My RH contract specifically forbade boycotting Israel, I'm sure for those reasons.
And of course, I imagine that Israel has laws about doing business there that look dimly on being boycotted.
It's very very dumb legislation, and I think derives from a very odd facet of belief found in some American Protestant belief systems - that for Jesus to come back, the State of Israel has to exist.
I remember reading Bill Clinton's biography. At some point, he mentioned that a pastor told him something along these lines, and that it was an important realisation for him. (I read that years ago, could be slightly wrong but that was the idea).
I found that extremely disturbing that archaic religious beliefs would influence foreign policies.
That being said, it's well known that our former French president got advised by an astrologer [1]
[1] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2000/jun/25/jonhenley.theo...
Why? As a former atheist, I’ve come to the realization that the alternative—at least at scale—to traditional religion isn’t people being hyper rational engineers. It’s different and less well established unprovable and illogical beliefs. Have you read some of the social “science” stuff that gets published? All the “woo” stuff? People believe that stuff and it gets executed into policy. (The reasons for the atheism being former are unrelated to that observation, my point is just that I get where your initial take is coming from.)
Easy example at the moment, I think it is obvious from game theory that there are situations where a rational actor in the US would order a nuclear strike on Russia. Under such circumstances, I'd rather the person with the power to do so acted irrationally. Following this line of thought, it is reasonable to support extremely religious people with irrational ideals for high office - as long as what they actually do gets a good outcome. Eg, a strong belief in a higher power might sometimes drive the sort of people who are willing to decentralise executive authority amongst the masses.
I believe it’s part of human nature. It’s exhausting being totally rational
1) "If you really have to pick a belief system to put your faith in, you can do much worse than traditional religion." Now, I'm a lifelong atheist, and atheism is one of the few things I never changed my mind on, but I came to the conclusion that this is probably true: at the very least, traditional religion is a stable belief system that won't destroy your life.
2) "A lot of people who aren't traditionally religious, actually follow some random bullshit creed that's much worse than religion." I agree with this, there is a genuine human need religion fulfills and many might want to "fill the void" with subpar alternatives.
3) "If you are an atheist, then you necessarily fall into case (2)." Which is blatantly false, as the existence of millions of perfectly well-adjusted and functioning atheists shows.
That might be true in liberal western democracies, but there are many parts of the world where your particular choice of religion may well destroy your life or straight up get you killed, if the people behind the next coup don't share your beliefs. Even in the west you might hinder your own success if you pick a non-majority system.
Religious people in America act religious on Sunday and like ruthless, immoral "greed is good" capitalists on Monday, flexibly switching ideologies for their convenience.
Mind if I ask what your path was? I called myself an agnostic starting at about age 12 (and was a doubter from age 5), but eventually worked my way around to concluding that something was going on.
Some of my musings on that subject:
- https://www.questioningchristian.com/2006/06/metanarratives_...
- https://www.questioningchristian.com/2005/05/why_i_call_myse...
EDIT: There is a lot of stuff in the second one that applies to me. My wife’s faith is very strong. I’m not sure whether I adapted to her beliefs, or as someone raised in an extremely secular setting she made me comfortable allowing myself to believe things that I already felt.
However very religious people are dogmatic (almost by definition). As such, they are less likely to review certain positions based on facts.
It seems like atheism might be correlated with false beliefs around social studies, but probably anti-correlated around false beliefs like "trump still the election".
You are welcome to pretend being progressive is believing in "woo stuff" like civil rights, womens suffrage, gay marriage, race blind immigration etc. The fact of the matter is that - you would not be in this country without the "woo stuff" you are ridiculing.
The conservative culture you have adopted doesn't welcome race blind immigration.
Referring to an earlier discussion when you verbally attacked a legal immigrant for documenting his citizenship process
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31348466
>>> As an ethnic Bangladeshi my kids and I have a right of return. I can obtain Bangladeshi citizenship any time I want.
