Brad Smith] wrote, noting that it had brought to light “information we could not access in light of our customer privacy commitments”. He added: “Our review is ongoing.”
Its interesting that they seem to be saying they dont know the full details of how their customers are using Azure, due to privacy commitments.
Weird, pretty sure employees brought this to their attention a few times already…
https://apnews.com/article/microsoft-azure-gaza-palestine-is...
https://apnews.com/article/microsoft-azure-gaza-israel-prote...
https://apnews.com/article/microsoft-build-israel-gaza-prote...
https://apnews.com/article/microsoft-protest-employees-fired...
I actually think understanding exactly how your customers do a thing is not an easy thing to be 100% sure of.
I've had sales, customer reps, even engineers and customers describe how a customer / they work ... and then I go and look and ... it's not how anyone said they work IRL.
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I wasn't addressing any of that. More generally that knowing what your customer is doing, even if someone "tells" you, it might not be accurate.
50% of Gaza destroyed, 100% of the hospitals. It's a good thing they precisely targeted Hamas assets
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> Would it be a better world in which Israel were not able to precisely target Hamas entities and assets
They are already not doing that
If they act on information their employees report, they are violating their commitments.
There have been public reports by major news organizations on the subject of Israel using big tech companies to surveil the West Bank and Gaza, for a decade. This isn't an issue of customer privacy.
The difference is that pre-2023 it could at least have some plausible excuse of trying to detect terrorist activity. With Israel's current actions in Gaza, there is no longer any plausible excuse or defense for any security action Israel is conducting towards Palestinians.
Did something happen in 2023 that makes it _less_ relevant for Israel to try to prevent terrorist activity?
Israel has a legitimate reason to want to try to intercept and detect terrorist activity, but given what they've been doing in Gaza for the past year and a half, they simply can't be trusted. They've lost all credibility and benefit of the doubt. So they can't expect other entities to help them do something they say is legitimate, because no one can trust them to do something in a legitimate and ethical way.
I think OP’s point is Israel’s legitimate surveillance needs have risen alongside their credibility crashing. This isn’t a simply reduced problem unless one has a horse in the race.
I understand that, and I am sympathetic to those needs to some degree. They do have increased legitimate surveillance needs. But they've lost all of their good will. Partnering with them is too morally and PR-ily hazardous.
I am not saying Israel is nearly as bad as Nazi Germany, but I think this argument is overall kind of pointless because one could easily have said that Nazi Germany had greatly increased legitimate surveillance needs after they invaded Poland.
> one could easily have said that Nazi Germany had greatly increased legitimate surveillance needs after they invaded Poland
This is an interesting comparison—thank you.
That said, did the Poles launch cross-border attacks on German civilians? The closest I can come up with is Bloody Sunday [1], which was an attack on ethnically German civilians, but not a cross-border incursion. (Granted, we can only observe this ex post facto, so your argument still stands.)
[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bloody_Sunday_(1939)
Israel's incursion into Gaza in October 2023 was more justifiable than Nazi Germany's invasion of Poland, yes. I wasn't trying to provide a full comparison between Nazi Germany and Israel, and I prefaced the sentence appropriately. My only point is that a nation having legitimate surveillance needs to protect their soldiers' and civilians' safety isn't a reason to support their surveillance efforts by itself.
There was the Warsaw uprising.
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.
Warsaw uprising with killing babies. Sure you’re the good guys
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
[1]: https://www.un.org/unispal/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/a-hrc-...
Why would being cross-border matter when the entire land was previously Palestinian land before being handed over by colonial powers and then "won" in subsequent "wars" (read: massacres) on the barely-armed villagers living there? The Viet Cong, South Africa's ANC, the Suffragettes and civil rights movements all used violence for their causes. Hamas was established in 1984, by the generation that had grown up with the occupation in 1948. If your country was occupied and members of your family killed, would you be as careful to keep your resistance peaceful?
> Why would being cross-border matter when the entire land was previously Palestinian
That's how borders work. (Anything else is, by definition, a border dispute.) If the Armia Krajowa had bulldozed into Lithuania on the logic that they lost it due to foreign meddling, they would have tarnished their record. (Despite the claim being true.)
> Viet Cong, South Africa's ANC, the Suffragettes and civil rights movements all used violence for their causes
On their own turf. And as for the former, against military targets--nobody serious in the Viet Cong or USSR was plotting Al Qaeda-style attacks on the American homeland.
October 7th was a terrorist attack. It was plotted like a military operation. But so was 9/11.
> would you be as careful to keep your resistance peaceful?
Not particularly. But I'd want to be fighting an actual resistance. 7 October attack was a strategic failure. The only reason it might end in a draw is because Netanyahu surrounded himself with maniacs. Even then, permanent damage has been done to the viability of a sovereign Palestine.
(There is also a massive difference between something being understandable and something being justified.)
So the problem is that you don't believe Palestinians are on their "own turf", because Israel "legally" won it from the villagers there in 1948 after having the British install them to it. Got it. Once again, the Palestinian homeland is exactly where the kibbutz (which is a military camp and outpost) was, mere miles from Gaza, and all of the people involved were actively standing members of the IDF (i.e. the occupying army akin to the Americans in Vietnam). You keep calling it a terrorist attack while appearing completely clueless that it's a largely meaningless political term. We considered Nelson Mandela a terrorist while he was locked up for 30 years, and for the UK at least he was only removed from that list in 2013.
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> Hamas was established in 1984, by the generation that had grown up with the occupation in 1948
Correction, Gaza was first occupied by Israel for a few months in 1956, then occupied continuously since 1967.
Regardless, by 1984, nearly half of the people in Gaza would have lived their entire lives under occupation, and the most would have lived at least half their lives under occupation.
Didn't Israel end the occupation of Gaza between 2005 and 2023? They still put up a blockade, but they didn't occupy it.
Israel may have withdrawn from Gaza and forcibly removed their settlers, but they did not end the occupation since they created a naval blockade and control all entrance and exits from Gaza and decide what is allowed in for two decades
I'm not sure why you were downvoted. Israel's position is that the ended they occupation. The United Nations on the other hand, still considered Gaza occupied under international law this whole time.
The only way one could argue that it is no longer occupied is to say there wasn't a continuous Israeli military presence of boots on ground inside of Gaza. It was still being surveilled by satellite and the entire perimeter, people venturing too far at sea from the coast would be shot, drones would occasionally bomb people, everything and everyone going in and out was controlled by Israel (until Hamas tunnels were built), all cell phones allowed in contained surveillance technology, a fence with military outposts was constructed on the perimeter, and Israel bombed the one airport they tried to build.
So arguing it was "no longer occupied" after they pulled out the settlers is disingenuous, unless you're trying to argue that it couldn't be both an occupation and a concentration camp.
> when the entire land was previously Palestinian land
No such thing as Palestinian. Just Islamic Arab. Choosing to label yourself the same as one name for the land doesn’t make the land yours. But also - who do you think occupied the land previously?
Sure, that must be why the very text of the Balfour Declaration specifies "Palestine" and why coins from the 19th century have been proven to show the same. I'm afraid the hasbara isn't gonna work anymore.
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>I am not saying Israel is nearly as bad as Nazi Germany
oh, that's generous of you
Nah, it's pretty undeniable. But this is mainly because Nazi Germany was singularly more of a force for evil than any other nation or organization in many centuries. They were uniquely horrible. So it's hard for anyone to be as bad as they were.
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Oh, don't worry, there's plenty of lost credibility to go around. Nobody's coming out of this situation smelling like roses, other than maybe some Israeli and Gazan peace activists.
At some point, when basically the entire world is saying one thing and only two countries (the US & Israel) are saying the opposite, you really need something strong to convince someone that basically the whole world is wrong.
This is some lame right-wing outlet whose front page contains things like:
>The assessment, shared exclusively with the Free Beacon, follows mainstream media claims that cuts to global health funding will endanger life-saving programs
While not mentioning that, yes, the Trump administration's USAID cuts absolutely will kill millions of people.
The rest is shitting on Democrats and supporting Trump. Obviously some right-wing site is going to say whatever they can think of to try to defend Israel's actions.
If this was how the world worked, we'd all be using Athenian democracy. There are plenty of things the whole world once believed that turned out to be wrong.
I see the war in radically different terms than you. It's not a battle between who has the better historical claim to the land. It's a religious battle. It's a battle between radical Islam and the secular west.
For a fuller treatment of the defense of Israel from a secular view point.
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/38926431-what-justice-de...
I'm grateful that what little good pieces are left in the American right their defense of Israel remains in place.
At least you're honest. This is why the vast majority of Westerners support Israel, its colonialism and its right to kill as many brown people as they can, they just don't say it out loud.
Isn’t it the inverse? Gazans voted for Hamas, and still support them per polls. Hamas’s charter is to destroy Israel in particular but also to subordinate women, subordinate all other religions, undermine Western powers, etc. Their goals and ideology are explicitly in conflict with liberal orders that support things like women’s rights, gay rights, free speech, freedom of religion, and so on.
Do you really think Hamas has killed more Israelis than Israel has killed Palestinians? Do you even know why Hamas exists? Do you have any idea how many years passed between the occupation in 1948 and massacres like the Nakba and Deir Yassin before Hamas was established? Also, no matter how much you want it to, your racism against brown people and fetishisation of "Judeo-Christian civilisation" doesn't justify killing them.
That's funny. In mid-October 2023 the narrative was "It doesn't matter who killed more" and now that so many Palestinians are dying - both by Israeli bombs and by Hamas rockets (1/3 to 1/5 fall back into the densely-populated Gaza strip) - the narrative is "Hamas has killed less Israelis than Israel has killed Palestinians".
The pro-Palestinian narrative adapts and changes as per the tides of war and the media. The Israeli narrative has remained consistent, even when it hurts.
Furthermore, your ideas about the colour of people's skin is an artifact of you dragging American racial issues into a place where they don't belong. The varied skin colours here favour neither side as darker or lighter.
No, the Palestinian narrative for those of us actually knowledgeable of history has not changed since 1948. As for Israel being consistent - how are those hostages doing? Cause it definitely doesn't care about any of them now (those it hasn't killed itself), and Netanyahu and others in the cabinet have admitted they want to occupy the land once more.
I'm not American, but you must be if you think racism magically stops outside of America. The racism most Americans and Zionists have towards brown people and the Islamophobia they have towards Muslims are some of their most prejudiced, and at least equal to any form of anti-Semitism you've ever experienced, but for some reason, you only believe in one of those. To be clear, "brown people" don't have to be "brown" just like black people aren't all black, it's a generic term that indicates a rough place of origin, and the point that you're clearly trying to obscure is that racism towards Palestinians is still racism no matter what colour they actually are.
You're right - such association with colour is not limited to Americans. I almost forgot being told about the slaves in the Gaza strip.
It turns out that Gazans call black-skinned Gazans "slaves". I've met black-skinned Bedouins but not black-skinned Gazans, and I don't know if the black-skinned Gazans are also Bedouins. I actually didn't know the word for slave in Arabic, but it was similar enough to the word in Hebrew that I was able to figure it out. I'd later have it confirmed. Not only do they called the black-skinned Gazans "slaves", they treat them as such as well. No lack of colour-motivated racism in the Gaza strip. Yes, I speak with Gazans in Arabic, and before October 7th I'd have conversations with them face to face.
As for Israeli racism - I think that we're the only country in the world who went out to help dark-skinned people immigrate en masse. Israel has a large Ethiopean community. I've had Ethiopean commanders in the army, and I work with quite a few Ethiopeans. I don't feel that they treat me in any unusual way, nor do I treat them in any unusual way.
I'm sure the Gazan friends you spoke to will be overjoyed you had face-to-face conversations with them before going online to advocate for their genocide, and that those conversations you had make them clearly savage enough to justify said genocide.
Are you really so wrapped up in your tech bubble in Tel Aviv that you can believe that? Here's some reading on a story even I knew off from the top of my head: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/feb/28/ethiopian-wome.... And here's the rest of it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racism_in_Israel. Israel is easily the most racist "Western" country in the world, ahead of even the modern US. Hmm, maybe a genocide against Israelis would actually be justified because Israelis are just racist savages that think black people should be forcibly sterilised against their will?
I knew that somebody would bring up the contraceptives the moment that I mentioned Ethiopians. Here, have a read: https://www.reddit.com/r/IsraelPalestine/comments/o49jqp/myt...
Since October 7th I haven't seen any Gazans face to face, but we have spoken on the phone and on Telegram. And I've never advocated for their genocide, rather I've advocated against the genocide of Jews. Anybody who supports Hamas, their goals, or their idealogy supports the genocide of Jews. It's right there in the Hamas charter.I'll say it clearly. There is no genocide of Arabs, or Muslims, or Palestinians, or Gazans in the Gaza strip. There are many Gazans dying, and many of them are children. Many of them are killed as a result of Israeli actions, and many of them are killed as a result of Hamas, Islamic Jihad, and other organizations' actions. Israel does not systematically target children, only Hamas benefits from dead children. They say it clearly themselves.
So in your warped logic, the few thousand combined killed by all of the groups you named are more evil than the 60,000 killed by Israel (likely 100,000+ after Israel finally lets the UN in) and the true cost of the genocide can be calculated. Also, Israel just accidentally ended up with a collateral damage rate of 50%, just like several medical doctors have attested to it accidentally sniping tens of kids and people waiting for aid, and accidentally shooting 300 bullets into the vehicle holding Hind Rajab. I suggest you wake up and start moving toward the right side of history, along with the UN, Amnesty International, Oxfam and virtually every other major human rights organisation, because very soon it'll be too late and history isn't going to forget active enablers and propagandists like yourself.
I can only tell you that when I was in high school decades ago, I shared a viewpoint that was similar to yours. But after watching history unfold in real time for the last 35+ years, my viewpoint has had to shift. And shift a lot it has. I have had to begin accept some uncomfortable truths that were not yet reaching me. I see them now.
Considering that your view point is bolstered by a vast ecosystem, I do wonder what propaganda are you thinking of that is responsible for my change in views? Like what do you think I tune into that promotes the viewpoint I hold? I'm asking because I'd love to know what is so that I can listen to more of it! Mine is very hard to find. So if you know where it is - please tell me.
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I wouldn’t have believed this until a few weeks ago. I then stated finding a lot of social media posts where people at pro-Palestine / anti-Israel protests talk about their goals, and many of them flat out say it is to bring down America and end its “empire”. They seem to use the same phrases in talking about this - I wonder if they get a script to use from the nonprofits they are a part of.
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.
[1]https://www.thecanary.co/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/snapins-... [2]https://youtu.be/sS9xidsyxXY?t=330
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.
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You’re the one openly promoting genocide.
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Same bogus website used earlier. Please don't copy pasta bad hasbara
Dismissing something as a “bogus website” or attacking the source isn’t an argument. It’s a logical fallacy.
It was debunked in another comment so I didn't copy paste the debunking, sorry
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No, because those employees didn't learn about it by snooping around in Azure data.
Can anyone help clean up these sources/verify?
The first one seems to be after Microsoft's claim "and Microsoft has said it is reviewing a report in a British newspaper this month that Israel has used it to facilitate attacks on Palestinian targets".
The second one looks similar "Microsoft late last week said it was tapping a law firm to investigate allegations reported by British newspaper The Guardian".
The 3rd one seems to be a genuine example that Microsoft employees were reporting this specific contract violation concern - but I feel like there are more genuine examples I've heard of than just this one report.
The 4th one is a bit unclear, it seems to be a general complaint about the contract - not about specific violations of it.
Perhaps the more confounding question remaining is "what was so different about the report from The Guardian". It's not like these kinds of claims are new, or in small papers only, but maybe The Guardian was able to put together hard evidence from outside that allowed Microsoft to determine things without themselves going in breach of contract details?
> Perhaps the more confounding question remaining is "what was so different about the report from The Guardian".
I think timing. The world is finally ready to stop ignoring what Israel has been doing so it’s significantly easier for countries, companies, and even individuals to stand up, speak out, and take action.
I think it's the latter -- Microsoft was unable to look internally, or able to pretend they were ignorant. But the Guardian report was just too detailed to ignore.
I don't know if it's _true_, but it seems right? I don't want Microsoft to have this level of visibility into my usage of Azure, just like I don't want my phone provider to eavesdrop on my conversations. I'm no privacy ayatollah, but this seems like a reasonable amount of privacy from Microsoft
Privacy ayatollah? Is that like an infosec shah?
I have seen "czar" used as an informal title to denote ownership of a domain, e.g. the "security czar."
I suppose it originates from the term "border czar" and others in politics e.g. https://www.politico.com/story/2009/09/president-obamas-czar...
No, a Shah is a hereditary ruler (a King), whereas an Ayatollah is more like a Bishop (ie a religious leader, but not the top guy such as the Pope in Roman Catholicism)
Data pope?
Thanks for this one, putting in request to my manager to change my job title to data pope, since our titles are all meaningless anyway might as well have a fun one.
Grand Mullah of GDPR Compliance
Metadata monitoring messiah
Privacy professing prelate
Surveillance-Suspicious Saint
Chain of Custody Cakkavatti
Bodhisattva of Vibe Ops Infrachaos
Supreme Pontiff of Vendor Asset Tagging
Well, the average org isn't out there literally committing genocide
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The UN says differently. Should I just take Israel's word for it?
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"Don't take Israel's word for it. Take this far-right pro-war website's word instead!"
Bad Hasbara copy paste. Not the good kind that mentions Matt Lieb or Daniel Mate either
The whole point of confidential computing is that the cloud provider can't access your data and can't tell what you're doing with it. This is a must have requirement in many government contracts and other highly legislated fields.
What country does this "confidential computing" exist in, and how can I get there?
I've personally never seen anything requiring confidential computing in anything. Is this required in the USA? I find that hard to believe, because the technology on a cloud level is still very beta-feeling. I think that Microsoft just never looked because they did not want to know.
They have services literally dedicated to things like health data records.
But you don’t even need to go that sensitive, literally any type of online service might run the risk of handling PII. Which is why CIS, NIST et al have security frameworks that cover things like encryption at rest.
But encryption at rest is not confidential compute. And Confidential compute is pretty new in terms of tech and i would be genuinely suprised if it's already required for some stuff. I am genuinely interested though, if you have any links about it please enlighten me.
Ahhh I hadn’t realised that was a new term. I’ve got something new to learn. Thank you
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/confidential-computi...
It could also mean "now that someone else has seen it, we can finally act on what we have only privately seen but couldn't admit seeing"
More likely MS was well aware of what was going on and didn't care until the Guardian forced their hand.
> The disclosures caused alarm among senior Microsoft executives, sparking concerns that some of its Israel-based employees may not have been fully transparent about their knowledge of how Unit 8200 used Azure when questioned as part of the review.
Highly likely, or at least a bit naive -- Completely reasonable to have local staff for a contract this big, but Microsoft should have independently 'double-checked' sooner
The head of that Israeli unit met directly with the CEO of MS. I don't buy a second the execs at MS didn't know what was going on. Blaming the local contractors is just MS throwing people under the bus.
I've worked for big corporations for nearly 20 years, I've seen this more times then I can count. Higher ups always happy to turn a blind eye to a bad situation as long as it's making the company money, and then immediately throwing subordinates under the bus when it bites them in the ass.
If they weren’t intended to be thrown under the bus, they’d be called… superordinates? I guess?
And if they all just took the bus together they'd be coordinates?
Not to sound too much like a reddit comment... but God damnit take my upvote.
A tale as old as time.
‘I’m shocked! shocked! that there is gambling in this establishment! This is unacceptable!’
‘Your winnings sir’
That comment is... weird, considering they disabled the accounts of certain International Court of Justice that were individually targeted.
The reality is that no one can tell whose ass it is safe to kiss now a days, so it’s all scandal driven actions. Unless someone can create a big enough scandal, no one is going to do squat.
They should ask their Chinese engineers in charge of sensitive Azure servers.
That’s the best part, they cannot. Well, they technically can, but the answer from the company that runs chinese azure servers is gonna be “none of your business.”
What is interesting is they gave some privacy while others they strip away.
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> 11,500 terabytes of Israeli military data – equivalent to approximately 200m hours of audio – was held in Microsoft’s Azure servers in the Netherlands
I wonder why IDC choose the Netherlands location. Microsoft has one Azure region in Israel itself: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/reliability/regions-...
