Times of Israel Blogs

> I'm surprised to see such conspiracy theories favored by the likes of Osama Bin Laden and Yasser Arafat like "Greater Israel" trumpeted on Hacker News. I read about it primarily in the Israeli newspaper Ha'aretz. Here are a few recent articles on the topic, no need to read Osama Bin Laden or Yassar Arafat: "Trump's Return Is a Victory for Greater Israel, Annexation and Apartheid" https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2024-11-10/ty-article/.premium/tru… "From Mount Hermon's Peaks, Netanyahu Plots His Vision of a Greater Israel" https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2024-12-11/ty-article/.premium/fro… "The Greater Israel Ideology of Bezalel Smotrich Has Already Lost" https://www.haaretz.com/opinion/2024-02-04/ty-article-opinion/.premium… Or you can read the Times of Israel. "The wind is at their backs. Activists screaming for a Greater Israel want the government to annex Gaza, Judea, and Samaria. Former U.S. Ambassador to Israel David Friedman has published the manifesto." https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/annexation-now-is-not-the-time-for-a-g… Saying that I cannot discuss Great Israel when it is a common topic in the Israeli press is just weird and…

The issue is really whether people are aware of their own biases and actively try to counter them by trying to look at events through the lens of different biases, or just run with their own biases because they're trying to promote them, generally with ulterior motives in mind. Hence George Orwell: "Those who control the present control the past, and those who control the past control the future." For example, if you ardently believe in investment capitalism as the best economic system in history, you might be reluctant to dive into the history of Wall Street's close ties to Nazi Germany in the 1930s, such as the IBM story: https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/ibm-and-the-holocaust-20-years-of-corp… Alternatively, if you ardently believe Marx-inspired socialism is the optimal solution, you might be reluctant to dive into the history of collectivization of agriculture in Ukraine: https://www.anneapplebaum.com/book/red-famine-stalins-war-on-ukraine/ Historians who are merely trying to promote their own particular ideology, or to justify the past actions of their own particular nation-state, are best viewed as propaganda peddlers.

> people who would kill others over physiological differences Most of them just want to enforce borders. And then the dogma that we are all the same is co-opted by people who would see their ethnic group wiped out, as they are told that they don't even exist except as a meaningless social construct, and their desire for ethnic self-preservation is therefore illegitimate - there is nothing to preserve! The same rhetoric targeting Palestinians: https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/perpetuating-the-myth-of-a-palestinian…

I'd wager it might be in response to israeli authorities having made clear that they're suspecting it was done by Iran. Here and there it is also claimed that he was jewish, which I haven't seen any credible sources corroborate. https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/the-strange-death-of-nuno-loureiro/

I see you ignored this opportunity to confirm the accused is innocent until proven guilty and deserves a fair trial before people call them rapists. Too bad. Of course I didn't walk back my claim that the video is doctored, and of course it's not unsupported. Here is one of many articles alleging the video is doctored and pointing to the specific person (Guy Peleg) who doctored it by splicing together different clips from different days: https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/sde-teiman-the-leak-that-shocked-israe… This is just reporting, and it will need to be tested in court. But my claim is not unsupported.

https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/dammi-israeli-the-genetic-origins-of-t… "On balance it is fair to state that Palestinians are in fact ethnically Israelite. The divide between the Israelis and Palestinians is on religious and linguistic lines only."

It does not matter what religion the discriminator is, it is the act of discrimination based on a protected characteristic (in this case religion) which is illegal. Imagine a Jewish boss rejecting Jewish candidates because he does not want his company to get the reputation of being only for Jews to apply to, that would still be illegal discrimination, even if they are of the exact same religion. Before you accuse me of making up a contrived example, that was exactly why the New York Times downplayed the Holocaust during WWII despite by that time uncontrovertible evidence, because they did not want to be perceived as a Jewish news outlet engaging in special pleading: https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/the-new-york-times-downplayed-the-holo…

Jews on college campuses [1] and jews in the black lives matter movement [2] come to mind. [1] https://www.frc.org/antisemitism [2] https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/black-lives-matters-jewish-problem-in-…

Well, to the people to whom the Hebrew Bible belongs, there's a reason Genesis (Bereshit) starts with the second letter of the aleph-bet ("Bet") and not the first ("Aleph") Explained here: https://www.sefaria.org/Midrash_Tanchuma%2C_Bereshit.1.1?lang=he And a summary of the explanation here: https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/midrash-tanchuma-bereshit-why-it-matte… Translating into English, it would have been more interesting to do it with "B"

It has been a long-standing complaint for awhile. In partricular, there appears to be a core group of editors that have displayed a blatant bias against Israel. Huge ommissions of information that only inflame anti-semitic passions and hinder real dialogue from occuring. There are other issues, but this one shows the limitations of wikipedia and how a narrow mindset can comandeer a few pages. Again, I like wikipedia, but it's only reliable for mundane issues. https://aish.com/48964486/ https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/wikipedias-jewish-problem-pervasive-sy…

Your standards for unbiased and objective are seriously questionable: https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/the-undisguised-agenda/

This article has a video of similar system from Lockheed Martin in 2013 demonstrating successful destruction of missile https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/iron-beam-iron-dome-and-laser-defense/ The capability for lasers to counter rockets has been demonstrated over and over in the past 20-25 years. The problem has always been making the systems practical, but I guess they are getting there now.