>> Why are you treating America as some kind of science experiment?
> I try not to! My family was invited here by Americans on certain terms, and nobody has ever really complained. But I think they have every right to complain if they wanted.
Just to be clear- your family was not invited here by a majority of Americans. Just a corporation or university on restrictive terms and got approved by the US government, thanks to MLKs efforts.
A majority of Americans would not welcome you here. Half the country- liberals would not welcome you here, because you would block all progressive laws except Loving vs Virginia, and perhaps race blind immigration, though you take strongly offence when legal immigrants open their mouth, as in the referenced thread. So perhaps, you would also roll back the various 1960s civil rights acts. Half of the conservatives would not want you here because of your skin color, or as you call it - "culture".
Apart from my views on guns and legal originalism, I have quite conventional opinions for a desi raised on the east coast of the US in the 1990s.
> I understand the advantage of talking about Bangladesh as there are very few Bangladeshis here to contradict you - but you can use this trick only so many times.
I’m sure there are lots of Indians and Pakistanis on HN. I don’t think we’re so different that they wouldn’t be able to contradict me. But even progressive desis have aunts and uncles. And I don’t know about yours but mine aren’t exactly sitting around discussing Judith Butler.
> You are welcome to pretend being progressive is believing in "woo stuff" like civil rights, womens suffrage, gay marriage, race blind immigration etc.
By “woo stuff” I was referring to saging houses and healing crystals and Druid weddings. (My wife’s from Oregon.)
But as to the issues you mention, the vast majority of Americans support those things. Progressives are the small subset of those people who support those things for distinct ideological and millenarian reasons.
> The fact of the matter is that - you would not be in this country without the "woo stuff" you are ridiculing.
You can’t gaslight me, lol. I grew up in a 95% white Virginia town that voted for Bush, Dole, and then Bush again. The precinct where I live went for Trump over Clinton 58-34 (the same year we moved there). A good chunk of my wife’s family is rural white Trump voters.
There is a wellspring of acceptance for immigrants in this country that’s far broader and deeper than progressivism. Its rooted not in critical race theory, but Christianity, Constitutionalism, and the immigrant history of people who are already here.
Indeed, if minorities and immigrants were as reliant on progressives to be our champions as progressives think, we would be screwed. There’s not that many of them and they have no guns!
> The conservative culture you have adopted doesn't welcome race blind immigration.
The conservative culture my entire family comes from believes in that way less than anywhere in South Georgia or Iowa that I’ve been.
> Just a corporation or university on restrictive terms and got approved by the US government, thanks to MLKs efforts.
I’ve never met a desi (who wasn’t put on TV by white people, anyway) who thinks MLK has anything to do with immigrants. It’s a completely different issue. Much of my family moved to Australia or Canada, which never had a US style civil rights movement. But those countries are also very welcoming of immigrants.
Ahem.
> In the winter of 2003, when George Bush and Tony Blair were frantically gathering support for their planned invasion, Professor Thomas Römer, an Old Testament expert at the university of Lausanne, was rung up by the Protestant Federation of France. [..] President Jacques Chirac wanted to know what the hell President Bush had been on about in their last conversation. Bush had then said that when he looked at the Middle East, he saw "Gog and Magog at work" and the biblical prophecies unfolding. But who the hell were Gog and Magog? Neither Chirac nor his office had any idea. But they knew Bush was an evangelical Christian, so they asked the French Federation of Protestants, who in turn asked Professor Römer. [..] He explained that Gog and Magog were, to use theological jargon, crazy talk. They appear twice in the Old Testament, once as a name, and once in a truly strange prophecy in the book of Ezekiel
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/andrewbrown/2009/a...
> That being said, it's well known that our former French president got advised by an astrologer [1]
Former, former, former, former president Mitterand, not president Hollande.
Gog and Magog are well-known figures mentioned in both the Hebrew Bible and the Quran. Playing dumb because it's not also in the Old Testament is not a good look for someone who's supposedly an expert.