The Israel Azure region wasn't launched until 2023, and AFAIK has substantially less services available than the others. I know Google's Israel region doesn't have as many GPU options, for example.
Safer from ballistics
might have something to do with the Netherlands being a large investor in Israel. the largest in the EU. It's responsible for two-thirds of EU investment in Israel. https://www.somo.nl/economic-sanctions-eu-is-israel-largest-...
Why build something near or semi near conflict?
Valid question, but just look at the huge amount of R&D / the tech companies in Israel. Even if it’s near conflict, I don’t think companies care
A company doesn't care. An army does.
It bothers me more that it was held in the Netherlands than that it was held on Azure servers.
It’s a fucking disgrace to any government to be facilitating anything like this, and the Netherlands seems extra complicit.
But why do you think the Netherlands govt was in anyway involved in this? I host some bsremetal in the Netherlands but I don't need to report to the government what I store..
What makes you think Netherlands government knows what data resides within its borders?
I don’t necessarily expect them to know what resides within their borders, I merely expect them to act against atrocities. It is no accident that all this data was located in the Netherlands.
It was located in the Netherlands because the Netherlands has excellent privacy and data protection laws. It's the same reason so much cybercrime is traced back to Dutch servers.
Would it have been different elsewhere in Europe?
How much would the bill be for this?
Kinda bullish for azure that the idf chose it over aws
Israel (like many governments) is very Microsoft Windows centric, so if I had to guess it wasn't chosen due to technical merits but instead based on existing business relationships.
Note: I've used Azure and it sucks. :)
Azure’s web app for managing servers is a nightmare
Uses the same awful UI/plaform as their Xbox account settings
Microsoft always somehow succeeds in spite of the quality of everything they build.
If the AI systems of these companies had 1/3 their hype, their craptastic admin consoles for their 100 billion dollar cloud companies would improve.
... any day now. aaaaaany dayyyy now. Yeah.
Not sure about that. To many companies or individuals, it might make them choose another provider. Unless... they already are Azure customers, in which case they might probably want to avoid the cost of moving from a cloud provider
meh more of a bearish signal. evil using shitty evil tech.
why would that imply bullying?
Bullish, as in, not bearish.
implying not bearing
Guess those protesting employees who lost their jobs weren’t fired for nothing, at the very least. Finally.
Too little, too late. The whole world knows that Microsoft has blood on its hands.
Yeah, not really. Kind of the opposite: they took action after investigation.
The assertion that Microsoft knew what it's customers were doing, that it was inspecting customer data and workloads, comes from ignorance of how cloud providers work.
False. Microsoft knew very well they had contracts with the IDF, it was announced in flowery PR all over the place, and at the beginning of the genocide there were protests against Microsofts' overt involvement.
This is just CYA. That it took Microsoft this long is incorrigible.
The issue that people have with Israel's actions is the death of civilians, not the death of Hamas, the widely recognised terrorist. I believe it also to be true that the IDF do not want to kill civilians, and that their target is only Hamas.
In which case, is it prudent to remove the IDF's ability to successfully target the correct people? Precise military intelligence is absolutely necessary for minimising civilian casualties.
> I believe it also to be true that the IDF do not want to kill civilians, and that their target is only Hamas.
I think it’s this second assertion that relies on facts not in evidence. Previous Guardian reporting on IDF use of compute for targeting indicated they were using it to increase, not decrease, the number of approved targets.
Quantity doesn't correlate with accuracy. OP's point was that surely having more intelligence means you are more accurate and thus less collateral damage.
Again, prior reporting on the IDF’s computational efforts do not indicate that less collateral damage was a driver - quite the contrary, the algorithm was being used to pad out targeting lists: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/apr/03/israel-gaza-ai...
You’re describing what ought to be, not what currently is.
Exactly. And an increase in accurate targets would lead to the faster removal of Hamas, and the process of repair can begin faster.
Hamas is quite open about their desire to increase civilian casualties by deliberately using civilians as human shields(which is of course a war crime). It's clearly part of their overall strategy.
This shouldn’t be a controversial statement. It’s well documented that Hamas utilizes this strategy by their own statements. On the Israeli side it’s much harder to determine what tactics some (military) groups utilize.
Israel claims that they “don’t want to kill civilians” but historically have not substantially changed course when the killings became grotesquely excessive. It’s also arguably true that they have never even sincerely investigated any issues.
Israel just gets more aggressive in the murder and bombing.
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Their source for deaths in Gaza is "CNN via IDF" but reading that article, it's actually an interview re: a specifically unconfirmed report from another news agency. Mixing that with data produced with very specific methodology, like they've done with the NIH data they're also using, seems like a bit of a faux pas.
Reent, published, actual figures (instead of ambiguously attributed early ones) show that they'd be up at the top end of the graph they've produced, not the bottom. https://www.theguardian.com/world/ng-interactive/2025/aug/21...
the only thing that those numbers mean it's how many of dead combatants IDF can identify/name.
if somebody killed holding RPG, he doesn't become civilian just because IDF doesn't know his name
Maybe that applied then but does it apply now? Each of their soldiers wear cameras. They see it in hd anytime their soldiers shooting women, old men, children. I guess only their snipers are getting away with dropping civilians constantly (as many British and American doctors are testifying they saw in gazan hospitals). And on top of this their drones target with visual data. So they see that too.
I think in this war the IDF has a very very good idea of how many civilians they killed. At some point it indicates that they have set targets they are striving to meet before the world stops them.
where from you got idea that each soldier wears camera ? from ukraine ? it's definitely not case in Israel.
doctors in hospital testify to something that they didn't see happening ?
and none from what you wrote contradicts that article/whatever parent posted is misleading
A 1:1 to 2:1 civilian to combatant ratio is reported by John Spencer, urban war researcher and chair at the Modern War Institute.
Spencer has said it will take years of research to confirm this ratio and how it was achieved. He considers it important to understand because the typical ratio in urban wars, including wars the U.S. has prosecuted, exceeds 6 innocent civilians killed per enemy combatant killed. Some urban wars see 12 innocent civilians killed per combatant killed.
I think all of these ratios are horrifying. A low ratio can't be considered either good or exculpatory, as to whether violations of international humanitarian law have occurred. Civilians always bear a disproportionate impact in all urban wars. The case studies that have been completed are worth reading.
https://mwi.westpoint.edu/urban-warfare-project/urban-warfar...
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> Precise military intelligence is absolutely necessary for minimising civilian casualties.
Whatever they've been doing on that front doesn't seem to be working so far...
It's so weird how people think the casualty rate in Gaza is high, it's actually incredibly low, virtually no other army in the world could achieve such a low collateral damage rate in urban warfare against guerillas.
The killings are not only direct hits with bullets. They are also blocking food, medicine and healthcare. Noone can survive without food. The goal is not to kill hamas, that was just the excuse, it is to clear the ground for new settlements.
I think the total reported deaths from food issues - as reported by Hamas mind you - are in the 1,000 range. Which is still a very small number for a war zone.
> The goal is not to kill hamas, that was just the excuse, it is to clear the ground for new settlements.
Israel has explicitly stated that this is NOT the goal, are you in a position to change their policy or something? I don't get how you think you can determine their goals for them, unless you are a member of their government (are you?).
Your stated goal doesn't even make any sense - why would they even need to "clear ground" in the first place? Just go live in those houses. And if you mean "kill people", then why are the deaths so low?
> issue that people have with Israel's actions is the death of civilians, not the death of Hamas
Would note that this issue has sufficiently polarised that there are thoughtful people in e.g. New York who think it’s an atrocity for even Hamas fighters to be killed. (Same as there are folks who think every Palestinian is safely presumed a terrorist until proved innocent.)
> I believe it also to be true that the IDF do not want to kill civilians
They should probably stop shooting them then.
[edited to remove snark] there is a ton of evidence to the contrary, that the killing of civilians is intentional and systematic. that's why the ICC (finally) determined it is a genocide.
The ICC did no such thing, you're probably thinking of the ICJ, which also did no such thing according to one of the judges that ruled on that decision:
“I’m glad I have a chance to address that because the court’s test for deciding whether to impose measures uses the idea of plausibility. But the test is the plausibility of the rights that are asserted by the applicant, in this case South Africa” she told the BBC show HARDtalk.
“The court decided that the Palestinians had a plausible right to be protected from genocide and that South Africa had the right to present that claim in the court,” Donoghue said. “It then looked at the facts as well. But it did not decide—and this is something where I’m correcting what’s often said in the media—it didn’t decide that the claim of genocide was plausible.”
“It did emphasize in the order that there was a risk of irreparable harm to the Palestinian right to be protected from genocide,” she added. “But the shorthand that often appears, which is that there’s a plausible case of genocide, isn’t what the court decided.”
Donoghue’s term on the bench expired a few days after the court delivered its initial ruling on Jan. 26.
https://www.jns.org/former-top-hague-judge-media-wrong-to-re...
It is interesting to me that all this sweat and tears are spent deliberating over the use of a word in faraway courts while all of us can see with our eyes the horrors Palestinians are subjected to by the occupying IDF. "We didn't say there was a genocide! We acknowledged the plausibility of the possibility that potentially maybe an investigation might perhaps occur into the possibility of maybe Palestinians being able to experience a genocide by someone."
It reminds me of a conversation I had with an Israeli a few weeks back. He asked me, "if what Israel is doing is so bad, why does nobody stop it?"
A great question. I don't know. And the bodies of children continue to pile up.
If you want to redefine genocide to mean "a very bad thing" then go ahead, but doing so would hollow out the term.
There's nothing stopping people from discussing the events in Gaza as a tragedy and a war crime, but activists are intent on attaching the word genocide to this. Referring to it as a genocide has become a litmus test to be considered pro-Palestinian.
To be fair, the UN working group that declared it genocide was completely precise in how they defined it and the criteria they used. Totally fair to disagree either with the existence of that working group, their definition of genocide, or with the facts they cite as evidence, but to pretend it’s just a bunch internet activists playing rhetorical tricks is clearly subterfuge.
are you referring to "UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory"? Their report came out 10 days ago. This has been referred to as a genocide far longer than that
Nobody stops it because it's not worth it, for whatever you want to measure "it" by.
Israel-Palestine used to be really important, because it was a surrogate conflict for Western vs Arab control of the Middle East, and what that is really about is of course oil.
The Arab-Israeli wars of the 1950s/1960s were direct conflicts, but it became apparent that the West wouldn't let Israel lose because Israel represents the latent threat of Western invasion if the Arabs ever really turned off the oil spigot.
So the Palestinians became the thorn for the Middle East to keep Israel at bay, so you get strange bedfellows of Iran and Qatar (Sunni and Shiite) funding them, and Hezbollah in Lebanon.
But a funny thing happened over 75 years of relative stability of borders and global trade: the status quo established itself, oil price and supply was managed and stabilized, security agreements established and backed up (with the Iraq invasion of Kuwait). Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Israel in fact are effectively allies against Iran and Turkey.
And the US has its own supply of oil with Dakota shale oil. A FUCKTON of it. So strangely, the Arabian peninsula isn't afraid of the US. They are afraid of Iran and Turkey. And who has the best army to counteract Iran and Turkey?
Israel.
The Palestinians don't have a geopolitical use anymore. The Palestinians used to number around 400,000. Now? They number 4,000,000. That is ... not good. The Palestinians have no economy, and rely almost entirely on external aid. So the scope of a humanitarian burden on Arab sponsors has risen from 400,000 people to 4,000,000 people. AGAIN: the humanitarian burden has risen by a factor of 10, while their geopolitical value has DECREASED, almost evaporated.
And that is without the decreasing value of oil from EVs/alt energy and the long term specter of global warming.
That is NOT GOOD for the Palestinians.
The answer is simple - racism, same reason the Brits gave them the land in the first place when they knew it already had brown people on it that had been living there for almost a thousand years. How many deaths did it take for most Westerners and Western governments to start caring about Ukraine and start moving towards action? Barely a handful if any. How many deaths has Israel racked up since 1948 while the self-appointed human rights arbiters of the world wring their hands and say it's just not quite genocide yet?
The UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem determined that it is a genocide in a report released September 16: https://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2025/09/israel-has-c...
The UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry (COI) is not a legal body, which would be the sort of body that is able to make a genocide determination. It also does not speak on behalf of the UN, given that it an independent commission of inquiry.
I am curious to see what the ICJ ruling in South Africa's case will be. That would be an actual legal body charged with making a genocide determination.
Reading the article you'll see that much of the surveillance is against the West Bank population, which has nothing to do with Hamas or Oct 7.
Israel has been very effective at blurring that distinction, using that attack from Gaza as the pretext to accelerate land theft in the West Bank.
hasn't the death toll surpassed the number of hamas members?
What part don't you understand? EVERYONE is Hamas, including the several kids that Western doctors have testified to being hit by snipers, and the little girl named Hind Rajab that they shot 300 bullets into. And the hospitals? Crawling with Hamas.
You can easily find telegram channels that show what regular Israeli soldiers are up to, they post it themselves like they're proud of it. Take a look at it and see what you think then.
Evidence indicates the intention is to kill indiscriminately, hence the genocide determinations.
I would be interested to read the evidence for myself if you have sources?
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45379611
Would you accept it even if it was shown? Or would you go on with adjacents to say how it is not evidence? Get new points from the ITF. Maybe hold them to the a fraction of accountability that you throw around.
It is a genocide. They are targeting civilians.
Proof? Or just what is convenient for you to believe?
If anything, quite the opposite. Think about this logically - why the need for expensive surveillance if your chief goal was to annihilate a population?
> why the need for expensive surveillance if your chief goal was to annihilate a population?
Gaza has long been a showroom and R&D space for technologies of oppression. Field proven platforms sell.
It's already been linked in the thread
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intent_and_incitement_in_the...
Genocide is not the same as extermination. The goal of expulsion is to obtain land. Surveillance programs facilitate ethnic cleansing by countering resistance.
For those looking for direct sources on the findings of genocide in Gaza, here are several key reports and legal conclusions from human rights organizations, international courts, and genocide scholars:
1. UN Commission of Inquiry: Concluded that Israel has committed genocide in the Gaza Strip. * Report: https://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2025/09/israel-has-c... * Press Conference: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=trUcK8hHaIA
2. Amnesty International: Concluded that Israel is committing genocide against Palestinians in Gaza. * Statement: https://www.amnesty.org/en/petition/end-israels-genocide-aga...
3. B'Tselem (The Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories): Published their conclusion that Israel is committing genocide. * Report ("Our Genocide"): https://www.btselem.org/publications/202507_our_genocide
4. International Court of Justice (ICJ): Ruled in January 2024 that it is plausible Israel's acts could violate the Genocide Convention. * Case Details: https://www.icj-cij.org/case/192
5. Lemkin Institute for Genocide Prevention: Issued an "Active Genocide Alert" in October 2023, warning of the high risk of genocide. * Alert: https://www.lemkininstitute.com/active-genocide-alert-1/acti...
Beyond these formal reports, it's crucial to acknowledge that this has been one of the most documented atrocities in history, often livestreamed by Palestinians on the ground. Their testimonies have been consistent from the beginning, yet they are frequently dismissed until a non-Palestinian, "human" source validates their lived experience.
>why the need for expensive surveillance if your chief goal was to annihilate a population
A question suited for ITF and Netanyahu maybe? Ask them spend less. He gets to prolong this Genocide, then he gets to stay out of trial for his previous crimes. Maybe ITF is not in a hurry.
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The state you are referring to literally calls Palestinians a demographic threat.
Inconvenient truth is that anyone who remained in Gaza, in active IDF ops area, is not a civilian. Civilians left these areas, or at least asked to leave many, many times. Unless it's a little child that's not capable of lifting a firearm, this person is Hamas at this point.
If you have better way to differentiate, I will happily pass it to IDF. Don't forget to mention about the last time you risked your own life.
>Civilians left these areas, or at least asked to leave many, many times.
Where to?
Hind Rajab ,literally a child, was brutally killed when fleeing their home, after being asked of course. The ambulance which came to rescue was blown up by the ITF. The Whole world has seen it all, ITF proudly displays it. Maybe it is time to update the Hasbara points.
>Don't forget to mention about the last time you risked your own life.
Why? ITF certainly risks many children's life, just for sport often.
Kid, civilians die in war zones, that's sad truth about world that you was born into. It sucks that this child was killed. Nobody in IDF or in any other army wants to kill civilians and children, btw unlike Hamas pigs that openly bragged about it, and benefit from every single civilian death in this conflict.
> Why
Because there's no shortage of armchair operators that know better how to make split second decisions in combat. Also, they never do anything wrong because they never happen to be in situation where you have to decide between bad and worse.
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You listen to them and get off their land that you violently "persuaded" the British to give to you (see: the terrorism of the Irgun, who would eventually become the IDF) and the Americans to fund to the tune of trillions of dollars since 1948. That's the only real, ethical solution to this problem, fixing the cause. Anything else like a two-state solution is more practical now that the world has let 70 years pass by, but still not ethical. Of course Israel actually wants none of those since, as Netanyahu and several other cabinet members have admitted, they wanted to subsume Gaza (again) all along into its "greater Judaea" expansion project.
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> I know this will be unpopular, but I'm just repeating what I've heard from the Israeli side [..]
It's war, this is the unfortunate truth and why we try to avoid war. Nobody really ends up winning in this.
> This doesn't justify killing civilians, but what do you do when civilians kill you?
Then point at which a civilian picks up a weapon to operate alongside Hamas, they have become Hamas and are no longer civilians.
> It's a nasty situation no matter which side you look at it from.
Yes. But a peaceful solution was almost impossible once Hamas performed their October 7 attack. The other day the UN members agreed to recognise Palestine as a state, and now the only thing left on Hamas' manifesto is the complete destruction of Israel [1]. I suspect Israel is not inclined to negotiate on that demand.
[1] https://www.dni.gov/nctc/terrorist_groups/hamas.html
Well, I guess it would be equally unpopular to the Israelis to hear that the global majority and the Palestinians consider Israel as oppressors and occupiers, and Hamas as freedom fighters. And as one man's freedom fighter is another man's terrorist, it also brings focus into another interesting point - only certain western countries have designated Hamas as terrorists, while the rest of the world doesn't agree with that designation because, well Israel is a settler-occupier. Leave Hamas aside - is anyone here, whatever be your nationality, surprised that every Palestinian (including those in West Bank) is ready to fight (violently or non-violently) for their freedom, for their independence, when the Israelis are hell bent on oppressing them (by treating them as second class citizens), killing them or chasing them away from their homeland?
Remember, Israel has already colonised all of Palestine, for many decades now. They have the choice to integrate the Palestinians into their society, and make them equal citizens. Instead, they chose not to, because the religious fundamentalists right-wing in Israel, who have captured power of all Israeli institutions, don't want a secular state - they want Jewish state with a Jewish majority. That is why Israel chose to create an Apartheid society where the Palestinians are treated as worse than second-class citizens, to make them react violently and use that as an excuse to steal more of their land. That is why this genocide is happening under the Israeli-right - to turn the Palestinians into a small minority group that will not be a threat to a future "Jewish" state.
It is the IDF and Israel governments explicit goal, as stated by high up government officials and leaders, to eradicate all Palestians in Gaza. A cursory view into their own Hebrew media make this abundantly clear.
They are committing a genocide in both word and deed.
A few government officials have said this. No one part of the War Cabinet has said this and it is definitely NOT the explicitly goal of the IDF.
This is entirely made up.
>I have ordered a complete siege on the Gaza Strip. There will be no electricity, no food, no fuel. Everything is closed. We are fighting human animals and we are acting accordingly.
> I have ordered a complete siege on the Gaza Strip.
For some additional context this initial complete siege lasted for roughly two weeks.
> We are fighting human animals
What else do you call people who rape and murder civilians, then parade their dead bodies around to cheering crowds?
Hamas will never have any sympathy from most people who watched the October 7 attack footage.
Refusing to distinguish between random Palestinians and Hamas members is literally the entire problem
I have ZERO issue with the IDF killing Hamas. That's what you do in a war. But we have ample evidence that Israel and the IDF is not making any effort to not kill random Palestinians.
