I live in a post religious society and it's easy to forget that these things still matter for the rest of the planet.
They've weaponized anti-semitism against their detractors. And, who wants to be accused of racism? Even false accusations stain your reputation.
The irony is that it's probably one of the most racist countries I've ever seen in my entire life. They made a shrine to a terrorist (Baruch Goldstein). The president proudly called miscegenation "a tragedy". If you can imagine a white US president openly calling for whites and blacks to stop having babies - that's the level of racism this state's supporters endorse when weaponizing anti semitism.
Not sure what you're talking about here. Baruch Goldstein has no "shrine"* and besides fringe groups in Israel he is generally not accepted. Compare that with the monthly salaries Palestinian terrorists receive from the PLO and their rockstar status in Palestinian society.
* he has a grave, Israeli law can't really prevent that. The Israeli government has ruined most of the site of his grave despite his family's appeals.
On the flip side, human nature being what it is, giving any person or set of people unconditional approval is creating conditions where evil can thrive.
Maybe go look up Jonathan Pollard. If Israel is our close friend, why would they need to spy on us?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonathan_Pollard
https://www.military.com/history/jonathan-pollard-was-one-of...
The same reason why the US spies on the Bundeskanzler.
An actual reason I have heard is that it is as important to have independent information on your allies than it is on your enemies. Even if it is only for better coordination.
Basically, boosting Israel makes politicians popular with big swaths of their electorate. Pissing those electorates off makes things tough on a corporation, so they generally try not to.
As a secular Jew in Western Europe, I've distanced myself from my religious community due to its insistence on tying my identity to Israel. Where I live, it's less taboo to critique Israel than in the U.S., but still tricky.
Advocates of Israel's right-wing politics have blurred the line between criticizing Israel and anti-Semitism, an endeavor helped by actual anti-Semites. I've grown up with these supporters, but can't quite call them a "lobby" due to their loose organization and lesser influence here compared to the U.S.
Speaking out brings risks: being labeled a leftist extremist, clashing with fellow Jews, or unwittingly aiding anti-Semites. And that's if you are Jew.
This creates a pervasive, cautious silence that I imagine is even more stifling in countries with highly organized pro-Israel lobbying.
My horrid crime that made me literally Hitler?
Disagreement if a tag should be named "jews" or "judaism" on the Politics Stack Exchange site. I made an off-hand comment that I renamed the tag from "jews" to "judaism" and the very first response was that I had been "reported to the ADL" (whether they actually did: who knows? Probably not).
That such an incredibly boring, banal, and benign disagreement exploded in accusations of anti-Semitism so quickly has made me rather distrustful of these accusations in general unless I can verify things. Anti-Semitism is real, but so are narcissistic people abusing it to "win the argument". If you need to defend yourself with "but I'm not anti-Semitic!" then you've already kind of lost the argument, right?
Is it really so hard to "critique" Israel? I see daily calls for Israel to be abolished one way or the other (either violently with the help of Iran or with a Palestinian return). You can hear these opinions from politicians, on the news and social media, campuses and schools.
You might be labeled as a leftist as you said because this is generally a leftist stance, that's fair no? If I held a rightwing view I will probably be labeled as a right winger. Most Israelis I know think twice before they identify as Israelis in certain parts of Europe, they don't want a random cab driver to start lecturing them about apartheid (or do something worse). So I'm really intrigued why you think its such a taboo thing to criticize Israel or even openly call for its destruction.
- Strong lobby in both political parties.
- Boomers with their Judeo-Christians “values”.
- Israel intelligence agencies controlling/influencing ADL, ADL pressuring three letter agencies in US to further influence big tech.
- The usual tactics of infiltration into big corps especially ones that can influence public opinions, you can read a little about Roy Bollock case
>The ADL operates as a private intelligence agency, sending spies, infiltrators, disruptors, and agents provocateurs into the camps — both Jewish and non-Jewish — of those who disagree with its view of Jewish interests. Also like an intelligence agency, it maintains a huge database containing personal information on politicians, writers, dissidents, activists, publishers, bloggers, and even unaffiliated private citizens so that — should any of these people “get out of line,” in the opinion of the ADL — they can be threatened, “exposed,” blackmailed, and thus silenced with maximum effectiveness. [1]
- And especially for Facebook with their shady business, they live on selling the users data to advertisers, the company won’t do anything to cut that money flow, take a look at twitter in the same case how ADL managed to cut around 60% of ads companies, it’s mostly about money and influence.
[1] redice.tv/news/the-adl-and-domestic-spying-roy-bullock-case-revisited
For example on twitch, Spanish streamers[1] say a lot of things that would get an English streamer canceled and/or banned for saying it. And for other languages I'm sure the gap is even bigger.
The same with the group being criticized. Criticism against Russians is not moderated the same way as criticism against Jewish people.
To be clear I'm not in favor of hate speech, I'm just pointing out that moderation isn't 100% equal.