This article is a silly hit piece written to fool people who are totally ignorant of religious history.
Surely you meant gaslighting Chirac ? (which I disagree with, anyway).
> Gog and Magog are well-known figures mentioned in both the Hebrew Bible and the Quran. Playing dumb because it's not also in the Old Testament is not a good look for someone who's supposedly an expert.
Good thing he's an old testament expert and not a Hebrew bible or quran one then. You think Bush was referring to the Gog and Magog from the Hebrew bible or from the Quran or from the old testament ? Should have called an Hebrew or an Islam expert instead of an protestand Old Testament expert ?
Here's a different report of how things happened: https://wp.unil.ch/allezsavoir/george-bush-et-le-code-ezechi... and that might shed a light on why you think Gog and Magog is not as well known in France as you seem to think they are.
Imagine claiming to be a LOTR expert and then feigning ignorance as to the events that took place in the Hobbit!
I'm not religious or even particularly interested and even I am aware of this history. Ridiculous.
France's Ministry of Foreign affairs isn't advising the President on things like this, they don't have subject matter experts? Forgive me, maybe I give governments too much credit or, but seems like an odd article.
Calling an expert was the right call.
> France's Ministry of Foreign affairs isn't advising the President on things like this, they don't have subject matter experts?
Seems pretty obvious to me that they wouldn't have experts on every subjects, especially on things like that.
> I'm not saying Bush didn't say that because I don't know, I can believe it. [..] Forgive me, maybe I give governments too much credit or, but seems like an odd article.
There's healthy skepticism and there's something else.
Not mention Israels extremely damaging influence on US domestic politics. Israel working together with Neocons to push the US into some of the worst foreign policy choices since Vietnam. And that's just one aspect of the problem. The list goes on and on.
If Israel is a major ally, then I think the US would be much better of with fewer allies.
The apartheid state that is dominated by far right extremist that are still living by a 19th century colonialist doctrine?
I'm sure you'll be able to find _someone_ who believes it, but it is so weird to see people claiming something as a fact about your church that you've never encountered in nearly 40 years. What's infinitely more likely is that Christians feel a certain affinity towards Israel due to a shared Judeo-Christian heritage.
As someone who attended an evangelical, fundamentalist Baptist church as a child (Hyles Anderson), it is very much their view as well as larger groups like Independent and Southern Baptists (the largest Protestant denomination in the United States) that the existence of the nation of Israel and support for it is a precursor for the second coming of Jesus and the fulfillment of Gods plan.
Additionally, “Christian Zionism” is embraced by Christians in Australia and Western Europe as well.
There are academic sources for this everywhere, but feel free to watch their sermons on YouTube too:
[1] https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/politics-and-religio...
[2] https://www.brandeis.edu/israel-center/news/newsletter-5-rob...
This might definitely not be your intent - but that is for sure how I am currently parsing your comment.
1. Obviously anti-semitic
2. Not even true. The Christian Right lobby is HUGE and includes evangelical Protestants, Catholics, and LDS.
3. The Christian far right is significant and spent over 10% of the total lobbying spend in the last election cycle.
Sources:
[1] https://www.pewresearch.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/7/2011/...
[2] https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/5050/trump-us-christian-spe...
And depending on your definition of 'Zeal' the christian zionists often have more. A educated Neo-Conservative might be a strong Zionist but not will not come across as having Zeal, while a Baptist Christian Zionists might come of as pure Zeal.
What's really infinitely more likely is that israel and usa share some common enemies, and usa doesn't really have all that many geopolitical allies in the region to chose from. I don't know why everyone reaches for weird religious conspiracies when the obvious geopolitical explanation will do.
Without these cultural and religious layers, what remains is same for everyone. A human body.
But that also means Jews/Christians have a very rocky road together. Technically, "Christians" performed the Holocaust, for starters.