A few years ago, criticism of Israel's policies started being called anti-antisemitism.[1] That made it OK to censor criticism of Israel. Israel's policies got more divisive under 12 years of Netanyahu, and there's more reason to be critical of them. Those two trends are in collision. [1] https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/criticism-of-israel-is-anti-semitism-r…

So you trade mosquitoes for cats... Sounds like what Israel did but with rats for cats... in a different way hehe https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/concerning-cat-population-in-israel/

I'm sure there are interesting counterexamples here but all I can think of is the anti-dentite episode of Seinfeld :)... https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Yada_Yada I guess (anecdotally/hearsay) at least one person has done it to get a free birthright trip? https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/i-pretended-to-be-jewish/

I read the phrase "modern slaves" as an accurate description for a sadly large number of sex workers worldwide. See http://blogs.timesofisrael.com/hookers-in-the-holy-land-an-uncomfortab… for an example of something that qualifies for that description.

The censorship debate always reminds me of the 2000s after 9/11 where anyone who opposed going to war in multiple foreign countries which had nothing to do with 9/11 were labelled "terrorist sympathizers". Taking advantage of this, they also passed a mass spying bill - the Patriot Act. Stating "man cannot be a woman" or "men shouldn't compete in women's sports" is considered transphobic in current climate. Regardless of which side of the Palestine-Israel conflict you fall one, either or both sides can be censored by labelling it as "anti-semitic" or "islamaphobic". Speaking out against the Patriot Act and forever wars would be (and was) labelled "unpatriotic" and "terrorist sympathizer" and censored. Speaking out against healthy living would be labelled "fat phobic". Or the opposite could also happen. All the groups which speak out against fat shaming could also get censored because it's dangerous to public health. The government and big tech would start censoring you for advertising soft drinks/chips and other junk food. Since all religions oppose gay marriage, when super religious are in power, they would censor LGBT content. Pro-choice would get censored for religious reasons and Pro-life would be censored for racism/dangerous or other reasons. Just a few days ago there were 2 posts on HN: Rival weightlifter speaks out on transgender Hubbard's Olympic place: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27598383 The blackout Palestinians are facing on social…

If it were intentional, to conflate all Jews with all of Israel is intellectually, ethically, and morally bankrupt. If it were unintentional, then it would be extremely ignorant for a supposed "diversity head." I hope he instead meant "instances of the Israeli military shooting unarmed civilians across an international border, led by extreme Zionist leaders who want to 'drive [Palestinians] into the sea.'" even if unable to articulate it in a professional, nuanced, and sensitive manner. --- The larger issue that keeps getting lost --- Zionist != Jew; Anti-Zionism != Anti-Semitism. There are plenty of anti-Zionist Jews and allies; Bernie Sanders and Noam Chomsky, IIRC, are anti-Zionists. Alan Dershowitz[0], Fox News, and Likud all peddle the same fallacy: anything anti-Zionist is exactly the same as anti-Semitic. Furthermore, Likud and its allies have repeatedly targeted American universities with overt and covert anti-BDS and anti-Zionist disruptive social/political/intelligence-gathering/free speech activities[1,2,3,4,5], which 45 got behind to condemn BDS with the weight of the US government to the extent an executive order can (an EO is an "executive wish," in many cases).[6] They hide behind the shield and sword of crybully shouting down and labeling anyone anyone who isn't with them as "anti-semitic," and in doing so, are making the term irrelevant and meaningless for actual instances of anti-semitism ("the boy who called 'wolf.'") 0. The Case Against BDS: Why…

No Wait! Global Warming Caused ISIS ! Anti-capitalist Naomi Klein says ISIS and global warming caused by same forces : http://junkscience.com/2015/11/anti-capitalist-naomi-klein-says-isis-a… No wait: Obama caused ISIS : http://www.nationalreview.com/article/386354/how-obama-caused-isis-ira… wait more ... America caused ISIS : http://www.globalresearch.ca/america-created-al-qaeda-and-the-isis-ter… Clinton says Dick Cheney caused ISIS : http://www.newsmax.com/Newsfront/Clinton-Cheney-Iraq-ISIS/2014/06/27/i… Kerry says Israel caused ISIS: http://blogs.timesofisrael.com/whos-right-kerry-believes-isis-recruitm… Wait ....

You would start by not sending them money. Unless of course you needed a justification for your political/expansionist goals. https://archive.ph/2023.10.14-033824/https://www.haaretz.com/israel-ne… https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/hamas-israels-own-creation/ Anyway, the idea of embedding military targets within civilian populations is also not exclusive to one side: https://www.haaretz.com/2012-06-09/ty-article/.premium/does-the-presen… Neither is the use of terror: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King_David_Hotel_bombing https://web.archive.org/web/20121226235336/http://www.foreignaffairs.c… https://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2019/02/no-justification-israe… https://www.thetorah.com/article/israels-incomplete-conquest-of-canaan