They made some stupid AI algorithm to feed data into in order to generate target lists. They accepted something like 10:1 "innocent palestinian":"literal terrorist" ratios. They have no qualms about killing a 10 innocent Palestinians to kill a single Hamas terrorist
This is unacceptable.
> Refusing to distinguish between random Palestinians and Hamas members is literally the entire problem
Well, it is difficult to distinguish between the two when you’re hunting down terrorists who hide among civilians. But also, let’s not forget - the civilian population of Gaza VOTED for Hamas. In polls they still show support for Hamas even after October 7. There are videos of those civilians cheering in the streets while the naked bodies of raped / murdered women were paraded down the street by Hamas terrorists. I don’t think you can pretend “random Palestinians” are entirely innocent either.
It's very easy to distinguish a children from a terrorist, children are no terrorists, also, children didn't vote anybody. However, the IDF is killing thousands of children in the most horrible ways.
>What else do you call people who rape and murder civilians, then parade their dead bodies around to cheering crowds?
Israelis.
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hey, man - I understand this is a stressful time for you. but you're not doing your people any favors by denying the suffering your government is causing. in fact, the bold faced unapologetic nature of these atrocities is why people are talking about sanctions (which is also likely why MS made this move - to avoid being caught up in sanctions)
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We all know that's a lie. Israel has murdered the negotiators most interested in giving the hostages back. Qatar was the most recent miss, but they got Haniyeh in Iran and he was a known moderate (in the Overton window of Hamas)
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It is not a lie. It is so extreme that it has merited its own Wikipedia page [0], but don't trust that, read the citations. Leaders[1] statements[2] have been chronicled calling for genocide. It is happening in both word and action.
Resisting an occupying force is not genocide.
[1] https://amnesty.ca/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/Amnesty-Intern...
[2] https://web.archive.org/web/20250916081026/https://www.ohchr...
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intent_and_incitement_in_the_G...
> Resisting an occupying force is not genocide.
Hamas’s charter explicitly calls for genocide, and the people of Gaza voted for Hamas, and still support Hamas per polls. They support that charter, its ideas, and the actions that result - such as the thousands of rocket attacks for over ten years, as well as the mass murder / mutilation / rape of October 7.
Fighting a war of self defense isn’t a genocide, right? If it is, then is every war a genocide? And if so does that word really provide any meaningful value, other than stirring up emotions?
Can a war of self defence turn into a war of aggression?
I'm sure that it could, but this clearly hasn't happened yet. We still see lots of high-quality videos of buildings being bombed by Israel. That is possible only because Israel warns civilians away from such structures. In a war of aggression, such warnings would not happen, and such videos would not exist.
I would say yes. The question is what definitively makes it that. So far, all I see is subjective judgment. Even in official reports, when you go deep enough in official reports from various organizations, it feels subjective.
It's quite clear which group has genocidal intent, there's a Wikipedia page [0] for that as well. Groups like Hamas are quite open about their genocidal intentions, they even detail those desires in their charter [1].
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allegations_of_genocide_in_the...
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1988_Hamas_charter
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You're right, Gaza was not occupied. It was an open-air prison where people are not allowed to enter or leave, aid was severely restricted, and the IDF adopted a policy of "mowing the grass" which was to cull the population periodically. That's worse, but I'm not sure that's the point you were trying to make.
And if you're only other point is to accuse me of something I never said about an event that was debunked several times, whereas the actual kidnapping and burning of Palestinian babies, women, children, and men is well documented and still ongoing, I think that's all we need to know.
> and the IDF adopted a policy of "mowing the grass" which was to cull the population periodically. That's worse, but I'm not sure that's the point you were trying to make.
I've heard the phrase mowing the grass. It clearly referred to the Hamas leadership. You can make up interpretations all you want, but I read the sources in both Hebrew (כן, אני מדבר עברית) and Arabic (وانا بحكي عربي كمان). I know exactly what was said, and what was meant. It's usually very clear.
> And if you're only other point is to accuse me of something I never said about an event that was debunked several times, whereas the actual kidnapping and burning of Palestinian babies, women, children, and men is well documented and still ongoing, I think that's all we need to know.
Israel does not deliberately target Palestinian children - there is no benefit to that. Do you know who does benefit when Palestinian children die? Hamas does. They say it clearly. If you really cared about children - Palestinian and Israeli - then you would not perpetuate the blood libel against the side that until recently went out of its way to protect children.
I guess time to buy more Oracle or Google stocks? They can easily provide more than needed, especially Oracle which is very friendly to Israel and Ellison is a big supporter of IDF (large donations to "Friends of the IDF" non-profit).
Here is a link in case anyone wants to donate https://www.fidf.org to this amazing organization.
No? No one should service them
Wow nice, I wish i could donate, but US Taxpayers already cover for me. What do the donors get? Like souvenirs? Funding Genocidal ITF to kill more children and bomb more hospitals has to have its perks.
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makes sense to do if you support genocide
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ok IDF bot. anybody with a brain knows that criticizing israel's genocide against palestinian people is not antisemitic. such an overdone, false trope
https://www.jfeed.com/analysis/gaza-nutella-cafe-reality
>Is there famine? In some selected areas, yes, but for the ones with money, this reality never came.
Seems like what Israel is doing disproportionately affects poor people.
I think Cloud providers should be common carriers. I don’t think that it is a good thing when a company can make an arbitrary decision and disable functionality that you have put millions of dollars and thousands or tens of thousands of person hours into.
I think that the only reasons that a cloud provider should be permitted to use to justify termination of service, are illegal activity (in the country of service), non-payment, or attempting to harm or disrupt the service.
I am in no way condoning anything that Israel is doing, just like I wasn’t condoning what people on Parler were saying when AWS axed them in 2021.
No matter how much you like what the people in charge are doing today or who they’re doing it to, sooner or later someone will take the reins who decides that you are the target.
Same with banks, credit card companies, etc. if you are incorporated and your business is to support commerce, you should keep your thumb off the scale.
I agree with you in most contexts, but "illegal activity (in the country of service)" is a tough one in the context of an invasion, a territorial dispute, or international espionage.
Before the current war, Hamas was the governing authority in Gaza, despite the Palestinian Authority being the internationally recognized one. Regardless, whether the surveillance was legal under Israeli law doesn't seem like the correct standard.
I think that if Azure offers their service in Israel it has to comply with Israeli law; I don’t see why that would not govern in this case.
If Azure were providing service to the US Government then that service would be governed by US law even if the employees using the service traveled abroad; the only exception would be if service was initiated by an employee in another country under the terms for the service provider in that country, but even then likely government has contracts with the provider that would shift jurisdiction back to the US.
MS is saying they violated terms of service. Are you saying common carriers shouldn't have terms of service?
The concept of common carriers in not a wartime concept. Should occupied Ukranians keep providing service to their occupiers on principle?
Aside from the common carrier concept, operating a significant war-supporting facility makes you a significant target. And I don't just mean a target for criticism. Datacenters risk a security threat on a whole new level if taking them out is important to war operations.
Would you criticize a commercial port in the Black Sea if it turned away Russian warships? Harboring Russian warships makes it extremely likely that your port could become the target of missile strikes. If you want to remain an innocent bystander, don't harbor combatants.
This is not a statement in support of any side of any war.
> I think Cloud providers should be common carriers. I don’t think that it is a good thing when a company can make an arbitrary decision and disable functionality that you have put millions of dollars and thousands or tens of thousands of person hours into.
Exactly! The IDF have put a lot of effort in to this genocide.
So you think making a genocide is not illegal ?
Look how carefully they worded that to make a carve-out for this very case: "in the country of service". As in, Gaza is now part of Israel, and according to Israeli laws, Israel is not doing any genocide on Palestinians.
Just to be clear: "illegal under international law" isn't good enough? It has to be sovereign entities' own laws? As in, a cloud provider should have no power to refuse service to any government?
What would happen in a hypothetical scenario where Microsoft cut off everything [1] they can for all of Israel - no Azure, no Office, no Outlook, no Exchange, no SQL Server, no Windows, no Xbox, no ...? Depending on how many things they can make unusable, I would imagine that this would be pretty bad, probably even causing some deaths because of affected infrastructure.
[1] Not sure what they could actually make unusable by revoking licenses, blocking logins, and whatnot. It probably also matters how quickly the effects are felt, Azure would be gone immediately but I am not sure how often Office checks whether its license has been revoked, if at all. If license checks make things stop working over weeks and months, it would still not be pretty, but it would provide at least some time to prepare and avoid the worst.
IDK but Mossad is quite possibly the world's most effective spy agency and SV software corporations rarely have effective safeguards to protect against rogue employees so we must conclude that there are many sleeper agents planted throughout major corporations on behalf of just about every intelligence agency in the world including but not limited to mossad.
I have not seen any hard evidence of this nor have i ever suspected a fellow employee at any of my employers of being a double-agent loyal to a state intelligence agency but it's easy enough to do that there must be hundreds, maybe even thousands of sleeper agents all over santa clara and redmond.
That would never happen.
Israel has too much influence over the US.
That is why the comment says hypothetical scenario. ;-)
No one left to surveil, I guess.
Estimates of deaths are around 60,000, of a 2 million strong population.
I could write things here about those officially reported deaths (not estimates, which are much higher, but no one really knows and very likely never will), or the internal diaplacement, but since there might be at least 1 Palestinian still alive digging in the rubble somewhere, literalists like you would still feel the need to overcorrect.
I thought the defeated tone of my post made it clear that it was not meant to be taken that literally. I guess not.
That's about the latest number from Gaza health ministry that stopped counting well over a year ago as Israel had destroyed all but one hospital. It doesn't even count the people left in rubble from destroying 80% of all buildings.
This is nonsense. The Gaza health ministry continues to report estimates, of which are substantial portion are missing and presumed dead.
If you think that figure is remotely accurate despite the fact Israel has decimated all hospitals, leveled entire areas, wiped out entire families and is starving those that are still alive to do the counting, you're being naive, and that's a generous interpretation. Once Israel finally allow the UN in, that figure is going up by a factor of at least 2 or 3. The true cost of most genocides are only counted years after it's over, when it's too late.
Confirmed deaths are in the 60,000's.
Estimated deaths are in the 300,000's.
The international community must be allowed into Gaza to start counting skeletons.
So... 1/10th of the civilian deaths in the Iraq war?
Iraq lost 5% of its population to the US' illegal, criminal war, and Iraqi mothers are still losing children to the side effects of the DU that has been deposited all over its major cities.
So the atrocity continues in Iraq, even to this day.
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Good on Microsoft! This is really amazing.
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Wow, they actually are pulling back. That is really surprising. Wonder if they see the winds changing on this issue and want to get on the right side of history. Big props to everyone at Microsoft who spoke out about this and risked or lost their jobs because of it. They kept that fire lit on their ass.
The article says they are continuing to work with IDF. It’s the spy agency who crossed a line.
Last week a UN human rights commission found that Israel is carrying out a genocide. I think you're right that the winds have changed and now companies will shift their positions.
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The word genocide has a legal definition, it’s not up for discussion or debate. What is happening in Gaza is a genocide according to genocide scholars.
If you're referring to the "International Association of Genocide Scholars" (IAGS), all it takes to join that organization is $30 and self identifying as a genocide scholar. Furthermore the resolution was passed with a total of 129 voting members, and about 107 voting in favor, out of over 500 total members.
Here's a letter from 514 verified scholars and legal experts calling on IAGS to retract their resolution, along with their rebuttal of the substance of the resolution:
https://www.scholarsfortruthaboutgenocide.com/
> If you're referring to the "International Association of Genocide Scholars" (IAGS), all it takes to join that organization is $30 and self identifying as a genocide scholar.
They have certainly had some interesting members[0].
[0] https://archive.ph/J52WH
The definition of genocide is absolutely up for debate. And even legal definition (presumably you mean UN definition) is highly subjective, too. Less than 1% of Palestinians have been killed since Oct 7. Germany saw 10% of its population killed in WW2. France lost 4% in WW1. Why the former is a genocide but not the latter two is a pretty big hole in the logic behind the allegations of genocide.
Any "debate" is for the courts, not a subject of debate for hacker news. People don't debate the definition of murder/rape. Genocide is a legal term.
What court? Presumably you're taking about the ICJ? It only stated that allegations of genocide is "plausible". The grandparent comment is about a human rights commission, not a court.
Also, the ICJ only has jurisdiction when states consent to its authority. And the UN security council can veto any decision. It's essentially a show court.
And again, people endlessly debate what is and isn't rape and murder. Judges and juries make the decision at the end of the day, and people still debate whether their decision was correct. If anything, drawing parallels to murder and rape only serve to highlight how subjective it is.
Legal definitions are often up for discussion and debate. That’s a large part of what lawyers do, in fact.
Anyway I have no comment on the specific claim being made here, I just really dislike it when discussion is stifled by saying “I’m right and no one can ever disagree”.
That's like debating the definition of homicide or rape. There is no nuance here.
Homicide? Like abortion? No nuance?
Rape? Like age of consent being different across regions and time? No nuance? Like how half the planet laughs when a boy gets molested by his attractive teacher and the other half calls it rape?
There is no nuance in dehumanization.
People absolutely do disagree and debate what is and is not rape, though. Legal definitions exist, but have loads of subjectivity. E.g. some argue that threatening to break up with a partner over lack of sex is coercion and thus rape.
Exactly. I think people socialized into certain conversational norms in politicized online spaces, ridiculously overestimate plausibility of the rhetorical gambit of going "gee, who's to say?" when attempted out in the wild.
I think one strength of the liberal academic tradition is that whether it's philosophy, whether it's law, you get introduced to the "whose to say" archetype early on and get inoculated against it. It's not just that the concepts are well enough established that they're resilient against such skepticism, but even in cases of uncertainty, routine amounts of conceptual uncertainty are not a deal-breaker to investigating and understanding urgent moral issues.
A real argument in the negative would be along the lines of "here's how food truck inspection policies are tied to well-established norms that better explain the outcome of famine than intent to destroy". A not real argument is spontaneous, mid-debate discovery of the transience of linguistic meaning, discovered just in time to skirt the question of genocide.
The trouble with this form of skepticism is it can only ever be hypothesized, never actually consistently embodied by real people. Long before navigating to hacker News, you would look at your computer and be paralyzed by fundamental puzzles like "what is electricity", "what is information", "is there really an external world" and so on. It wouldn't have been discovered mid conversation about genocide.
This is a bit off topic but there isn't anything more debated in history than legal definitions. Maybe religious scripture?
I don't think you could have raised a weaker point.
I think you actually, without intending to, raise the reason why this is an exceptionally powerful point. Given the diversity of academic opinion on so many fundamental subjects, consensus on any topic is extraordinary.
I actually don't agree with you that "legal definitions" are as hotly debated or that the existence of debate in general negates consensus on specific topics. And I do think one important point with genocide scholarship is regarding muddying the waters with tom-ay-to/to-mah-to approach to definitions. Treating definitions as inherently transient is an important instrument in normalizing cultural acceptance of genocides when they're unfolding in real time, which is why that tactic is targeted by so much scholarly criticism.
Also - many many institutions have declared that what’s happening is a genocide, and unfortunately that hasn’t changed anything. (Perhaps naive of me to believe that it would change anything)
It shouldn't be.
But here we have UN and other twisting it to fit a situation that clearly weren't meant to be covered by it.
Because if the war in Gaza can be called a genocide so can almost every single other major war!
Also it is absolutely ridiculous to call a war that is started by one side, and one that only that side can end, a genocide against the same side that started it!
This is indeed a big obstacle to credibly calling the Israel-Palestine conflict a genocide. Germany lost ~10% of it's population in WW2. France lost 4% in WW1. Less than 1% of the Palestinian has been killed since Oct 7.
Heck, the US Revolutionary war saw the British perpetrated genocide against the Colonists if the military actions following Oct 7 count as a genocide.
> Germany lost ~10% of it's population in WW2.
75% of those were military deaths, 25% civilian deaths. In Gaza the numbers are switched.
Even if the numbers are true, that leaves Germany with 2x the proportion of civilian deaths.
In your opinion, is there a neutral organization in the world that could define whether the legal definition of genocide is being met or not?
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Do you honestly think it is correct to use the same word that we use for the 500 000 innocents that were clubbed to death in Rwanda?
The boys that were transported by buses into the woods of Srebrenica and gunned down?
The millions that starved to death in Ukraine during Holodomor?
to use the same word for a war, ome that they can end tomorrow just by uttering a credible claim about wanting to release the hostages?
Because if Gaza is a genocide, then we must also talk about the genocide of the Germans in 1944 and 1945. But for some reason we don't call it a genocide when somebody forces someone else to stop them.
Except when that someone else is Israel.
This fits a broader pattern BTW:
Hamas executes possible the worst sexual terrorism since the rape of Nanking in 1937: not a word about war crimes.
Israel hit a legitimate target hidden in civilian hotspot: waRcRiem!
Surrounding countries have various apartheid laws: nothing to see.
Israel being a democracy where every citizen can vote, be in the government, be a judge in the Supreme Court: apArthEid!
When will people stop and look at the evidence?
> Hamas executes possible the worst sexual terrorism since the rape of Nanking in 1937: not a word about war crimes.
What are you talking about? The ICC issued an arrest warrant for war crimes for the Hamas leadership
Again, it's time to open your eyes, you are on the wrong side of history.
The world isn't against you, it's against what Israel is doing to Palestine. You don't have to dig your heels in.
The emperor has no clothes even if he, the entire royal court and the newspapers report it.
In this case you're believing the emperor. Remember the "terrorist check in list" that was just a calendar? Israeli propagandandists don't even have the respect to make up plausible lies anymore.
I think the debate (/question) is whether it is Israel’s goal to eliminate the entirety of the Palestinian people. That does not seem to be the case, which is where the “not genocide” argument comes from.
Now I understand that the UN has specific criteria, etc. But the most famous genocide was the systematic execution of millions in gas chambers. This is not akin to that, is what people are arguing.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intent_and_incitement_in_the_G...
Anyone who watches Israeli news/media in Hebrew knows that Palestinians are not considered human in the Israeli society. Israel dehumanizes and genocides the Palestinians with the intention of wiping them off the face of the earth.
It is perhaps important, also, for genocide scholarship to survey the ways proponents rotate through various forms of apologetics. Not that I would wish it to be the case but the last few years are rich in case studies for how people debate and communicate about genocide, and it's attempts to muddy definitional waters that make it so important to have strong scholarship and scholarly consensus.
A long way of agreeing with your point, I suppose.
It definitely depends on the proximity to the genocide itself. Plenty of Americans easily call what happened with the Uyghurs in China a genocide. And if they know about, the genocide in Sudan a genocide as well. But when it comes to Israel it's a real reluctance. Will definitely be interesting to see how this time is viewed through history. It's close enough to western culture that it will likely stick around and just be something that happened in a poor country that gets forgotten.
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I encourage you to step outside of the Israeli echo chamber of lies and deception.
Israel has committed genocide in Gaza, UN commission of inquiry says https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c8641wv0n4go
Gaza: Top independent rights probe alleges Israel committed genocide https://news.un.org/en/story/2025/09/1165856
ICC issues arrest warrants for Netanyahu, Gallant and Hamas commander https://news.un.org/en/story/2024/11/1157286
Israel is a naziesque society through and through.
you're responding to an IDF bot
Sentiment toward Israel outside of USA has changed.
The leaders of the developed nations of Europe have gone against Trump and publicly stated their recognition of Palestine.
It has changed quite a bit here in the US too, even among the Jewish population. Our synagogue is very divided on this, mainly between the young and the old.
The statistics bear this out, millennials on down are very against this. Within the last year a true overall majority of the American Jewish population are opposed to what Israel is doing to Gaza. I expect this trend to continue. The truest supporters of Israel in America have always been Christian (for both insane and cynical reasons).
Do you have a source for this?
Here is a good background:
https://jewishcurrents.org/antisemitic-zionists-arent-a-cont...
“There you are, Mr. Netanyahu! Just who do you think you are, killing thousands and flattening neighborhoods, then wrapping yourself in Judaism like it’s some shield from criticism? You’re making life for Jews miserable, and life for American Jews impossible!” - Jewish character on the latest South Park, a show created and run by two Jewish people.
Also ”It’s not Jews vs. Palestine, it’s Israel vs. Palestine!”