It begs a question - when you add in Islam, why do Christians and Jews suddenly become political allies?
It's important to note that we throw around terms like The Muslims as though all Muslims and Christians, etc have the same beliefs and agenda, and that's clearly not the case.
The subject is completely invisible to us except when we discuss interesting parts of the religions we believe.
I for one believe that religion is an ethics and conscience system, and when practiced correctly, all of them points to the same direction, albeit with different narratives and paths.
Goes back to the Crusades, the Islamic invasion of Europe and the fall of Constantinople
It’s not like Christianity embraced Jews either, but they did not present an existential threat
> And it shall happen in that day that I will make Jerusalem a very heavy stone for all peoples; all who would heave it away will surely be cut in pieces, though all nations of the earth are gathered against it - Zechariah 12:3
The (mis-)interpretation being that for the return of God to occur, the existence of Jerusalem is a pre-requisite. It can't disappear, again. So for that to happen, we should protect Israel, who will protect the city. We should especially protect them because the world will gather against them.
The logic has some major flaws to it, and can be easily worked around, but I've heard it a few times.
isn't it amusing how humans think their deity isn't powerful enough so they have to make things possible for him?
There are several times when significant figures such as Moses, David, Jeremiah, and so on, negotiate a new outcome with their God. There are also other times that their God refuses to act, because the faithless have fallen away.
They "wandered around in the desert", a rather small patch of desert, mind you, because of a lack of faith. The 40-ish years in the desert, to age out those who failed in their duty, rather than to enter into their "Promised Land". Moses was also forbidden from entering Cana'an, because he tried to act on his own, instead of in tandem with his god.
> > odd facet of belief found in some American Protestant belief systems - that for Jesus to come back, the State of Israel has to exist
This seems to be overwhelmingly true[1].
> "...80% of the surveyed evangelicals believe that the modern rebirth of Israel and the return of millions of Jews to that land are a fulfillment of Bible prophecy and show 'we are getting closer to the return of Jesus Christ.'[1]
> more likely is that Christians feel a certain affinity towards Israel due to a shared Judeo-Christian heritage
This wouldn't really explain it.
Muslims also have a Judeo-Christian heritage (and even believe that Jesus Christ was the Messiah), and there's no reason to believe the historical parts of Israel would be different if they were under Muslim control. After all, the Palestinians living there prior to Israel's formation preserved all that stuff for hundreds of years.
1. https://www.npr.org/2019/08/25/753720351/as-u-s-jews-cool-to...
If you seek to 6 min 5 seconds, the narrator describes an Evangelical pastor by the name of Urban Baxter whose End Time ministry leads a tour to Israel twice a year. The pastor then explains to his tour group / congregation the significance of Armageddon in relation to the current location of the tour group, Megiddo.
Up until they actually travel to the Holy Land to see 1) that the Christians there are either of European descend, or Palestinians (there are very few Christians of Israeli descend), 2) how Palestinians are treated by the State of Israel.
This is kinda eye-opening. You imagine that there is some "shared Judeo-Christian heritage", but after seeing this firsthand you associate the Land more with barbed wire than with Jesus.
Source: been there, seen that.
It still shocks me how people that know nothing are the ones that define what Christian’s believe / behave.
I don't think historically this makes any sense at all. It's normally just a thing used by right wing politicians to say that muslims are not ok.
There are legal ways of firing an employee if the employee does something illegal. Bullying is not one of them. And that is my point, people insists that "Google has reasons" that does not justify to commit a crime.
Same thing is happening in the culture wars. The nutjobs are slowly getting elected onto school boards and other local positions so they can start adding prayer/ban civil rights related content/remove any references to CRT.
I dont believe in made up books saying "this is your promised land"
I also dont believe in madeup books saying ",kill jews"
Just stop landgrabbing and/or killing each other jeez.
Defending Israel is such an NPC mentality, theres no good guys in that war they both commit atrocities.
Just FYI, most of evictions Israel is doing are against jewish settlers, not arabs.