[1] I mean the language of the stream, not the nationality of the streamer
People are not criticizing ethnic Russians. They are criticizing citizens of the Russian state, which includes people who aren’t ethnically Russian but doesn’t include people who are ethnically Russian in e.g. Ukraine. It’s arguable how much responsibility Russian citizens have for the present situation but it’s more than zero.
Similarly while it’s fine to criticize Israelis for the actions of Israel, it’s not fine to criticize Jewish people in general for it.
I agree, kind of, but let's also please realize that it's similar to criticizing US citizens for the actions of the US state. I wouldn't criticize the average American for the actions of the CIA or for the war in Afghanistan, because the average American might or might not agree with those actions.
In other words, I think it's correct to criticize the country, but incorrect to criticize specific people unless they are personally doing bad things.
Some do, and are rarely denounced for that. Alas.
Also, when the internet will ever learn, if you try to censor something you will just give it more exposure, I personally would never know about this documentary but now I will watch it.
Since 9/11 Americans can't trust anything with an "arabic background", they are constantly bombarded by the media, so they can't ever discover that the middle east is much more than a place with oil or "weapons of mass destruction".
Al Jazeera hires top journalists, they are well-funded. They are just very concerned when talking about Qatar, which in a geopolitical sense, doesn't matter, all other news are typically very unbiased.
Only a few news outlets from Europe are similar in quality.
Americans rarely want to see the truth anyways, so they stick with those republican/democrat-leaning media outlets, eating Mc Donalds, going bankrupt on a hospital emergency and believing in the American dream: you need to be asleep to believe on it.
Doesn't seem like the sign of a good news org if you can't say a word of criticism about the country you're headquartered at. Makes me wonder what else is rotten in there, how can we know the rules of the country aren't dictating a bunch of other stuff to the news? News should be as independent as possible.
The main State-sponsored media outlet in my country is considered to be of a pretty high quality. It has some international recognition.
I’d say a fair chunk of those that actually care about media outlet trustworthiness (and aren’t just sharing whatever articles come their way barring a few outlets that are in their person blocklist) are aware of the nuances of AJ’s authority and trustworthiness. The reality is that they have built this reputation by doing heaps and heaps of good reporting, not even in spite of being state-sponsored, but really because of it. There are certain topics that you shouldn’t listen to AJ regarding. Otherwise? They do a good job.
I would argue that they just have more polish to their presentation rather than having more integrity, and the coverage in local language is quite different from the one in English
Because they are different govs, with different agendas, each of them see the propaganda of others as evil, but it's still all very much propaganda.
Remember CNN diffused many bits on how WMD were in Irak to justify the war the UN voted against. The USA went to war anyway, and we learned there were no WMD.
Al Jazeera does the same, but for their side.
It is, nevertheless, quite qualitative content for many topics, and give you another points of on the world events than our own medias outlet.
I am sorry, but they aren't. This is just false equivalence, you can just go read BBC's coverage of UK politics and you will see criticism of their government
Speaking personally, as an ex-journalist I found their English-language coverage generally to be pretty well-balanced and well reported - so that's probably why. And I came to them with a pretty sceptical eye. I've heard that their arabic language stories are rather different - but I don't have a way of checking that for myself.
You realize that all media/press is backed by something, right?
Do you prefer click-baity ridden press looking for ad revenue instead? Or media as a business where they avoid reporting anything controversial that would hurt their business/image/relationships/backers.
Just because it doesn't adopt you worldview doesn't mean its a propaganda outlet.
Certainly there's very negative coverage of Quatar's many faults, but that's not the same as constantly pushing a positive agenda. In other areas the reporting seems sound.
A starter for you https://www.aljazeera.com/search/quatar?sort=date
I'm also willing to bet that when it gets manually reviewed it will be reinstated.
I never got an explanation from fb at the time, but now when I try to log in it states a reason: I have broken community rules regarding "dangerous people and organizations". Which is really a laughable accusation regarding me, a convinced pacifist since 50 years back. But I'm honestly concerned that this might have further implications for me. Who else gets to know that I'm considered associated with "dangerous persons or organizations"?
Anyway, we are as a society still grappling for how to deal with the sudden and immense power over public opinion generation as well peoples most private lives that social media companies have acquired lately. I don't have a complete solution, but this is untenable.
They have known this for a while they do nothing about it.
Should Coca-Cola and its followers also be banned?
Who decides where the line of "dangerous" is drawn?
Still wrong to target the host, but I could see how they could justify it.
Elon Musk doesn't know how the advertising business works, get's rid of moderation and let's banned people back. Which obviously leads to an increase of antisemitism on Twitter and the ADL justly fights against it.
Now after the lawsuit this guy thinks: Elon is a genius, it must be the jews who control the media who have prejudices against Elon and his management.
Lol what? Advertisers literally pulled out because their ads showed up to actual Nazi, holocaust denying content. The ADL didn't (have to) do anything, the brands' brand safety teams did.
https://www.newsweek.com/adl-has-lost-its-way-elon-musk-righ...