Hard to imagine that this argument exists, the real victims of mass murder aren't the actual victims of mass murder.
If a country was killing thousands of people and saying it was to make people like you safer, might you not be inclined to point out it's having the opposite effect?
No, that isn't my general reaction to Hitler saying he killed Jews to make Europeans safer.
My reaction is "what are you talking about, psycho murderer?"
That's a good look, try that.
Perhaps we'll have to agree to differ, but I think American Jews being like "not in my name" sends a more politically effective message than "what are you talking about, psycho murderer?".
tbf I'm not primarily interested in what's a good look.
I think we're stuck and have to agree to disagree but the message sent is at least indistinguishable from the message of a self-interested sociopathic community with no moral concerns beyond their own. When I do things I at least try to make it discernible from psychopathy.
I don't really want to get into the A word thing, but your position makes more sense to me from a perspective of being anti-Jewish, rather than pro-Palestinian. From the latter perspective, I think it's better to challenge Israel's narratives than embolden them.
I'm glad you realize how silly that word has become. In reality, groups of people via culture or whatever other mechanism do generate certain things that are undeserving or deserving of censure. For example, due to cultural reasons, 1930-1940s Germany produced a high preponderance of Nazis, so we destroyed them.
I'm not suggesting cultural destruction is possible or desireable (maybe it is, but it's not my purview), but if a culture is producing a large preponderance of murderous ethnic supremacists it's time to sound the alarm bells. This entire thing wouldn't have been possible if that community didn't make it so.
This is especially compounded given that this group feels above critique from outsiders. That is a dangerous concoction and unfortunately the end result is wanton murder and redirection of resources to abet it. I think we're all about sick of the killing now. With great power comes great responsibility to be a moral agent.
I think word is sometimes used as a cudgel to derail reasonable discussion. I still think it has its place and at this point, yeah I'm going to say you're unambiguously an antisemite.
Sorry Joe, I guess we didn't frame the discussion of a checks notes horrific genocide done and abetted by and on behalf of a cultural and ethnic identity helped or hurt you specifically enough.
Palestinians don't discern Jews and Israelis. If you listen to this recording you'll understand - they're after the Jews: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bACNYtaLBQI
I think you're probably propagandizing rather than trying to engage coherently with the conversation, but perhaps I'm missing something.
I was directly referring to your closing line saying ”It’s not Jews vs. Palestine, it’s Israel vs. Palestine!”. Given that about half of Israelis are Arab in origin, and about a fifth are proper Muslims, the objection of Palestinians is not to Israelis but to Jews. The video I linked demonstrates the common mode of thought in that part of the world.
You linked audio of a phone call from a Hamas terrorist, as evidence that "Palestinians don't discern Jews and Israelis". I hope you can see the irony there.
There's also, I think, an irony that antisemites and Zionists are united in their their efforts to conflate Jewishness with the actions of the Israeli state. I think it's a welcome development that Parker / Stone / Sheila Broflovski aren't going along with it.
Very true. I've gone on dates with a couple Jewish women over the past two or three years & they've all staunchly supported Palestine which surprised me a bit.
Why would that surprise you? I think the opposite opinion is a lot more surprising.
One in every 50 children in Gaza was killed by the Israeli military. That’s like killing a child in every second classroom in the US…
That's a fair point. My gut reaction is that people will default to tribalism, but I think this has been a different situation than most others (and going on a lot longer).
Why is it surprising?
Fwiw my Jewish friends have also been quite vocal in opposing Netanyahu/Likud, usually more vocal than Muslim friends.
I think it’s surprising because Israelis are very loud in their support for Netanyahu. Yeah, there are protests but it polling suggests that the overwhelming majority of Israelis support Netanyahu.
No they are not. It’s like 20%
Comments like that reminds of people asserting blanket statements like: majority of Iranians support the regime and hate Jews!
Like do people not realize Iranian Jews also exist?
Anyway I digress..
Over 60% of Israelis believe there is nobody innocent in Gaza. That’s like the core operating principle of the Netanyahu-Smotrich-Ben Gvir government. The Israeli street is thoroughly behind the Genocide and the polling has been showing this for over a year.
My gut assumption is that people will default to tribalism, but that has proven to be wrong over the past few years.
Your sample size of two surely is conclusive? lol
I can understand your skepticism, but this is an example of what is termed “normal human conversation,” where people share their personal experiences. Quite often, one will find people sharing stories without the backing of statistical evidence.
I'm just speaking from my personal experience and don't mean to draw any conclusions about anything.
I think the fact that you have gone on dates with Jewish women shows they don’t really care about being Jewish.
My boomer Jewish stepmother surprised me when I saw her recently - complete U-turn from last year’s “all Palestinians are human animals” to “Netanyahu is a war criminal”.
Politics is weird. With the Biden administration there was lots of lip service given in opposition to the slaughter in Gaza while at the same time they were shipping unprecedented amounts of weapons to the IDF.
Now with Trump they state that they have max support for Israel while it seems like all of Europe is turning away from unconditional support for Israel and a massive change in the typical rhetoric around media in the US. That’s odd.
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As someone who's been boycotting Microsoft in line with the BDS movement, I welcome this (belated) move, but seeing Bill Gates on stage laughing (maybe nervously) at Ibtihal Aboussad's (now validated) protest still makes me uneasy about a guy who I previously followed and liked to a reasonable extent, and I'll still probably hold off on watching his most recent documentaries. It makes me wonder how comfortable you have to be (as a supposed philanthropist, no less) with the deaths of tens of thousands of brown kids to laugh in a situation like that. Hell, even Ballmer had the sense to keep a straight face.
> how comfortable you have to be (as a supposed philanthropist, no less) with the deaths of tens of thousands of brown kids to laugh in a situation like that
Laughing at someone yelling on stage can be entirely orthogonal to what they’re saying. (And it’s not like that outburst did anything.)
The article you're commenting on quite literally mentions that employee pressure, of which Ibtihal Aboussad's was the most vocal and memorable in the media, played a significant role in the decision.
> article you're commenting on quite literally mentions that employee pressure
Fair enough. I’m not buying it—the timeline doesn’t work, and the broader literature on disruptive protest is mixed, leaning towards negative.
What clearly swung the odds was the Guardian reporting on the frankly brazen meetings Microsoft executives decided to take. Without that reporting, this wouldn't have happened. With that reporting and absent the employee protests, this would have still likely happened.
Does that "literature" include history itself? I can't think of a single movement for good in history that accomplished its goals without pissing people off. Resisting any form of power tends to result in that power - and the many supporting it - getting quite upset by definition.
> Does that "literature" include history itself?
Literally how these things are studied.
> can't think of a single movement for good in history that accomplished its goals without pissing people off
Disruptive protest takes the form of interrupting ordinary peoples' lives. (In contrast with targeted protest, which seeks to directly disrupt the problematic conduct.)
They are effective at raising awareness of an issue and rallying the base. Among those who are already aware and have not yet committed to a side, however, they tend (broadly) to decrease sympathy.
> Resisting any form of power tends to result in that power - and the many supporting it - getting quite upset by definition
Of course. I'm talking about broader views.
Sympathy for Israel went up after the Columbia protests because (a) nobody was surprised that there was a war in Gaza and (b) folks breaking into a building and disrupting public spaces doesn't naturally elicit sympathy from undecideds. (It also crowds out coverage of the actual war.)
Military spy agency involved in ongoing war stores 11.5PB of data, Microsoft commissioned external review founds no evidence that military spy agency is using said data to target and harm people, only to backtrack after media breaking more project details? Come the fuck on. What’s the point of these performative external reviews? Just thugs hired to say whatever their customer wants them to say.
Wow! This is fantastic news, I wouldn't have bet on Microsoft ever doing something like this. I pray it's just the start and other American companies start to do the same.
After they fired how many protestors?
> The project began after a meeting in 2021 between Microsoft’s chief executive, Satya Nadella, and the unit’s then commander, Yossi Sariel.
This seemed completely glossed over in the article (never revisited beyond this) but seems to imply that Satya must have at least known something about what was happening?
Or was he mislead, told partial truths, or something?
Very curious who within Microsoft knew anything about what was happening.
I am seeing several kneejerk "Microsoft bad" reactions here, which HNers don't do for many other companies. I encourage many of you to read what is written.
They listened to their internal staff and stakeholders and public pressure, and did terminated the contract instead of ignoring it or doubling down.
That is a good thing.
The Guardian last month reported a meeting between Microsoft CEO and Unit 8200. That means this comes from high level and they did not cancel because of protestors but because of media publicity.
Did the protestors help the media publicity?
I really wonder if a company like microsoft has any real concern over people tweeting negative things about it. It seems like companies are finally realizing a lot of it can just be ignored, but with microsoft specifically, what’s the risk? Who in a position to deny ms enough money that they’d care or even notice is going to decide to do it based on people protesting?
Yes, unfortunately this is what happens when you have people who are constantly critical of Microsoft based on what they know of the company from the 90s and 00s, it devalues genuine modern criticisms and makes all criticism meaningless.
> this is what happens when you have people who are constantly critical of Microsoft based on what they know of the company from the 90s and 00s
There are more than a couple of us who have Office or Teams imposed on us. There is plenty to complain about that is current and most definitely valid.
"Software with slightly worse UX than the competing products" is not an ethical concern.
Have you used a modern Microsoft OS? They are somehow worse than they were in the 90s and 00s. I don’t remember having to agree to sell my personal information in the 90s or having advertising baked into the start menu in windows xp.
I agree that in-OS advertising for a paid product is dumb, but a) I thankfully still use Windows 10 which doesn't have those, and b) those are ultimately UX concerns, not ethical. And no, Microsoft doesn't sell your data no matter how many in tech subscribe to that conspiracy theory.
Last time I installed windows 11 in a VM I had to agree to at least 3, possibly more, un-skippable Eulas that required me to agree to share my personal information. Maybe they aren’t selling it outside of MS, but MS is such a giant company if they are using it for ads I don’t see the distinction.
The distinction is consent, and it's a pretty big one, because it's the difference between Microsoft sharing it among their services (they don't need to sell it to themselves) for the reasons outlined in the EULAs, and companies that aren't Microsoft using it for whatever reason they want. You can be assured they're following the EULAs because the consequences of not doing so would make them vulnerable to millions if not billions in fines if only one sufficiently motivated individual, like an ex-employee, leaked the evidence. More targeted (i.e. relevant) ads are really not the evil many make them out to be. Ads in a paid product are also not quite evil, but they are incredibly idiotic and a step backwards. Either way, makes no difference to me because at this rate it seems my next OS will be a Windows-like Linux distro anyway.
I appreciate the nuanced and intelligent analysis of the situation. Admittedly I haven’t thought about it very deeply because as it appears you agree Linux has made operating systems commodity at this point, at least to moderately technical users, so I really see no benefit to using any MS OS at this point.
The problem here is thinking that the only form of protest anyone ever engages in is tweeting things. Some people stop supporting companies they disagree with, both individually and, if they're able, with their own company.
Not just some people - a lot of people, and an increasing amount of people in the last year or so, including whole countries like Ireland, Spain and Slovenia. See the BDS movement/website/Facebook pages. As a lifelong Windows user I've been seriously considering moving to a Linux distro for my next desktop. I'll need to dig into the news some more, but this decision more than likely means I can stick with Windows.
But that’s my point - who will do that? Who is going to go to their company’s CEO and convince them to put in the massive amount of effort to switch cloud providers? Who is going to say “I don’t think we should use Teams anymore” and actually be able to switch to something else? I have no idea if microsoft even cares about retail customers anymore, but are there really enough people who are going to boycott microsoft products (I honestly don’t know what those products even are) over this?
I just don’t think they have anything to worry about. I personally think it’s good what they’re doing here, but I guess I’m too cynical to believe they are doing it out of the goodness of their hearts, and I don’t think the real reason is that they’re worried about bad publicity.
Some people like me are running a company and are still picking out their tech stack. I don't like Microsoft, and that absolutely affects how likely I am to use their services. My situation might not be that common but PR surely still matters some.
> are there really enough people who are going to boycott microsoft products
Maybe not, but some is better than none, and I'll continue to push more people to do it, rather than tell them nothing they do matters.
> over this?
Maybe it's not just this. Maybe this is the straw that breaks the user's back. Or maybe the next thing is.
My point was to address your belief that they're too big for anyone to make any difference. That isn't true, and the belief that you or any other citizen can't make a difference is their biggest advantage.
(I put this last because I know what HN will say to this, but: are CEOs and other executives not people too? Can they not make principled moves either?)
> (I put this last because I know what HN will say to this, but: are CEOs and other executives not people too? Can they not make principled moves either?)
Not sure what you mean by "what HN will say to this", but for me the answer is clear - they are, they can, and they often do. As do their employees - or at least they push in the direction which is better aligned with their values.
> Not sure what you mean by "what HN will say to this"
I fully expect some form of cynical "No" as an answer.
I originally had phrased it, "Are CEOs not humans too?" which might make it clearer what I expected :P
That's fair. For the record, I recently dumped windows for linux and won't ever buy/use a microsoft product again if I can help it, and I will encourage others to do the same, but that decision had nothing to do with politics.
I don't think I actually disagree with anything you've said. I am just very cynical, and while I want to believe like you do, I find it very difficult.
edit: "Can they not make principled moves either?" - Yeah, they _could_, but does that _ever_ happen at companies as big as microsoft?
Don't worry, so do I :)
> Who is going to go to their company’s CEO and convince them to put in the massive amount of effort to switch cloud providers?
Surely if any movement leads to this, it's BDS, likely the most popular and widely-known boycott since before the end of South African apartheid.
They even appear to have a page and a visualization devoted to compiling publicly visible impacts: https://bdsmovement.net/our-impact
I can't speak to Microsoft specifically, but bad press has certainly hurt other similar companies (eg Meta) when it comes to hiring.
BDS is also about as formidable as a boycott movement gets.
You know a boycott movement is effective when Israel has tens of lobbies like the IAF that are dedicated entirely to passing legislation to make it illegal. Germany has already passed it and the UK is unfortunately looking very close.
> BDS is also about as formidable as a boycott movement gets.
Barely gotten started.
This is what made the difference in South Africa, but the boycotts were much bigger
Amazon, Google and Oracle will have to boycott too. I am boycotting them
You are right that with the Trump administration (well, bipartisan support), US companies don't have to worry about any adverse political action by cooperating with Israel. Negative publicity from the common people also won't adversely affect their bottom line. But they do have to worry about the legal aspects - the US is one of the few countries actually having laws against genocide / war crimes. Trump may be ready to bomb the Hague and the ICC, but we know he can't bomb US courts for any similar proceedings against any US or foreign firms ...
> the US is one of the few countries actually having laws against genocide / war crimes.
Yet the US does not allow prosecutions in the international criminal court.
How do you explain Mai Lai what went on more recently in Afghanistan and Iraq.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_and_the_Intern...
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_war_crimes
Trying to pin support for israel on one side and not on the entirety of the us government at all levels is either profoundly naive or profoundly dishonest.
Well, Biden was claiming that "there is no genocide" while approving the building of (future) concentration camps for the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians, while Trump is worried only about the "optics" but is fine as long as a "beautiful resort is finally built in Gaza", after herding the Palestinians into these new "refugee centres" (i.e. the concentration camps) and from there to Egypt (who has been promised to be made the future gas hub for Europe) to complete Israeli occupation of Gaza. I'll leave it to you to decide whether I am being naive or dishonest or who planned the genocide and who is complicit in it - Here's the "propaganda" sources based on which I am making these assertions:
1. Trump criticizes Israel for releasing photos and videos of its devastating war in Gaza - https://www.businessinsider.com/trump-criticizes-israels-pho...
2. Trump ruthless take on Israel's war on Gaza: 'Finish the problem' - https://www.newarab.com/news/trump-israels-war-gaza-finish-p...
3. Satellite photos show Egypt building Gaza wall as Israel’s Rafah push looms - https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/2/16/satellite-photos-sh...
4. Israel’s plan to build Gaza ‘concentration camps’ was rolled out months ago - https://mondoweiss.net/2025/07/israels-plan-to-build-gaza-co...
5. Trump’s Gaza takeover all about natural gas - https://asiatimes.com/2025/02/trumps-gaza-takeover-all-about...
I guess that one needs some help to transfer "swiftly" 8000 Terabytes of data. At 1 Terabit per second it would take about 18 hours.
But is 1 Tb/s a thing?I think this has been another case of "Never underestimate the bandwidth of a station wagon full of tapes hurtling down the highway" (Andrew Tanenbaum, 1981). Maybe rack units of disks? For very important data I would pay for the privilege of removing my disks at a very short notice.
https://what-if.xkcd.com/31/
that would be an interesting service contract.
the rack and infra are yours; the storage media and all contents are mine.
AWS Snowball can be used to get data out of S3. They copy it onto portable devices, ship them to you, and you can copy the data off without saturating your DirectConnect bandwidth.
Isn't media publicity the entire point of peaceful protest?
or it means that they met with Unit 8200 to see if there was common ground that would rationalize keeping the contract and their tech being used for a way that respected human rights, dignity, and a coherent strategy to getting to that place,
and there wasn't
I want to believe this is true, but it would only be true if they cancel all the contracts they have with Israel that enable the genocide, rather than just the ones that have made the most noise. Otherwise it's just PR, not ethics. In other words, a lot is resting on the "some" in that quote.
They fired staff who protested against the firm’s ties to the IDF.
That's a funny way to say "they fired staff that vandalized company property, broke into the CEO's office, and used an internal company website to publish and promote anti-company propaganda".
That will get you fired from bussing tables or washing dishes, let alone a six-figure job at MS.
Edit: Source on the last one; the first two were widely reported on in media:
https://lunduke.substack.com/p/fired-microsoft-employee-enco...
One protestor was fired after interrupting a CEO's speech.
I feel like interrupting a CEO's speech at a big conference is pretty well understood to be a social indicator of a high level of insubordination. I suspect the protestor knew that too.
The consequences were appropriate, even if I might share some of the protestor's concerns.
You feel that being fired is an appropriate consequence to interrupting a CEO?
Interrupting a speech? Yes. It demonstrates a lack of maturity, decorum, and is completely unprofessional. Someone who pulls these shenanigans is unworthy of the role they were hired for. This isn't high school anymore. They were hired to perform productive work not be disruptive and play pretend activist.
You lost me at "pretend activist". This person put their job on the line for what they believe in, and in a public enough way that complete strangers are discussing it on the internet. That's real activism.
If they don't like it, they don't have to work there.
All these people hate on their employer and customers whilst simultaneously drawing a salary.
If they put their money where their mouth is, they can all quit en masse and let the company deal with customers without employees to support.
In general, continuing to get paid while being disruptive and forcing them to fire you is more activist than quitting.
If they don't like it, they can voice what they don't like. And that is what happened here.
When doing a presentation at a big conference, yes.
If it was an open discussion in a meeting with 5 people, no.
You are trivializing what they did. This is not that they were in a meeting with the CEO and accidentally spoke interrupting him. They started yelling disrupting the CEOs speech at a large event. Name a single company that wouldn't fire someone for that.
> insubordination
Are we talking about the military or some company?
US corporate culture has a stronger sense of hierarchy than many other countries. It is an environment where one can get fired quickly and suddenly and that instills a lot of obedience and discipline (if not outright fear) in employees.
I don't even think you need a strong sense of hierarchy. The meaning of the word would apply anywhere.
I think that term can be / is used for individuals at companies.
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LOL. The military isn't the only organization with a hierarchy.
If I interrupt the CEOs speech at a public conference, yeah, I fully expect to get canned. It’s not like this was an internal all-hands or summat.
Oh, it was an event with custoners invited? Yeah, that's grounds for dismissal anywhere, I'd think. Even in countries with strong labor laws you could just show the court the video recording of an employee doing willfull sabotage.
If I did what the protestor did at an internal all-hands or summit I would expect to get canned as well. You can't go up yelling and interrupting the CEO. In an internal all-hands/summit situation you need to maintain decorum, if you have a point you wait until a QA session, then express your displeasure.
Half the jobs I’ve worked, I’d be immediately fired if I interrupted a CEO’s speech. The other half, I’d be in serious trouble and I’d be first on any layoff.
I know a story of a guy who got fired for just talking to the CEO of his large company!
failure to use acceptable method of interdepartmental communication ?
america sounds like such a hell-hole
that would be a nice compensation package in any first world country
You’re going to base an opinion on a third-hand story? That might not even be true just to illustrate a point?
I know a guy that passed BillG in a hallway and said, “hey, Bill, how’s it hangin’?” (Saw him do it; I was mortified.) Just a bottom-tier IC at the time. 20 years later, he still works there. Still an IC, though, so make of it what you will. :-)
So there, now you have another folksy anecdote to balance things out.
Well, not quite third-hand, the guy was working in my team. But not a US company, not in the US either though.
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Oh no, is the CEO ok?
You might have 1A rights as an American but it seems to me the manner in which this person protested would be grounds for termination in many jurisdictions.
1A doesn't apply to private entities anyway. 1A protects against government prosecution for your speech, and the government may make no laws "abridging the freedom of speech."
But your employer? They can put whatever rules and restrictions they want on your speech, and with at-will employment, can fire you for any reason anyway, at anytime.
You can say whatever you want, but you aren't free from the consequences of that speech.
This comment sums up well how the spirit of the law is not being upheld, given that the biggest players in government, finance, and the corporate world are working together hand in glove.
>”Corporations cannot exist without government intervention”
>”Some privates companies and financiers are too big to fail/of strategic national importance”
>”1A does not apply to private entities (including the above)”
>”We have a free, competitive market”
I find it very difficult to resolve these seemingly contradictory statements.
Literally nothing to do with 1A
That's because 1A only has to do with a limited subset of the actual concept of freedom of speech.
And?
Every protest we praise in history broke the law at some point.
“Promote company-hating propaganda” is an interesting way to describe what happened.
Building a website on internal Microsoft infra that ledes with a picture of "Azure Kills Kids" is beyond the pale.
I'm not sure you know what "beyond the pale" means. You probably shouldn't look into the history of the suffragette or civil rights movements, for your own sanity.
How can it be “beyond the pale” when it is quite literally true?
Killing kids is not beyond the pale, building a website criticizing is.
Saying what has happened is worse than it happening? American missiles kill kids, and so does intelligence and support systems they use to do so.
That’s a pretty low bar for “beyond the pale.” Company PR isn’t some sacred thing and these people paid a hefty price for their protest. They should be praised for their bravery even if you disagree with their message.
I make no comment on their message but you cannot use company resources to do it and not expect consequences.
Sorry if that is unclear.
This is a fireable offense in nearly every company handbook in existence.
When did I say they shouldn’t expect consequences or that it wasn’t a fireable offense? The whole point of this discussion is that cries for people to “protest properly” are ridiculous and designed to make protests ineffective.
Clearly I get that their jobs and more were at risk, hence why I said they were brave. The only thing unclear is where you got the impression I thought otherwise.
I think laws enforced by the government are a difference in kind from social standards or company rules.
Laws are backed by legal, physical violence.
Source?
https://apnews.com/article/microsoft-azure-gaza-israel-prote...
There's a couple of sub links off of that one. Not sure if that's what GP was referring too but there is mention in there of employees being terminated related to protests
I would also like to read the source for the last claim of that statement. The break-in is well established in multiple sources, and also documented on Wikipedia (citing one of those sources). CNBC also add that they planted microphones (using phones) as listening devices.
"In the aftermath of the protests, Smith claimed that the protestors had blocked people out of the office, planted listening devices in the form of phones, and refused to leave until they were removed by police. " (https://www.cnbc.com/2025/08/28/microsoft-fires-two-employee...)
Protestors (in associated with the firing) also projected "Microsoft powers genocide" on the office wall (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft).
Some people seem to think rioting and vandalism are acceptable behaviors.
It's important that people engaging in such activity are dealt with swiftly and justly. Such behavior further encourages violence and destruction as acceptable behaviors in society, which they are not.
Rioting and vandalism are unacceptable...until they aren't and are instead necessary.
Is everyone so quick to forget that the rights we have today in the US were won through violence after all other methods failed? The 40 hour work week we enjoy today was also won through blood.
Now, in this case between employees and Microsoft I'd agree, no, vandalism wasn't necessary at all.
But when it comes to defending our rights and freedoms, there will come a day when its absolutely necessary, and it's just as valid of a tool as peaceful protest is in enforcing the constitution.
It's a difficult question, because obviously violence is out of line for protests about many topics, while just as obviously necessary for some.
I think think that violence or vandalism in this case was unwarranted, but there are some other in this thread who believe otherwise.
I guess that I'd say that, probably, vandals/criminals should always be punished, because they're doing clearly illegal things... and it's up to the protestors to judge whether the cause they're supporting is really worth going to jail for. If sufficient numbers of people feel that, you have a revolution.
(And also, a separate issue, whether the violence is actually going to benefit their cause. It probably won't.)
I certainly don't think that we should be in a position where courts are are judging certain crimes as forgivable because of their cause, while supporters of other causes get the full weight of the law for similar actions. I think the vandals on Jan 6th should get the same punishment as, for instance, similar vandals during BLM.
There’s been a couple studies showing that disruptive protests (blocking roads, yelling at people entering buildings, etc) cause public support for their cause to decrease or even increase opposition.
If the ideas are good then support will build through effectively communicating those ideas. Being noisy is fine but there’s an obvious line that selfish activists cross. The sort of people who want their toys now and don’t want to patiently do the hard work of organically building up a critical mass. So they immediately start getting aggressive and violent in small groups. Which is counter productive.
I think the people is just more vocal, not that the protest changed its opinion, but now they have an excuse, violence, to go against the cause they did not like.
"Violence" like stoping the traffic. If that is violence...
Stopping traffic can easily kill people if it stops a medical transport, for example.
Even if it just ruins the day for thousands of people, I have zero sympathy for such assholery. Whether you call it "violence" is unimportant.
Using your car every day create trafic and congestion.
I have zero sympathy for people like yourself that use their car every day and put their time before others peoples lifes.
The classic "an effective protest is one that is neither seen nor heard". Which is just ahistorical. Civil rights in the US was not passed because black folks explained to white people that they are people deserving the same rights as them. I hate this white washing of history as a series of peaceful movements that everyone agreed with.
The other side of this is that the people doing the protesting have to have the fortitude to accept judicial punishment. If the punishment is out of whack WRT the crime, then you get popular support (e.g. a year in jail for sitting at a lunch counter). But the current situation where folks can break the law and then suffer no consequences? F that noise.
Sitting at a lunch counter was illegal and the punishment was widely viewed as too light for the protesters. Like the racist violence going on right now, people of color were framed as disturbing the peace and disturbing a private business. There were called animals and criminals. Like I said, buying the white washed version of history where everyone was on the right side.
There is nothing wrong with being seen or heard. Instead it is that being violently disruptive tends to lose you support.
You are posing a false dilemma where the only thing a person can do to voice there opinion is to destroy or disrupt things.
That's not true though. Instead you can simply voice your options. You can put out manifestos, publish articles in the newspaper, post to social media, or even talk to people in person.
All those methods are how speech and ideas are normally distributed in a normal society. And if people aren't convinced by what you say, then it is time for you to get better arguments.
If you think being violently disruptive loses you support you should look at any equality movement. I'm not posing a false dilemma, I'm saying that when peaceful means are not working then violence will follow. "A riot is the language of the unheard".
The idea that everyone can just be convinced with a good argument is a nice fantasy but just never true in reality. You've also rigged the game since you can just dig in your heels are refuse any argument and just say "get better arguments". It's a situation no one else can win. If people could so easily be convinced that different people deserve the same rights then we wouldn't have had to spend over a century trying to get them.
The United States has a history of rioting, vandalism, and violence. The Boston Tea Party comes to mind. The more important question is the contexts in which it is unacceptable, and who should be given the authority to swiftly deal with it - an authority that will itself require the ability to commit violence.
The employees weren't "rioting."
Vandalism can be measured in dollars. How much did this vandalism actually cost Microsoft to repair?
It's important that we don't ignore context.
It’s amazing how many discussions I’ve had in the past decade about how people are supposed to “properly” protest (I.e. in a way that commands as little attention as possible) and how few I’ve had discussing the merits of what people are protesting about.
Except of course Jan 6th, which somehow normalized the belief that the 2020 election was stolen AND gaslit a ton of the country into thinking the violence that occurred did not and therefore doesn’t need to be critiqued.
This admin is truly adept at labeling all forms of dissent or disagreement as unacceptable actions that make discussing the issues at hand impossible.
Pardons all round then
That would put you in the pro genocide camp and subject you to consequences.
Some people think it is ok to do business with genociders
They've been raising the alarm for months. If this extreme action is what it took Microsoft to look into genocide and then terminate the contract, it was absolutely the right call
Not that you're implying this, but making an "absolutely the right call" does not in any way shield one from consequences.
Heck, it's usually because one will be punished that doing the right thing is in any manner noble. Otherwise it's just meeting minimum expectations as a human.
After all, why would anyone want to work for a company which actively supports genocide.
I think how you protest matters.
I can agree with protestors, also think their choices are bad.
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> The project began after a meeting in 2021 between Microsoft’s chief executive, Satya Nadella, and the unit’s then commander, Yossi Sariel ... In response to the investigation, Microsoft ordered an urgent external inquiry to review its relationship with Unit 8200. Its initial findings have now led the company to cancel the unit’s access to some of its cloud storage and AI services.
"Some" ... Microsoft's chief executive was involved in cementing a collaboration for a secret military / intelligence project with an AI component, to spy on people against whom a genocide is ongoing by their colonial occupiers. This only "ended" when the public became aware of it, for political and (possibly) legal reasons, clearly indicating that they would have continued with "business as usual" if the public hadn't become aware of it. What other Israeli projects are Microsoft hiding and supporting, that possibly aids Israel's genocide, is what concerns me ...
What concerns me is that Project Nimbus is a public project that is still actively being enabled by Google and Amazon. Secret projects are one thing, but largely meaningless, because companies, people and governments have shown they don't even care when they're in the open.
>to spy on people against whom a genocide is ongoing by their colonial occupiers
To be fair in 2021 you'd be laughed out of the room (or be in a DSA conference) if you called what was happening in Palestine a "genocide".
True, the correct term back then would've been apartheid.
> To be fair in 2021 you'd be laughed out of the room (or be in a DSA conference) if you called what was happening in Palestine a "genocide".
you have a very narrow historical lens if you think a DSA conference in 2021 is the only place that has treated allegations of genocide seriously.
I'd recommend reading through [0] which has a very nice chronological timeline.
for example, way back in 1982 the UN General Assembly voted to declare the Sabra and Shatila massacre [1] an act of genocide. it was carried out against a Palestinian refugee camp in Lebanon, by a militia allied with the Israeli military, and during the Israeli invasion of Lebanon:
> In February 1983, an independent commission chaired by Irish diplomat Seán MacBride, assistant to the Secretary-General of the United Nations, concluded that the IDF, as the then occupying power over Sabra and Shatila, bore responsibility for the militia's massacre. The commission also stated that the massacre was a form of genocide.
there's also a long history of "well...it's not genocide, because genocide only comes from the Geno region of Nazi Germany, everything else is sparkling ethnic cleansing" type of rhetoric:
> At the UN-backed 2001 Durban Conference Against Racism, the majority of delegates approved a declaration that accused Israel of being a "racist apartheid state" guilty of "war crimes, acts of genocide and ethnic cleansing". Reed Brody, the then-executive director of Human Rights Watch, criticised the declaration, arguing that "Israel has committed serious crimes against Palestinian people but it is simply not accurate to use the word genocide", while Claudio Cordone, a spokesman for Amnesty International, stated that "we are not ready to make the assertion that Israel is engaged in genocide"
0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palestinian_genocide_accusatio...
1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sabra_and_Shatila_massacre
Will Microsoft rehire the employees who were fired for protesting?
No? Hmm, then you should not let Microsoft whitewash its record by taking credit for the very cause those workers were punished for defending
> Will Microsoft rehire the employees who were fired for protesting?
One can be correct in theory and wrong in practice at the same time.
Yes, Microsoft was right in theory for firing the protestors, but wrong in practice because Microsoft should have listened to their employees before it got to the point they felt they had to mount a protest to get executives' attentions.
> did terminated the contract instead of ignoring it or doubling down
This was after they ignored it and doubled down for almost 3 years*. What was the total gain in profits and how many Palestinians died during that time? You’re going to ignore the full cost because they did the least they could do almost 3 years later?
* if the starting line is set to October 2022 attacks, if not how long were they making money off this contract?
October 2023
The problem is that if you're very very bad, you can do a good thing and still be very bad.
What other reasons are Microsoft very very bad? Genuinely curious about what your definition of "very, very bad" is and whether it aligns with mine.
In other comments replying to another user you dismissed "criticisms from the 90s", but I think that's not entirely justified. If the bad things they did in the 90s are still having bad effects today, and they built their success on those bad things, then it's not really enough just to stop doing them; they would need to actively try to right those past wrongs.
However, even in the present, the increasing intrusiveness of their update schemes, forcing people to have a Microsoft account even to install Windows, shoving AI into people's faces at every opportunity, etc., would all count as reasons I think they are bad. Also I tend to think in general that simply existing as a giant corporation with large market share is bad.
To be clear, I also think that Apple, Google, Amazon, etc., are also very very bad. I think I'd agree that these days Microsoft is on the lower end of badness among these megacorps. However, that's partly just because it's become somewhat weaker than it was at the height of its badness. You could argue that this isn't "badness" but something like "ability to implement badness" but I see those as pretty closely tied. Basically the bigger a corporation becomes, the harder it has to work to avoid being bad.
Search for "Embrace, Extend, Extinguish".
So the criticisms from the 90s that I mentioned in my other comment? Yeah, I prefer to live in the modern world. It isn't Microsoft that needs to be hit with antitrusts in 2025. It's Apple and Google. Live moves on, and in 2025, Microsoft is one of the more ethical tech companies around, unless you're one of the many sheltered people in tech that think targeted advertising is manifest evil that's on par with enabling a genocide.
I'm 40. For me, the modern world didn't just start in 2019. And the list is additive. The fact that Microsoft has been on it since the 90s doesn't stop me from also listing Google, Apple, and Amazon.
Modern by definition means the modern day, I'm not sure what 2019 was but we don't get to redefine terms for our own use. The list is only "additive" if the criticisms still apply. Your presumably best example was a corporate strategy from the 90s. Companies, just like (most) people, change. 2025 Microsoft is pro-Linux and a much better force for good than most other tech companies, yet almost invariably I find the people triggered by the mention of Microsoft tend to be relatively quiet about and/or active consumers of Apple, Amazon, Google et al.
I think you're selling this too far with "one of the more ethical tech companies around" and "a force for good". You'll have to clarify what exactly that comparison is based on.
I'm not a total fan of Apple here but it's weird to contrast them with Apple in this case when they don't enable a genocide (having a closed ecosystem is a UX decision compared to genocide). You mention that Microsoft is now "pro-Linux", but if that's your measure, many other tech companies contribute significantly more to the Linux kernel. https://lwn.net/Articles/1031161/
With respect to anti-trust, some of their bundling decisions absolutely deserve to be scrutinized (e.g. Teams).
Furthermore, Microsoft is still doing business with the IDF. If your bar is "enabling a genocide" (presumably by being in contract with the IDF), I don't think that's changed too much, just the most egregious example of cloud services in service of that are being challenged (Unit 8200 stuff). It looks like that work is now moving the AWS though.
You're right, I was operating on the assumption this was the last of their ties before I'd properly read the article and looked into the issue, unfortunately it looks like it's still on the boycott list until they actually divest from Israeli military at the least. Apple is therefore not as unethical as the genocide-enabling companies (and isn't one of them to the best of my knowledge), but it's still far more unethical than most people in tech tend to acknowledge - their pricing practices are akin to price-gouging, including 2-3x markup on like-for-like hardware and locking you into their own accessories before the EU forced them to standardise, and the whole "walled garden" ecosystem was never anything but an excuse to limit what consumers can do with their software/hardware. They almost single-handedly raised the prices of mobile phones for the vast majority of people because other manufacturers saw what their consumers were letting them get away with. And that's before we even get started on the sweatshops.
> What other reasons are Microsoft very very bad
Their laziness, greed and business acumen have left us in the position that the world's dominant personal OS is insecure, unreliable and running a protection racket with virus detection (and virus writers)
This is an ongoing rolling clusterfuck, and is entirely due to MS
That's a very dishonest framing. The article contains some not particularly subtle relativizations in various places, e.g., “ability to use SOME of its technology,” which make it clear that Microsoft is not reacting decisively here in any way, but is trying to muddle through somehow and make a few publicly visible concessions.
Furthermore, why do you think the reactions are knee-jerk? That implies a rather biased attitude on your part.
It has come a tad too late to be called a good thing.
Yes it’s a good thing AND we don’t need to be celebrating companies when they finally do the bare minimum.
Nobody with any semblance of ethical, just or just plain being a basic good corporate citizen would say.. oh yeah mass surveillance of the comms of a whole population for money is in any way acceptable or ok. This shouldn’t be a tech side note this should be a total meltdown front page scandal. What a disgusting abuse of power by all involved.
> Yes it’s a good thing AND we don’t need to be celebrating companies when they finally do the bare minimum.
I think we should give props here. This is an important step forward. Thank you Microsoft!
I think we should protest when companies do things that are wrong and we should give them kudos when they make good moves. Carrot and stick.
I am not fans of those that say because you did wrong things in the past, I will never recognize when you change and make good moves.
I want to encourage more companies to correct their involvement in this.
I agree. If we want our pressure campaigns to be successful, we need to reward companies that respond to them.
But the question is do you want to actually reward behavior that is just less bad than before? Or should that reward just be in the form of less punishment? I agree the consequences should get better in relative terms, but I don't think bad behavior should be rewarded with a positive response, even if the behavior is less bad than before.
It's like, if someone steals a million dollars and then steals a thousand dollars, you don't reward them for making progress.
What kind of pressure campaign are we talking about here? And what kind of reward? Are we now buying Microsoft products because Microsoft's cloud storage is no longer allowed to be used in genocide, only Office and email? That's absurd. What this is about is public opinion, and that takes years and decades to change. And that's a good thing. If you change your tune after every Microsoft PR release, it's not you who's holding the carrot and the stick, it's Microsoft.
I disagree that we shouldn't give them their props when companies finally give in, because most are still not doing that (see Project Nimbus). The problem here is that we don't even know they have done the bare minimum yet, since this is only one contract and to my knowledge they have several, including still actively working with the IDF.
M$ is bad, just not cause of this
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I mean, they have thoroughly soiled their reputation with the US tech workforce by being the most egregious abusers of the H1B program.
If we tally up all the good things Microsoft did and weighed them to some of the bad things, it'd be like weighing a few grains of sand versus Mount Olympus.
These journalists have saved lives and will almost certainly face repucussions and backlash for their work, so kudos to them.
Are they going to rehire the employees they fired for being against this and Microsoft's support of the genocide now? It's more than just mass surveillance, and their leaders need to be held accountable.
https://www.dropsitenews.com/p/microsoft-azure-israel-top-cu...
I'm confused what this really means. Countries don't store their really secret things in Azure. So what do we think the source of this surveillance was?
> I'm confused what this really means. Countries don't store their really secret things in Azure. So what do we think the source of this surveillance was?
Why wouldn't countries store secret data in Azure, Google Cloud and AWS services? I think that this is quite common.
I think you're misunderstanding my question. I'm not saying "this story is bogus," but rather I'm saying that this sort of data is probably not the kind of data which is acquired through really secret means. Perhaps it was purchased from providers, or some other less-secret method.
Israel actually had a bunch of rules where Palestinians are not allowed to have 5G or 4G networks to ensure that they can be monitored.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/oct/30/israeli-restri...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communications_in_Palestine
And yes it is recording pretty much all calls in Palestine:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/aug/06/microsoft-isra...
I really had no idea, thanks for the links.
Yes, they do
https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/azure-government-top-...
I'm clearly not informed and equally surprised. Thanks for letting me know.
After 2 years of genocide, and massive dissent from their own employees repeatedly warning that this was happening...
Those who make holocaust tabulation machines belong in prison.
Well, to their credit, they've also seen that IBM, Volkswagen and Ford were still allowed to do plenty of business with no repercussions whatsoever (that I know of).
"Unit 8200 had built an indiscriminate new system allowing its intelligence officers to collect, play back and analyse the content of cellular calls of an entire population"
During the troubles in Northern Ireland all the phones were tapped. IRA supporters knew this, so would frequently discuss fake bombing plans over the phone, sending the authorities on a wild goose chase.
It's okay if they mass surveil and kill other people using sweeping AI systems, surely it will never happen to me.
>Unit 8200, the military’s elite spy agency, had violated the company’s terms of service by storing the vast trove of surveillance data in its Azure cloud platform
reliance of everything/everybody on cloud platforms already mind-boggling.
One can extrapolate it further - in a near future conflicts both sides may have their data, weapons control systems, etc. running inside the same Big Cloud Provider ... in this case would they need actual physical weapons systems? or may be it would be easier to just let those weapons control systems duke each other out in the virtual battle space provided as a service by the same Big Cloud Provider.
Seems to be fairly equivalent to ABC pulling Kimmel and reinstating it a few days later.
Not really my backwaters, but suppose Israel would block US companies from using their tech, wouldn't cybersecurity collapse?
Looks like the contracts are not going to AWS or Google but to Nebius (founded by Volozhin, who founded of Yandex).
https://www.datacenterdynamics.com/en/news/nebius-to-build-a...
"Google and Amazon, both of which already hold the $1.2 billion Nimbus contract with the Israeli government, originally received a preliminary tender for the supercomputer but ultimately withdrew from contention."
My first reaction was "good on Microsoft". Then I read how it was only after a Guardian report exposed this was happening that MSFT took action. They were perfectly content to provide the services so long as it wasn't widely known.
Nice
Impressive.
I often think of Microsoft as the new IBM, and it's startling to me to watch them buck that reputation.
They could never be that while Amazon and Google still run Project Nimbus.
Every single one of these companies that have enabled the genocide should be help accountable. Maybe some are trying to claim plausible deniability.
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For those looking for direct sources on the findings of genocide in Gaza, here are several key reports and legal conclusions from human rights organizations, international courts, and genocide scholars:
1. UN Commission of Inquiry: Concluded that Israel has committed genocide in the Gaza Strip. * Report: https://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2025/09/israel-has-c... * Press Conference: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=trUcK8hHaIA
2. Amnesty International: Concluded that Israel is committing genocide against Palestinians in Gaza. * Statement: https://www.amnesty.org/en/petition/end-israels-genocide-aga...
3. B'Tselem (The Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories): Published their conclusion that Israel is committing genocide. * Report ("Our Genocide"): https://www.btselem.org/publications/202507_our_genocide
4. International Court of Justice (ICJ): Ruled in January 2024 that it is plausible Israel's acts could violate the Genocide Convention. * Case Details: https://www.icj-cij.org/case/192
5. Lemkin Institute for Genocide Prevention: Issued an "Active Genocide Alert" in October 2023, warning of the high risk of genocide. * Alert: https://www.lemkininstitute.com/active-genocide-alert-1/acti...
Beyond these formal reports, it's crucial to acknowledge that this has been one of the most documented atrocities in history, often livestreamed by Palestinians on the ground. Their testimonies have been consistent from the beginning, yet they are frequently dismissed until a non-Palestinian, "human" source validates their lived experience.
Israel is now damaged goods. You interact with them at a reputational cost. It's only going to get worse as they don't seem to want to stop the genocide.
A small step, mostly for PR I guess, but still better than nothing.
There should be no tech for genocide!
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It would be only just if the Palestinians would get their own state after this.
And their own datacenter!
Right of return for all Palestinians and their descendants, worldwide.
Also for the 850K middle eastern Jews that were kicked out of their countries by arabs?
Kicked out? Is that what you call the One Million Plan and all the other plans like it? They were imported there because that's been the MO of the state of Israel since the Irgun and Haganah first envisioned it.
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Can you please not post antisemitic tropes?
It's not a "trope" but well documented history. The Edict of Expulsion (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edict_of_Expulsion) was issued in England in 1290 and was repeated across most of western Europe for the next several hundred years. And I'm assuming/hoping you don't deny all the atrocities against Jews from the early-mid 1900s in the same region.
And it's pretty telling that you chose to say this to me and not the comment I replied to.
Do you think Israelis are only from Europe? Seriously?
You are the only one using the word "only".
They are predominantly so. Ashkenazi Jews are from Eastern Europe. Sephardic Jews are from Spain. Zionism as a movement was started in Europe by Europeans. Israel is a European colony state.
And presumably Mizrachi Jews don't exist?
Don't fool yourself, you are repeating antisemitic slurs. The Jews in Israel never left, and Zionisim is something like 2,000 years old (it's as old the Babylonian exile). Israel is as far from "colony state" as you can get - it's literally the opposite, it's an example of the native people getting their own land back.
If committing genocide puts the genociders in a tough spot, then I’m actually cool with that
On genetic terms, the Palestinians are virtually identical to Semitic Jews.
There's been plenty of slander to try to say they're more arab, but they're essentially close cousins.
Which leads one to believe, perhaps a large amount of the jews in the region simply moved on with the times with the new religion taking hold.
Essentially Israel/Palestine is a fight between cousins, and one side's inlaws who never actually came from the region but converted elsewhere.
So converts vs converts. Do the local converts have a say over the foreign converts?
The idea that land rights can be derived from the bible or spans of 1000s of years is silly, but the ongoing ethnic cleansing of Palestine going back to 1945 is within living memory.
> On genetic terms...
...race is fiction.
Genetic analysis does not match "racial" classifications
"Race" is a social construct
I think you missed my point. I'm trying to say a people split, some left, some stayed. The part that left is now doing violence on the part that stayed, claiming ownership of the area.
The goal of the genetic stuff is to point this split out, not delineate races.
Sadly though, this conflict is full of racism. The Gazans are described as "Arabs" and therefore undeserving of the land. If it turns out the Gazans are not Arabs, but also locals to the region, then what does that mean?
Let's not get too far ahead of ourselves, here, that would have the stench of colonialism about it.
It's not their land to 'return to' - after all, people already live there and they have no moral right to displace them.
How do you think Israel was formed in the first place? Or is your comment intentionally ironic?
How do you think most countries or borders were formed? It's almost all wars and displacement.
In the fist place? That was 3,000 or so years ago.
There was never a country called Israel until 1948. It was always Palestine.
The idea of a nation called Israel is the invention of Zionists in the 19th and 20th century.
> There was never a country called Israel until 1948. It was always Palestine.
Palestine was never a country before 1948, immediately prior to 1948 there was a British Mandate[0] with the name Palestine, but this mandate included land that would eventually turn into countries like Jordan(which just so happens to be a country with a Palestinian majority population). After 1948 and before 1967 the West Bank was annexed by Jordan and Gaza was occupied and administered by Egypt.
The idea of a nation called Palestine is arguably a more recent invention than the nation of Israel.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mandate_for_Palestine
Ancient Israelites existed approximately 2000 years before your incorrect claimed timeline. Today’s Jews are descendants of Israelites.
It is also trivially simply to disprove “It was always Palestine”. It was made up by Romans. Again, much later than when Jewish people lived there.
Today's Israel has absolutely nothing to do with ancient Israel. They took on the name as propaganda, a cynically constructed state origin myth.
Really? Nothing?
It's the same people, on the same land, practicing the same religion, speaking the same language, with the same alphabet, with the same capital, with the same place names, with the same cities, with the same core texts, with the same national holidays.
But that's somehow nothing? At this point you'd have to actually work hard to figure out what's not the same.
Israel is an example of anti-colonialism, where the original inhabitants of the land were able to take it back from invaders.
It's amazing how everything you say above is proveably false.
They are not the same people. Modern day Palestinians share more ethnic heritage with the land's original inhabitants than European Zionist settlers.
The religion of the region has been different throughout time. Judaism is one religion of that region, and not the only nor even the first.
The language is not the same. Modern Hebrew that is spoken in Israel diverges significantly from the original Hebrew, which is more closely spoke by Yemeni Jews, for example.
Everything else is in your list is done by fiat, as even the the UN and the vast, vast majority of the world do not recognize Jerusalem as the capital.
Israel is the last major European colony and it's an anachronism that will go down in history as the final failed attempt at Western Imperialism.
And spearheaded by the Haganah and Irgun, who were violent terrorists whose many bombings "persuaded" the British to hand the land over to them.
You do realize all nations are man made inventions, right?
Israel was not formed by displacement. That's a common misconception. Jews bought lands all across Palestine in early 1900's, with bodies such as the JNF. The displacement ("Nakba") came in 1948, during the Israeli War of Independence (started by the Arabs in Palestine and abroad), and even that mostly concerned areas which participated in the war. Areas that remained peaceful integrated into Israel (today's Israeli Arabs, 23% of the population).
It wasn't started by the Palestinians. Israelis conduced ethnic cleansing operations against civilians to displace them, including biowarfare and well poisoning. It continues today, in Gaza and in the West Bank.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Cast_Thy_Bread https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palestinian_expulsion_from_L...
The article you linked refers to events during the war of 1948, when Israel was already formalized. It's establishment up to that point was primarily based on lawful acquisition, not expulsion. When it turned to an all out war, then yes, expulsion took place.
Palestinians still owned most of the land... and buying land doesn't give you the right to rule over the peasants who till it. https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/4/46/Pa...
Yes, it was so lawful that the Irgun had to bomb the British and Palestinians to lawfully convince them to hand it to them.
Started by the Arabs is charitable when Jewish terrorists went around massacring villages.
They have been deliberately displaced by Israeli's apartheid government giving Jewish people around the world a "right to return" to Israel. Except unlike the Palestinians, they were never from Israel in the first place so the term "right to return" as used by Israel is nothing but colonialist propaganda.
Undoing colonialism isn't colonialism.
Hey chatgpt how many jews displaced from Arab countries in 1948? and how many descendants they have today?
So you think the Jews imported by the One Million Plan and the tens of others like it were "displaced"? There's a reason that the multiplicity of Jews in Israel today are American and European immigrants with no connection to the land whatsoever.
It’s all just the ‘hopes and prayers’ of the left anyway. When someone doesn’t give a damn (like Israel right now), all the public shaming is just another version of the UN’s strongly worded letter.
Yes, the shameless and evil generally aren't to be reasoned with, in which case things will come to a head and there are other ways to stop genocides. See for example, the Nazis.
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No. You're just factually wrong. This is a made-up statement with no truth to it.
Arab Jews were living peacefully side by side in Palestine before the European Zionist colonizers started coming in the 19th and 20th centuries.
> No. You're just factually wrong. This is a made-up statement with no truth to it.
Arab colonisation of the middle east and north africa is documented history.
> Arab Jews were living peacefully side by side in Palestine before the European Zionist colonizers started coming in the 19th and 20th centuries.
You can look up historical incidences of Arab violence against Jews at any time you like. Palestine was partitioned into Jordan/Arab state/Jewish state for this reason, much like India and Pakistan was.
It's interesting how you have to go back about 1,000 years in order to try to make your false equivalency.
At no point in the plan for the partitioning of the Arab world was the safety or peace of peoples living there a consideration whatsoever. It was a convenient way to get the Jews out of Europe for the antisemites that lived there and to give the West a vassal colony to continue to serve its imperial purposes in the Middle East for destabilizing lest the Arabs otherwise unify.
Every other government in the Middle East with few exceptions are now, at this point, similarly vassalized and serve the same purpose, and any chance at deviation from that plan has been met with violence of an unsurpassed level with Israel serving as the foothold for that. The minor tribal violence you are alluding to, which was not targeted specifically at Jews, but part of general tribal spats that include Muslim on Muslim violence as well, pales in comparison to the technologized and politicized mass genocial violence in the Middle East that Israel has enabled and actively campaigned for (Iraq, Syria, Iran) for decades.
Don't tell me anything about the actions of the West or Israel in the Middle East aim for peace or reduction of violence. Jews were not spared from violence in Israel during its formation as well, with documented attacks against them in Iraq and Egypt to spur them to flee from the Arab countries to the "safety" of Israel. The Middle East was a much safer place for everyone, including Jews, before Israel was formed.
Arab colonisation being many years ago doesn’t mean it didn’t happen and doesn’t make arabs native. Here’s the Hamas leader talking about how they’re Arabs: https://x.com/eyakoby/status/1971056308939092028
> any chance at deviation from that plan has been met with violence of an unsurpassed level
Really? I thought it was because Arab leaders keep trying to destroy Israel. I think I got that impression from Arab leaders continuously saying they were going to destroy Israel, and 'the Jews' in the time between the writing of the Koran and the creation of the modern state (also still 'the jews' if you listen to Arab media).
Syria used to be Christian. Lebanon had a significant Christian population. Egypt was Egyptian and Iran was Zoroastrian. All fell after arab colonisation.
Judea became Palestine after the war in 115. Most of the population remained, stayed jewish, converted to christianism (which was just another jewish branch back then), or to one of the many other cults in the region. Their descendants are today's Palestinians. The fact that Samaritans, who are mentioned in the Bible, are still there is a good proof of this.
People didn’t refer to themselves as Palestinians until the 1960s. You can confirm this for yourself very easily.
The Arabs that lived in what is now Palestine simply called themselves Arabs, the same way that Arabs in Israel call themselves Arabs. British Palestine and Ottoman Palestine were multi ethnic states.
Imagine you kill my dad, steal his house and turn me out into the street; you get convicted and sent to jail and your son gets to keep the house.
That what Jordan did to the Jews in Jerusalem, and then handed the house to Palestinians who decided they want to make it their capital.
You say "the Jews" but you're leaving out that there are Arab Jews and European ones. Arab Jews have lived in Palestine for hundreds of years alongside other Arabs peacefully in coexistence.
The arrival of Zionist European Jews was a phenomonen of the 19th and 20th centuries.
The Zionist Jews that came from Europe brought with them a supremecist ideology that, in their eyes, justified all forms of violence committed against the Muslim, Christian, and yes, Jewish Palestians that opposed their colonization.
I don't know what you're making or misrepresenting in your statememt about Jordan and Jerusalem, but Jews have always lived in Jerusalem since the Muslims first took control of it 1400 years ago when Umar ibn El-Khattab brought back in Jews who had been expelled by the Christian rulers prior to that.
Jews have always prospered under actual religious Muslim rule, whether in Palestine, Spain, Morocco, Iran, or otherwise. Zionism is what drove a rift between Muslims and Jews in past two centuries, as prior to this there never was one.
> I don't know what you're making or misrepresenting in your statememt about Jordan and Jerusalem
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jordanian_annexation_of_the_We...
"The Jordanians immediately expelled all the Jewish residents of East Jerusalem.[54] Mark Tessler cites John Oesterreicher as writing that during Jordanian rule, "34 out of the Old City's 35 synagogues were dynamited. Some were turned into stables, others into chicken coops.""
Which is why Palestinians should never get East Jerusalem as their capital, it's simply not theirs, not even in the nebulous way that the West Bank is.
This:
> Jews have always prospered under actual religious Muslim rule, whether in Palestine, Spain, Morocco, Iran, or otherwise. Zionism is what drove a rift between Muslims and Jews in past two centuries, as prior to this there never was one.
Is not true, as even a cursory view of the history will reveal endless massacres of Jews by Muslims.
This is completely in the context of the formation of Israel in 1948.
Also, you are lying about "endless massacres of Jews by Muslims". This is not, has never been, and continues to not be, true whatsoever.
Arabs and Muslims didn't even have antisemitism before Zionism existed. You can only look to times after Zionism with its supremeist ideology to find hostility from Arabs and Muslims specifically targeting Jews for being Jewish. It simply did not exist and they have coexisted for nearly the entirety of the history of Islam. Only when Europeans came down into the Middle East and they segmented and separated the society did this occur.
Avi Shlaim [0], an Israeli and also Arab Jew, talks extensively about the peaceful coexistence Muslims and Jews had for hundreds of years in the Middle East prior to Zionism.
Zionism tried to force a wedge between Arab Jews and Muslims that simply wasn't there beforehand.
I'm as against the genocide as you can be, but what you are saying is historically completely inaccurate. Discrimination against Jews is old, older than Israel or Zionism. The arguments against the land theft and genocide are strong enough without the hyperbole.
Honestly can't tell if this is satire or not.
I can only hope it is, and assume it isn't.
Poe's law! Welcome to the internet!
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Their own land, of course, where they've lived for thousands of years.
Serious question, what do you think is their own land? And what exactly makes you think it is their land?
Are you aware that most of the Arabs of the Holy Land came around the same time period as the Jews? There were Arabs living here previously, of course, as were there living here Jews. Half a century before the British mandate, Jerusalem was already Jewish majority.
The only reason that Jews in the West Bank are called settlers is because the Jews were ethnically cleansed from the West Bank in 1948, and that territory was free of Jews for 19 years. Other than those 19 years, the Jews had been here far longer than the Arab colonizers had been.[flagged]
There are quite a few inaccuracies here.
Palestine is not in Arabia but in the Levant, which was conquered by Arabs from the Byzantine Empire in the 7th c. as part of the Arab-Byzantine wars, and came under the Rashidun Caliphate, the first incarnation of the Arab Empire (which also conquered parts of Europe, BTW, not to mention that people in Morocco or Tunisia speak Arabic for pretty much the same reason people in Peru or Mexico speak Spanish). Warfare in the Levant obviously preceded the crusades by centuries and millenia, and included not only European conquests such as Greek and Roman, but also Persian and Arab conquests.
While it is true that modern Zionism originated in Europe, most Jews living in Israel have no European ancestry whatsoever. Most Jews in Israel have a recent ancestry in the Middle East and North Africa.
Even Ashkenazi Jews of a recent European ancestry (who are a minority in Israel) have genetics pointing to Middle Eastern ancestry. While it is hard to tie any group to ancient Jews, it isn't unlikely that Jews of all origins as well as Palestinian Arabs have ancient Jewish ancestry.
Just as European nationalism excluded Jews as Europeans, Arab nationalism excluded Jews as Arabs, and if there's any group that identifies as Jewish-Arab today, it is vanishingly small.
What Zionism is has not only changed considerably over time, but now, as in the past, there's great disagreement among those considering themselves Zionist on what it means. For example, as recently as a decade ago you could find a small but not negligible group of Israelis who identified as Zionsists yet were in favour of a single multi-national (or non-national) Jewish/Arab state, i.e. the same position was regarded as both Zionist and anti-Zionist by different people simultaneously. Today, many (perhaps even most) of those identifying as Zionists favour a two-state solution.
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Even political Zionism is minimally defined as supporting "a home for Jews in Palestine"[1] Not only does it not require any ethnic exclusivity nor even for a national identity, it doesn't even require an independent state in the contemporary sense. Some of those who identify as Zionist take it to mean only that Jews should be able to live with some form of self-determination in Palestine, and so when they hear "anti Zionist" they take it to mean supporting the expulsion of Jews, which, of course is not what many of those who identify as anti-Zionist want. When some anti-Zionist hear the term Zionist, they take it to mean support of an exclusive ethno-national Jewish state, which, of course, is not what many of those who identify as Zionist want. The term could mean something very different to different people, to the point that the same political position can be called Zionist by some and anti-Zionist by others, which makes the term mostly useless.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Types_of_Zionism#Political_Zio...
I read that Wikipedia link as affrming my definition of "Political Zionism"
A racial state, I contend.Definitions are only one part - apartheid is a description of what Israel has achieved, "Political Zionism" is a good candidate to describe the underlying ideology.
However you look at it, it is a catastrophe without a likely, of foreseeable, happy ending. Even the state of happiness the South Africans achieved looks elusive
It does not have to be that way. Jewish people could be secure in Israel and live in peace there, but the Israeli state seems unable and unwilling to make the compromises to bring it about.
"Justice the seed, peace the flower"
A Jewish home isn't necessarily an exclusively Jewish home. My country is the national home of the English people, but it isn't a national home for that people exclusively (although some wish to change that). And while it certainly sees to me that the situation in Israel can best be described as apartheid, I don't see the point in using a term such as "political Zionism" that is also used by people who identify as its supporters to mean the opposite of what you say it is. I.e. some people support a binational Jewish-Arab state in the name of political Zionism. If different people have wildly different interpretations of a term - interpretations that go as far as being on opposite sides of the core issue - that term becomes useless.
As to Zionism having an explicit ethnic meaning, that is obvious and non-surprising. Political Zionism was formed in Europe at a time of ethnic and national awakening (and as a result of centuries of oppression against Jews and other ethnicities), and further shaped in the time of national struggle against colonialism and multinational empires. At least until the sixties (if not the nineties), ethnonationalism of ethnic minorities was seen as a progressive position against conservative multi-ethnic/national empires. You can see traces of such "left-wing nationalism" not only in Israel (obviously, I'm not referring to its current ruling coalition), but also in Ireland and in Asia. Ideological (rather than pragmatic) support of a Palestinian state - which is just as "racialised" as a Jewish state - is also a form of that. If you want a "feel" for that in the US, think Malcolm X or the Back-to-Africa movement, and especially Marcus Garvey, who was expressly inspired by Zionism and Irish nationalism.
Of course, even as early as the 1920s and the rise of right-wing nationalism, many on the left recognised that left-wing, "emancipatory", nationalism can quickly turn into right-wing, oppressive, nationalism and warned against that when it came to Zionism as well as other national movements of the time. I think they ended up being proven right in almost every case (including the famous examples of Israel and India), but emancipatory nationalism did play an important historical role in decolonialism, and in the case of Israel, it also helped save the lives of many Jews fleeing the horrors of oppressive nationalism (mostly in Eurpoe, but later also in the Muslim world).
But imagine Black Nationalism had succeeded and become oppressive on a national level, how hard it would have been to talk simply about "Black Nationalism", and how it would have meant different and probably opposite things to different people.
What term do you think would be useful specifically to describe the very widespread tendency in much of Israeli society to view Jews as inherently superior and deserving of favorable treatment by the state? Jewish supremacy, maybe?
Yes
This is such a perversion of the history of the holy land that I don't even see fit to correct any of it. Any reader here is welcome to read about the Muslim conquests, of which the Muslims are extremely proud.
In fact, part of that pride is calling it an the Arab conquest, even though the colonizer - Salah AlDin - was a Kurd and not an Arab.
Jews are an ethnicity and are genetically the same. Even those from Europe and those from Muslim countries (who now live in Israel after getting kicked out of Muslim countries). Stop making stuff up.
Ohhh and Muslims didn’t treat Jews “peacefully”. They were second class citizens and often massacred. Read some history.
No, Jews of today are ethnically quite diverse and have mixed significantly. There are several recognized heritages of Jews of today with known populations from North Africa, the Middle East, Iran, and also Europe. I don't deny the "Jewishness" of anyone, but say "The Jews" as if this covers all of them is wrong. There are huge swaths of Jews today that are anti-Zionist and consider Israel an abomination on religious grounds. That it is a religious goal to have a nation of Israel is a new idea driven by Christian Zionists more than Jewish ones and the political, areligious Jewish Zionists enjoy their support and will play any role to achieve their own goals. The recent newly emerging religious Jewish Zionists are a divergence from mainstream Judaism and a recent development that relies on a lot of creative interpretation and ignorance of Jewish religious texts.
And yes, Muslims and Jews lived over 1000 years far more peacefully than any time before. Jerusalem and the rest of the Palestine was at peace under Muslim rule except for the Crusades which, surprise, came from Europe.
Why do you think Jewish people are mixed? Could it that occupiers, like invading Islamic Arabs, drove them away and they mixed over time with others? Regardless of that, it is Jewish people and their culture that are indigenous to the Levant. Not the Islamic Arabs who call themselves Palestinian.
> That it is a religious goal to have a nation of Israel is a new idea driven by Christian Zionists more than Jewish ones and the political, areligious Jewish Zionists enjoy their support and will play any role to achieve their own goals.
It is literally a religious goal of Hamas and the people who voted for them (Gazans) to destroy a religion (Judaism) and to commit genocide. It is literally in their charter. They voted for it. Meanwhile, the nation of Israel has a population that is over 20% Islamic Arab and they are thriving. The reality seems to me to be the opposite of what you’re stating here.
> Jerusalem and the rest of the Palestine was at peace under Muslim rule
It seems to me like you are pro colonization when the rules are Islamic and when the suppressed are Jewish. But not in the reverse? Israel is a democracy. Surely that is preferable to a religious supremacist rule?
Saudi Arabia and Egypt, where else?
Arabs are from Arabia, Egypt was colonised just like Judea and the rest of the middle east and north africa was.
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Other commenters are right, but I'll point out another fallacy you're pushing here.
The current situation is like somebody commits a murder. Then the community rounds up a posse and goes out to kill the murderer. Then kill the murder's family, their neighbors, the residents of the next neighborhood over, raze the neighborhoods and then take all the land for themselves.
Justice means penalizing the guilty parties, not everyone in their geographical/social group. Your definition of Justice is leaky.
But isn't that what Hamas did? Broke into homes and burned babies to death? Beheaded people? Pulled fetuses from pregnant women? Shoot up clinics and murder the entire staff and patients?
Nothing Hamas has done justifies what Israel is doing to Palestinian civilians, because collective punishment is a war crime. "But they did it first" is not a valid excuse, especially when trying to excuse mass starvation and bombing population centers.
Under 60 000 British died during the Bliz.
350 000 to 500 000 Germans died in allied bombing.
Did the Germans become the good guys when the German civilian death toll exceeded the UK death toll?
Or even just when US got involved since Germany hadn't attacked US civilians?
No?
Is it collective punishment or just really difficult to successful take down terrorists, destroy their weapons, and free hostages when they hide among civilians in a highly dense place? How would you suggest a country like Israel could definitely put an end to Hamas so their citizens are not experiencing risk? And how do you separate the “civilians” from Hamas when they voted for Hamas, support them today, and so on, knowing full well what their goals are (religious supremacy and genocide)?
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Taking your post at face value (which nobody should), the argument would be to punish Hamas, and not run around shooting children in the head, or setting up snipers near hospitals or UN Aid stations - both things which are confirmed by foreign doctors and aid workers.
> Taking your post at face value (which nobody should),
The crimes of Hamas are well documented, not only by Israel who admittedly might have some bias, but also by several in the OSINT community before Hamas realized their mistake and started deleting.
You questioning it only tells us you don't know much about what happened.
> the argument would be to punish Hamas, and not run around shooting children in the head,
Exactly like we dealt with the nazis and not a single child was hurt, right?
Or maybe take "war 101" and "war 201" and learn a thing or two about both why the laws of war explicitly bans using civilians as shields and also explicitly point out that human shields can be ignored. (Yes, it does. Feel free to look it up, and as homework, consider why the laws of war points this out ao explicitly. Here is a link, I don't expect you to have tje laws of war bookmarked: https://ihl-databases.icrc.org/en/ihl-treaties/api-1977/arti...)
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> Broke into homes and burned babies to death? Beheaded people? Pulled fetuses from pregnant women?
It's important to note that these things never happened, and you're still repeating them years later. The only baby that died on 10/7 was a 10 month old hit by crossfire.
I have no idea of the third, and though I feel sure it's wrong judging by the rest of what you have said, I feel obligated to check. Try it.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-67629181
There are videos made by the Hamas attackers on October 7, using their own cellphones. There are recordings of cell phone calls by the same terrorists: "Dad? I killed a f**g jew just now!".
I personally know two women who had their baby babies burned to death. I know them personally. Whoever told you that was lying to you.
I suggest you seek out more information. Frankly this is not even under debate - there are videos from Hamas and from Gazans showing what happened. There are surveillance cameras showing them setting shelters on fire with children inside. Grenades thrown into living rooms with families. Dead women paraded around naked in the streets of Gaza (how did their clothes come off?)? Female hostages with blood on their crotch (hint: rape).
There are videos.
Not only collected by Israel but also by the wider OSINT community.
Hamas is a terrorist organization. IDF is a state-sponsored military force.
I expect those two categories to behave differently from one another. Do you?
Yes, and they are. If Israel really wanted to just commit a genocide or specifically target civilians, they would have been able to act much more quickly and cause a lot more collateral damage. Is there really any doubt about this? They could have literally leveled the entire city with a munitions from air.
"Don't worry guys, it's only inefficient genocide"
Obviously.
And that is also what we see.
When did IDF try to outdo the rape of Nanking?
When did Hamas follow the laws of war ever so slightly?
Getting away from the debate around your details (most of which didn't happen) ...
A singular terrorist event is not the same as an multi-decade occupation, on-going theft of land, discrimination, annexation plans, and - not least - a 2 year long genocide of tens of thousands of civilians.
So, no, that isn't what Hamas did.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-67629181
That's a Dec-23 article and doesn't take account of later independent investigations.
Regardless. I accept it's reasonable that sexualised violence took place. I accept the what happened on 7th Oct was a horrible terrorist act.
But, and apologies if this hurts, none of that, absolutely none of that, justifies what has taken place since.
There is no place in this world for genocide. Particularly from a country that preaches "never again".
Nothing you can say will change my opinion on that.
Israel has really fucked up. It destroyed Gaza, yes. But in so doing destroyed it's reputation and standing for at least a generation.
I am showing you that the accusations of genocide against Israel are beyond ridiculous. They are manufactured to favour the side that 1) provides oil, and 2) is in idealogical conflict with the United States. Most countries of the world either need oil or are similarly in an idealogical conflict with the US.
Just for example, the United Nations report that slanders the Jewish State about committing genocide starts off with this prose: "On 7 October 2023, Israel launched its military offensive in Gaza, which included airstrikes and ground operations". Does that sound like a logical summary of that day's events?
So, despite all the testimonials and video evidence to the contrary, the findings of the world's leading association of genocide scholars, despite Jewish holocaust experts, despite my own conversations with doctors on the ground ... you seek to label accusations of genocide as "beyond ridiculous" from one sentence in a UN report?
Not just dishonest. But sickening, frankly.
> the findings of the world's leading association of genocide scholars,
Like IAGS whose findings were widely reported until it turned out the biggest qualifications for its 500 expert members was that they had paid a $30 membership fee? And whose openly accessible member list included "Adolf Hitler"?
The emperor has no clothes and no amount of reports from the royal court of UN will change that:
It is plain for everyone to see and the emperors naked butt is disgusting.
It is also insulting to actual victims of actual genocides.
You people really are unhinged. I guess verifiable reports on the ground, from people I trust, isn't enough for you either. Literal eyeball witness accounts won't be enough for you. Mass graves won't be enough - obviously fabricated.
When this is over, people like you should be forced to go to those graves and the destruction and be made to reflect and be educated.
Just like people are now sent to Auschwitz.
You're the flip side coin equivalent of Holocaust deniers. My condolences on where you've ended up in life. Bye.
> There is no place in this world for genocide. Particularly from a country that preaches "never again".
And here is the point:
There is no genogide except
-if you first twist one of the definition,
- deny all counterpoints (like the fact that Gazans started the current iteration and can end it any day they want)
Because if this was a genocide we must also first talk about the much much MUCH larger genocide of the Germans.
This has not been a single terrorist event. Hamas has been shooting rockets at us for almost two decades before the October 7th attacks. They are still shooting rockets at us, some have fallen yesterday and today. And I'm not even talking about the rockets shot at us from other Muslim nations, such as Yemen, that just proves that this is a Muslim against Jewish war and not an Israel against Hamas war. 19 Israelis were injured in a rocket attack from Yemen yesterday.
And how could you oppose both the occupation and annexation plans? Annexation is an end to occupation, no? I also think that the occupation has been going on for far too long, though I fault UNRWA and the PA for that as much as I fault Israel.
You've relayed one side of the story. I'm aware of the other side.
Taking both together, nothing you've said justifies what has taken place over the last 2 years.
And your comment on annexation as an end to occupation was truly bizarre, but ... unsurprising at this stage.
less than 60 000 people were killed in the Blitz against London.
By your logic most of what happened in 1944 and 1945 when 350 000 to 500 000 German civilians died were probably injustice.
But in the real world we need to deal with the people who again and again attack their neighbors in vicious ways.
And we need to finish it.
No. WW2 was a response to the Nazi expansionism.
What's happening in Palestine is the equivalent of what happens when allies don't fight back against occupying forces.
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I accept it's reasonable that sexualised violence took place. I accept the what happened on 7th Oct was a horrible terrorist act.
But, and apologies if this hurts, none of that, absolutely none of that, justifies what has taken place since.
There is no place in this world for genocide. Particularly from a country that preaches "never again".
Nothing you can say will change my opinion on that.
Israel has really fucked up. It destroyed Gaza, yes. But in so doing destroyed it's reputation and standing for at least a generation.
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> Justice means penalizing the guilty parties, not everyone in their geographical/social group. Your definition of Justice is leaky.
I disagree. Your definition of justice inadvertently prevents justice. Holding Hamas accountable for the thousands of rocket attacks and the mass murder / mutilation / rape of October 7 means hunting down all of them, getting rid of their weapons, and freeing hostages. You can only do so with some degree of collateral damage since they’re hiding in civilian populations.
But also, “civilian” is debatable. It’s this same population that voted for Hamas despite their charter explicitly calling for religious genocide. It’s the same population that supports Hamas even after the mass murder / mutilation / rape of October 7, according to multiple polls. It’s the same population that has so many times turned a blind eye to the actions of Hamas.
You mean like we did with Germany?
Obviously if the nazis and hamas had come out and surrendered we wouldn't have had to.
But sometimes one has to take out evil. Be it nazis in Berlin or Hamas in Gaza.
And it also serves as a lesson. A lesson certain countries might soon have to learn the hard way:
don't vote for evil, and if you did, don't be the ones who line the streets to cheer for them like Germans and Gazans did.
You are thinking of "Palestinians" as a collective group, synonymous with a group of extremists who have done horrible things
Just as most of the citizens of Iran are victims of an Islamic totalitarian government, just as many Germans were victims of the fascist dictatorship that took hold of their nation, most human beings living near the southeast bit of the Levantine Sea are victims of actions outside their control.
They're collectively paying the price for horrific violence on both sides of an ugly, tragic conflict that they have no power over.
Giving those victims some sovereignty and peace would not be "rewarding" extremists, it would be taking a tiny step towards sanity.
So, do we owe Germany an apology after we obliterated it to stop the nazis?
Or is it kind of logical that when you vote actual genocidal maniacs into power and cheer for them as they return from murder and rape, you hide the hostages they took and refuse to do anything to stop them, then maybe you aren't completely innocent?
Can you make this a bit clearer for me? Quantify it? How much hardship should someone endure to make up for voting for Hamas? Losing a home? A limb? A friend? A child?
Historically you can look at Germany in 1944 and 1945 and get an idea about what people think is fair.
Hope this helps.
Why can’t you just say what you mean? Are you embarrassed?
>when you vote actual genocidal maniacs into power [with the financial backing of Netanyahu]
I think you omitted part of it.
The financial backing of Netanyahu:
Not withholding UN funds that Israel was tasked with distributing, right?
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“Now imagine this scenario and ignore everything else that’s happened for the last 60-70 years and oh yeah, don’t mention the current genocide.”
Let's not ignore the last 60-70 or even 1400 years.
Israelis hit back hard. But they haven't been the ones to declare war on peaceful neighbors.
It wasn't them who stood for thr München massacre or a number of plane hijackings in the 70ies.
It wasn't Israelis who blew up buses in Gaza.
Was it?
We must stop confusing powerful with evil and currently helpless with "innocent".
What a delightful selection of specific incidents.
In just the past two weeks Israel attacked a half dozen of its neighboring countries.
Israel itself is a belligerent Western colony that has been ethnically cleansing Palestine since the 1940s.
It is the obligation for an occupied people to resist their occupiers, and according to the UN that is up to and includes violent resistence. The entirety of Palestine has been increasingly under occupation since Israel's inception.
Countless UN resolutions highlight Israels belligerence time and again with only the US and its subservient states like Micronesia voting against the overwhelming voice of the whole rest of the world.
Israel is an evil apartheid genocial settler colonial state that has brought nothing but further war and bloodshed to the region, and nothing Zionists state can change that fact.
Half a dozen? Let’s do inventory!
Lebanon’s - hezbollah has fired rockets into Israel on oct 8th 2023 Iraq - fired rockets in solidarity of Gaza Yemen - fired rockets in solidarity of Gaza Syria - fired rockets in solidarity of Gaza Iran - fired the largest array of ballistic missiles to Israel after Israel bombed an consulate in Syria where Hamas and hezbolla were congregating Qatar - that’s the only country that didn’t physically attack Israel, but they did finance Hamas for the past decade, and operate a global information war against Israel via Al Jazeera
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What does that have anything to do with what I just wrote?
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You know what, I just had to do a double take because your post is so stupid.
Israel brought nothing to the region? Let’s review.
Israel has the highest gdp by a great margin.
Israel is an important exporter of technology to the world, be it cyber tech, water tech, agriculture tech or defense tech.
Israel has the highest number of startups per capita in the world.
Israel has more Nobel laureates than the entire rest of the Middle East.
Last olymipcs Israel won more medal than the rest of the Middle East.
Palestines primary exports pretty much mounts to terrorism and sedition.
So yeah, Israel is an extremely successful country, saying otherwise is either ignorance, or malicious.
Israel only survives as a vassal state of the US. Without US aid, political cover, and unconditional military support, they cannot exist. It is being made illegal to boycott Israel in the US, given them artificial economic advantages, and they receive a surprising amount of US government contracts especially in security and data related tech. They exploit the few remaining Palestinians for their own manual labor with unfair wages in their aparteid state.
All of what you said does nothing for the region as they continue to expand their own borders by stealing more and more land from their neighbors (they recently took MORE land from Syria as the new government took shape). Their achievements are marred by their vicious genocide of the Palestinian people in Gaza and increasingly genocidal behavior in the West Bank as well. Of course you'll economically prosper if you consider stealing and occupying a legitimate right of yours. They achieve all of this by bringing bloodshed and war to the region, which they call for from the US time and time again.
How many times has Bibi Netanyahu gone before Congress to pull the US into another war in the Middle East? The US foots the bill to weaken their neighbors so they stand out more. That's not an economic achievement to be proud of or boasting about.
They can have all the startups they want, but they have the worst human rights record of any country currently, with the largest number of condemnations in the UN of any other country but always vetoed by the US. When you don't have to worry about being judged the same as other countries, then you are free to develop your country without worry about petty things like human rights violations as long as Uncle Sam foots the security bill and sends over more contracts.
Israel and those who unconditionally support it are complicit in its genocide.
How much land did Israel expand in km^2 since 1967?
Leaving Quatar aside, because seriously that puzzles everyone including me: what half a dozen countries are you referring to?
Somehow everyone is forgetting the Six Day War and who the aggressors were. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Six-Day_War
Or that after they got soundly defeated, Israel was nice enough to give back a lot of their lost territory.
Palestine, Lebanon, Syria, Tunisia, Qatar and Yemen [0].
[0] https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2025/9/10/maps-israel-has-att...
"Palestine" have declared themselves to be at war with Israel.
Syria is at war with Israel since decades.
Lebanon has been shooting rockets at Israel and preparing ground attacks. Yemen (or rather the Houtis) keep firing at Israel.
Are these the examples you want to show about Israel being bad?
Edit: Tunisia hasn't been attacked. The influencer convoy was attacked by their own flare and media claimed ot was a drone until every OSINT researchers pointed out it was a flare not a drone.
Palestine has been illegally occupied by Israel since its inception. It is not AT WAR. It is resisting occupation.
Israel has been the single most belligerent nation in the middle east, attacking and antagonizing their own so-called allies for its entire existence.
Israel is responsible for attacking the British (King David Hotel), the US (USS Liberty), all of its neighbors, and even others more distant (Tunisia). It in their nature to antagonize their neighbors because they WANT conflict. They occupy lands that once belonged to Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, and Syria. They aspire to occupy far greater regions. They are not interested in peace, only on expanding their borders. They continue to build settlements on what little land people still call Palestine. They are committing a recognized genocide in Gaza. Resisting and stopping this is not just a right, but a mandatory action according to the genocide convention.
If not for the US support of Israel, it could never act with such impunity.
> They occupy lands that once belonged to Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, and Syria. They aspire to occupy far greater regions. They are not interested in peace, only on expanding their borders. They continue to build settlements on what little land people still call Palestine.
Palestine is a relatively recent term. Long before that, the ancestors of today’s Jews occupied this region. We’re talking about the literal Bronze Age. The land NEVER belonged to Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, or Syria.
Great. So if you support Hamas you support everything that comes after. Actions have consequences.
The comment is a complete non sequitur to what it's replying to. I don't even understand what you're trying to say here.
1400 years ? it was a creation of the second world war, but anyway regarding neighbors you mean other than bombing iran, syria, yemen, lebanon I believe in all these cases israel attacked first and thats in the past 12months. I think your point was meant to be more that Israel has a right to defend its self and I think most people and countries would back Israel in that right if the response had been proportionate. instead theyve killed record numbers of journalists(worst in history https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/ng-interactiv...), 70% of the dead are women and children (https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cn5wel11pgdo), more than a thousand are dead due to starvation directly caused by Israel, this isn't how wars are fought.
> it was a creation of the second world war
The modern state of Israel with its present borders were a creation of the Second World War. But if you go back in time to ~1000 BC, Jewish people occupied the entire region (much broader than just Israel), and they are the only surviving indigenous people of the region. This isn’t even controversial. Virtually all historians and scholars acknowledge this because there is literal physical evidence in the buildings at Temple Mount and elsewhere, which are all dated back to that time.
1400 years ? it was a creation of the second world war, but anyway regarding neighbors you mean other than bombing iran, syria, yemen, lebanon I believe in all these cases israel attacked first and thats in the past 12months. I think your point was meant to be more that Israel has a right to defend its self and I think most people and countries would back Israel in that right if the response had been proportionate. instead theyve killed record numbers of journalists(worst in history), 70% of the dead are women and children (tried adding links but doesnt seem to let me), more than a thousand are dead due to starvation directly caused by Israel, this isn't how wars are fought.
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If the powerful are genociding the helpless, then the powerful are evil. It doesn't matter who hit whom first.
The point is a conflict that the victim can choose to end anytime they want isn't a genocide, no matter how UN tries to twist one of the legal definitions into something that can be interpretated as one.
Boy I would love to hear how the innocent Palestinians who are starving and whose homes have been destroyed can end this conflict at any time.
Maybe they should all just kill themselves? That way greater Israel can usher in a new era of peace stability to the Middle East. /s
You seem to be unaware of all the Palestinian hostages Israel has been taking for decades. Thousands of people locked up without trial or charges, many of them children. Please educate yourself.
You don't see the difference between imprisoning people that attack you and taking care of them (mostly, exceptions sadly exist)
and storming a music festival and houses to abduct completely innocent teenagers and even toddlers to use them for leverage?
Honestly?
Why do you use the term "completely innocent teenagers" only for Israelis? Are Palestinians teenagers guilty because of their ethnicity? Why do you ignore the many, many documented instances of torture in Israeli prisons, and the fact that the man who runs that prison system, Itamar Ben Gvir, idolizes a mass shooter who murdered Palestinians and has been convicted for supporting terrorism?
The people at the Nova festival wasn't throwing rocks at police or military when they were abducted. Neither were they trying to smuggle bombs, slash throats, stab elderly or any of the other things Palestinian Arabs get locked up for.
That is what I meant by completely innocent.
edit:
Also, any reason why you mention Ben Gvir but not the many Palestinian Arab leaders who says worse?
Any reason you don't mention the hundreds of thousands of Israelis who fill the street to protest its current government and the absolute lack of anyone who protests Hamas in the streets of Gaza?
You just ignored the fact that the people Israel rounds up haven't been charged with a crime, let alone convicted. Israel rounded up 1500 people this month simply because they were Palestinian and live in a particular village.
https://www.democracynow.org/2025/9/12/headlines/israeli_for...
I guess to someone with your ideology collective punishment of Palestinians is normal day, but when the world sees it we are repulsed.
There is no justification for Israel's occupation and apartheid of Palestine. The attacks on civilians are unjustifiable as well but the trigger for them wasn't random - Hamas never would have come to power if Israel didn't occupy Palestine, let alone fund Hamas with the explicit stayed goal by Benjamin Netanyahu to divide Palestinian politics.
Look to Israel, the source of decades of suffering for everyone in the region, including its own citizens whom it exposes to retaliatory violence in response to the violence it delivers to its neighbors.
That would be a valid point if they were guilty of "occupation and apartheid of Palestine" and the situation wasn't just a military administration of land that has been unclaimed since 1917 and the collapse of the Ottoman empire.
Yes, I know you're deeply steeped in Israeli propaganda, that doesn't mean you have to function as a mouthpiece for it.
Hopefully you have decades left in your life. One from now, I would be immensely grateful if you emailed me and let me know your perspective on your past-self's defense of genocide.
Of course there is a difference. And if you did some kind of scoring exercise you may be able to say that one entity is objectively worse than the other. But so what? That score does not justify the killing of innocent people by either side.
The article is discussing "mass surveilance" of millions of phone calls per day. Whatever scenario you're trying to describe isn't at all reflective of what's being discussed here.
> It would be only just if the Palestinians would get their own state after this.
This seems off topic. I will flag it.
Too little too late, but anything we can do to stop this genocide...
I doubt it can be stopped anymore without physical intervetion.
At least, not without the Palestinians being virtually wiped out, cause that's how long we'll be waiting for Israel to do the right thing. We don't even know for sure how many are dead, but the vast majority of deaths during genocides are counted after it's over, least of all when there's so much rubble and so many whole families have been wiped out.
it doesn't matter. What is happening is demolition and genocide. Simple as that
Cue the victimhood - how unfair it is that the IDF gets singled out for doing what every military does - how Israel is the real victim here.
it's a jing jang thing. soon there will be some one else who will be a tastier roast. but as an Israeli im really impressed they were able to use so much compute before someone checked their activity report. I mean this was not just parking space they were using, stakes were high! it's 2025 and (still) money talks.
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Have you not seen any news coming out of Gaza for the past two years? It's a desolate flattened lunarscape. Israel never had any intent of avoiding civilian deaths. Quite the contrary in fact and they still have their eyes on the West Bank.
> It's a desolate flattened lunarscape. Israel never had any intent of avoiding civilian deaths.
So you think they managed to destroy so many buildings and only killed ~65k people (about half militants) out of 2 million by not avoiding civilian deaths? If half the buildings are destroyed, we would expect a million dead if there were no efforts to avoid civilian deaths.
Do you think Israel makes no efforts to avoid civilian deaths? If you were presented with easily verifiable proof that they do avoid it (via both their own reporting, international reporting, and Palestinians themselves), would you retract your statement? Are there any facts which would change your mind? I ask because these facts are easily accessible, and I'm happy to provide them with many sources, but only if providing them isn't a total waste of time because it's become a pseudo-religious belief.
They don't actively civilian deaths, they just don't particularly care about them for pragmatic reasons, because killing a million people is much less plausibly denial genocide that wouldn't fulfil the former conspiracy theory and now publicly-stated gaol of Netanyahu to subsume Gaza into the rest of former Palestine. Is that not enough evidence for you? Besides that, if you truly believe Israel's version of events that at least 30,000 of those people were "militants" (the ANC and Viet Cong were also militants and terrorists), do you really believe it's possible to get a ~50% collateral damage rate when you care about innocent civilians? Also, the 60K figure has been stuck there for a long time in an ongoing genocide and famine. Once the dust settles and Israel has let the UN in, that figure will go up by a factor of at least two or three.
> do you really believe it's possible to get a ~50% collateral damage rate when you care about innocent civilians?
You should look up civilian death rate in previous wars, even recent ones. Civilian deaths typically outnumber combatant deaths by a factor of at least 2:1, often more like 6:1, and sometimes more.
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More likely AWS, according to OP. I bet Bezos won't mind EU reputation as much. But I bet the IDF hedge their bets.
IBM has a long tradition to provide computers for such use cases ;)
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> the current suffering could stop tomorrow if they simply
Who is the "they" in this sentence, exactly?
The Gazans obviously. Who else?
Who else? The people actually holding the hostages, perhaps.
Because you surely mistakenly implied here that All Gazans categorically are responsible for the hostage-taking and "deserve" to be killed as a consequence of that.
Your use of language betrays your feelings. You are disgusting.
Even in nazi Germany a number of people tried to help the Jews.
On Gaza: not a single that I am aware of have tried to help the hostages, not even the toddlers, despite promised financial rewards.
Why would anyone in Palestine, including Gaza, care about helping the people who have occupied them since 1948, with the help of the Brits and funding of the US?
Because Gaza hadn't been occupied since 2005/2006 and kidnapping toddlers is universally seen as an evil thing to do.
No, it's just been so isolated that only Israel can control who and what goes in and out, to the point NGOs have described it for decades as the world's biggest open air concentration camp. I don't condone the horrible things Hamas did (that were actually proven and not later disproven hasbara, like the rapes), but I'm also not arrogant enough to tell an occupied people how they should be resisting their occupiers, especially when the target is a military outpost (which is essentially what the kibbutz was) mere miles from Gaza and being used as a base largely by standing members of the IDF and their families (i.e. the occupying force). Desperate people take desperate measures, who knew? The Irgun and Haganah probably should have thought about that before they violently persuaded the British into giving them a "homeland" that already had a people - including Jews and Christians - living in relative peace on it for almost a thousand years.
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> This war that European Jews started in 1948 when they decided to attack and invade Palestine spans 2 continents, and more if you include the various attacks elsewhere.
This is extremely ignorant. Jews have lived in Israel continuously for 3000 years. The modern Zionist migration, which started in the late 19th century (far from the first such movement for the Jews, and far from the last we've seen globally for all peoples), was met with violence by the Arabs with pogroms and organized violence starting in the 1920s. It was the Arab nations who attacked the Jews in 1948, not the other way around, and both Jews and Arabs were displaced in the war. Prior to then, there was no land "stolen" by Jews, just land legally purchased from Arab landowners. We'll ignore the fact that the Muslim caliphates and Ottomans stole the land in the first place and focus on the modern conflict. We can also ignore the repeated mass-murders / pogroms of Jews throughout Israel and the rest of the Arab/Muslim world in the 19th, 18th, 17th, 16th, and prior centuries, since acknowledging that Jews were repeatedly killed in Safed and elsewhere would require you to acknowledge they existed there and were oppressed by the people and dhimmi laws of the Muslim empires.
The Arabs were and are the equivalent of the xenophobic Trump supporters in the US - they didn't want Jews coming in, buying land, working and thriving, etc. Do you also support violence against non-white migrants in the west?
No, it isn't ignorant, it's history, and pointing to other historical examples of colonialism and imperialism doesn't make modern colonialist states legitimate. Romans lived in the UK over a thousand years ago, but that wouldn't give their descendants in modern Italians the right to occupy the UK, and us native Brits would be well within our right to fight back any invading and occupying force whether the invading and occupying force likes it or not. Muslims, Jews and Christians lived in relative peace in Palestine for almost a thousand years before the British put Israel there.
> before the British put Israel there.
The British not only didn't put Israel there, they actually fought against the Jews and supported the Arab armies in 1948, after previously restricting Jewish migration during the Holocaust (contributing to many Jewish deaths). Modern Zionism began 30 years before the Brits took control.
Thank you. Although I have no personal interest in the outcomes of this conflict, it is astounding to see how these basic historical facts are not only unknown to so many people who hold strong opinions on the Israel-Gaza conflict, but also outright denied. I guess this must also be how Holocaust denialism was ever a thing.
Do you also suggest Jewish families get back land and businesses that they lost in countries in the region in the process?
Because more Jews were squeezed into Israel than Arabs who were squeezed out.
These Jews also lost everything.
And unlike Israeli Arabs who at least from the declaration of Israel got an invitation to stay there as citizens, this option was not offered to the Jews of surrounding nations.
Furthermore, if you want to go back in history, note that Israel was not originally suggested because of WW2 and Holocaust, but decades before because of Muslim harassment of the Jewish minorities in their countries.
Just like Pakistan was created as a national home for Muslims to protect them from Hindus.
Feel free to see for yourself and also to ask why absolutely nobody in UN or the "unbiased" media or schools has told you this before...
"Squeezed"? I think you mean invited. Assuming you're not being disingenuous, which is unlikely given your other comments and clear hate for Palestinians, maybe you should look at the One Million Plan and the many similar movements by Israel to import tens of millions of Jews into the area since 1948, and the many atrocities like Deir Yassin that forced Palestinians out. Israel has been a long time in the making, since the time of the Irgun and Haganah at least, and none of the current situation is accidental.
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Honestly, respect to the big M.
A little more surveillance might have prevented Oct 7.
A lack of surveillance wasn’t the problem. It was not believing the intelligence.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/nov/28/israeli-milita...
Such a Monday quarterback's perspective. There is always plenty of intelligence to suggest there will be an attack
The amount of intelligence to suggest there will be an attack on specific places at specific times is contextual and not comparably equal.
Every time I hear or read that expression, I stop taking the comment seriously because it attempts to shut down dialogue with a cute, esoteric phrase instead of fostering a discussion about a serious retrospective.
Not moving troops and police away from the border might have prevented Oct 7th. I think they were more focused on the West Bank at the time.
Or following up the reports of suspicious behavior in Gaza by your own IDF border troops days before the terror attack.
Ah, yes, the classic argument: we must ramp up surveillance because it is the only way to stop pedophiles, terrorists, and pirates.
Egyptian intelligence informed Israel before October 7. Israel chose to let it happen anyway: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-67082047
Israeli government wanted October 7 to happen, because they knew it would provide a good pretext for the genocide they wanted to commit.
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What a foolish and unsubstantiated claim.
this site is going downhill quickly if we’re moving into conspiracy theories like this
There is no evidence whatsoever that was false flag attack. I didn't expect such blatant conspiracy theories on HN.
https://www.timesofisrael.com/for-years-netanyahu-propped-up...
https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2024-07-07/ty-article-ma...
This isn't evidence of a false flag attack. If I don't change the oil in my car because I'm lazy then my motor seizes I didn't "purposefully destroy my own car"
These two link are not "government from staging a provocation".
Yes, Netanyahu thought that pulling out of Gaza completely, giving them money and allowing them to hold jobs in Israel would improve their economic standing enough to make them docile enough to not attack. He was obviously wrong.
And preferring them to the PLO in the wake of the second intifada was reasonable. All Palestinian groups claim to want to kill all Jews, but at that point in time the PLO had actually done it for decades. For the record, the PLO still has the pay-to-slay program...
Netanyahu preferred Hamas to the PLO in order to guarantee that no unified Palestinian movement might arise. The way to do that, according to Netanyahu, was to strengthen the Islamist Hamas in Gaza at the expense of its rival, the Fatah-dominated PLO in the West Bank.
“Anyone who wants to prevent the creation of a Palestinian state needs to support strengthening Hamas,” said Netanyahu at a Likud party meeting in 2019. “This is part of our strategy, to divide the Palestinians between those in Gaza and those in Judea and Samaria.”
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/nov/21/the-netanyahu-...
Israel, despite its PR, never actually took its foot off Gaza conpletely, continuing regular unprovoked cross-border killings of civilians within Gaza, among other means of exercising control and preventing economic development and activity (though for preventing economic activity specifically, other means were more significant, mainly the intermittent blockade before 2007 and the full blockade from 2007 on.)
> unprovoked
Your bias is showing...
"Unprovoked", except the regular rocket attacks and other acts of terrorism.
Israel actually put up with a lot, way more than any other country would, because they had the Iron Dome.
A little humility would be in order here. "I am not aware of this" is quite different than "there is no evidence whatsoever." The latter comment implies you are aware of the reporting and issues and have carefully weighed them.
This is something that has been discussed in major Israeli media publications.
> A little humility would be in order here.
You couldn't know (but you could have guessed) this but as an Israeli I'm well aware what appeared in major Israeli media publications and this didn't.
A fish in an aquarium doesn't see water.
it's not false flag attack to know everything about preparation to the attack and then moving all protections away to let it happen
it's straight up worse
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I really don't care. I'm just pointing out that surveillance often means thing get nipped in the bud instead of festering and blowing up.
"Microsoft condones Hamas attack on Oct 7th."
"Microsoft changes company slogan to 'Allah Akbar Surveillance for the Future of Glorious Jihad"
"Microsoft Pledges Billions of Dollars to Help Hamas Rebuild Tunnels That Were Used to Invade Israel".
I wonder how the Jewish employees at Micro$oft don't quit en masse...I guess people need income/have families to think about, but still... Preventing Israel from using MS tech to protect itself from terrorist attacks is pretty disgusting. Highly recommend Douglas Murray's (extremely disturbing and sad) book "On Democracies and Death Cults: Israel and the Future of Western Civilization" (warning: includes horrific accounts of extreme violence against Israeli civilians)
https://www.betterworldbooks.com/product/detail/on-democraci...
https://www.audible.com/pd/On-Democracies-and-Death-Cults-Au...
> I wonder how the Jewish employees at Micro$oft don't quit en masse...
I suspect the sensible ones are keeping a low profile and praying for it all to be over, much like the Palestinians (except they are starving in a wasteland not working for Microsoft).
> Microsoft told Israeli officials late last week that Unit 8200, the military’s elite spy agency, had violated the company’s terms of service by storing the vast trove of surveillance data in its Azure cloud platform
You can spy but data is all mine.
What's the protocol when a client stores data that violates their terms of service? Delete it immediately? Retain it until the client can retrieve a backup? Deny access until they sign a new contract?
I suspect that really depends on the content. What does Microsoft do when it's CSAM? They can't legally posses it but can't legally delete it because that would be destroying evidence. I'm sure there's a process.
There was an interesting point in the earlier article on this, where Microsoft tried to push their Israeli employees under a bus. They claimed their Israeli employees had lied to them about the use of Azure for war and civilian harm because they held more allegiance to their army than to Microsoft.
Now obviously, this was a lie, but the implication is staggering: Microsoft can't trust it's own employees in Israel, and believes they're lying to the mothership! And if microsoft can't trust them, surely no one else should either!
Unrelated, I knew I recognised that name, thank you for everything you do, I've made a few commits to T4P myself in the last few months and can't imagine the regular work that must go into it.
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The op did not say Jews, he said Israelis. Apparently a poll by Haaretz found that 47% of respondents wanted to "kill every man, woman, and child in Gaza." 87% wanted complete expelsure of all Palestinians. So, the op is not quite right to say majority explicitly want to kill children, but regardless, it is frankly gross that you heard a criticism of a nation and immediately jumped to islamophobia.
https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2025-05-28/ty-article-ma...
For what it's worth, I agree about the Islamophobia. However, the OP in question does have a consistent track record of collectively blaming Jews (particularly whichever ones they think are Ashkenazi) for everything going on in Israel (which, notably, is not majority Ashkenazi). Their adjacent response reflects this.
(It's sad that I have to say this, but to ensure that my position on I/P is clear: Israel is committing war crimes and is currently litigating a campaign that isn't justifiable on strategic much less basic humanitarian terms.)
Ah, I hadn't seen that. Gross.
It's bizarre to me to see people litigating ethno religious debate on this tech forum. The continued existence of racism into the 21st century baffles me. It's so obviously irrational to be racist I'm especially surprised to see it represented here.
Can I get a link to that article? Thanks.
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> Jews have a hatred of Muslims
Wtf? You can't post like this here, and we've banned this account.
I suppose I'd better add that yes, we have banned accounts for posting the reverse as well. Religious flamewar is not allowed here, regardless of which religion people have a problem with. Neither is using HN primarily for political/ideological and/or nationalistic battle, which this account has been doing egregiously—enough so that I'm surprised we didn't ban it earlier.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
some muslims believe it is acceptable to kill children. These are individuals.
The israeli democratically elected government feels it is acceptable to children, and has, for the past two years employed a campaign of systematic destruction against the palestinian children.
The majority of citizens agree with this. That’s… I don’t know how to describe it.
I think a significantly more parsimonious explanation is that Israel is an extremely flawed democracy, and that its political leadership (namely Netanyahu) are not directly accountable to the public will.
Polling in Israel appears to reflect this[1].
This is a recurring theme in MENA politics: even the most democratically "colored" countries in the region consistently put political preservation over long team regional interests. Israel's recent version of this is arguably the most despicable in terms of outcomes, but it's not particularly unique.
[1]: https://www.timesofisrael.com/breaking-with-pm-74-of-israeli...