Both sides think the land belongs to them as both sides inhabited the same land for hundreds* of years. Which side is doing the grabbing then turns into a judgement call.
* - Going by Wikipedia, Muslims Arabs since ~600CE and some form of Israelis since ~1200BCE.
The reality is that before the EXPLICITLY colonialist movement of Zionism, there was a small Jewish community there. A small amount of people compared to the overwhelmingly Muslim population.
The waste majority of current population has immigrated from Europe and the Soviet Union.
And of course because the Zionists know that they enacted a law that states that basically everybody who is even vaguely Jewish is free to live there and a lot of them are then settled in the West Bank.
At the same time the countless Muslims who actually lived there, in 1948 and their kids have no rights to return at all.
So according to the current Israeli law, a person who has hasn't grown up Jewish but has Jewish grand parent has a right to live their, but the children of the people displaced in 1948 don't.
The Israelites go back to the Bronze Age. They are from a couple of Semitic cities in the Canaanite levant. The same group that spawned phonecians and a bunch of other Mediterranean peoples who colonized much of northern africa and Southern Europe in addition to Anatolia
Specially when essentially all of these Palestinians that lived in China had no intention or interest in ever going back to Palestine.
And then one day a dude shows up, and says, "Hey one could argue based on some not very historical evidence that X place is our homeland, so lets just go there and steal that land".
Just as if a bunch of British people had colonized East Africa with the idea of reconquering their homeland.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_recognition_of_t...
If its a country, then its boarders are being moved step by step every year.
So it not really a country in any sense other then by a few people who want to claim Israel is not an apartheid state.
What is also true is that jewish, muslim, christian and atheist/other religions living in current territory of Israel and Palestine have right to peacefully live in future state that treat all people equally. With Israeli settlements we are way pass the point of two state solution.
Are you referring to Jewish colonialists coming to British ruled Palestine in the early 20th century, Muslim colonialists conquering Byzantine ruled Palestina in the early 7th century, Roman colonialists that exiled Jews and renamed the area Palestina in the early 2nd century after previous conquest, Greeks, Persians, Babylonians, Assyrians or Egyptians?
Or maybe how according to the bible the Israelites conquered the area from the native Canaanites? (Which at least according to Wikipedia is a myth and they actually are those Canaanites)
> With Israeli settlements we are way pass the point of two state solution.
Sadly, English Wikipedia has very little information on the peace agreement that was almost signed at the time of the Annapolis Conference https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Annapolis_Conference compared to the Hebrew entry on the peace talks themselves https://he.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D7%A9%D7%99%D7%97%D7%95%D7%AA... Those talks outline the (pretty obvious) path to pece via territory exchange and the fact they were very close to being signed show to me that maybe common ground can be found again.
My personal hope is that the more unreasonable settlements will just be exchanged away and thus won't pose a serious barrier to peace. Maybe I'm being overly optimistic.
To inject some pessimism, I also don't see how a peace agreement can be signed with Hammas and the PIJ in control as in my mind a peace agreement will probably cause them to implode.
The colonists movement called Zionism (that is historically closely interlinked with other colonialist movement and has been ever since) that started after WW1 and hit its peak after WW2 and in 1948 quite clearly and explicitly have the goal of whole sale population replacement of the whole region.
The dominate right wing parties plans as far as we can tell is to import as many 'Jewish' people as they can and hope to decrease the amount of people in the West Bank and Gaza. They have pretty clear and deliberate strategy of long term ethnic cleanings, converting land that they agree in theory was gone be Palestinian and settling Israeli citizens on.
If there were Muslim empires from Persia invading Palestine still today, we should fight against that as well but that is long gone. However Israeli colonialism is still fully active and pushing forward literally every day.
As many people have already noted, Israel has practically made a two state solution impossible. The West Bank has been so carved up and systematically been destroyed as a viable state territory that its really can no longer function as such.
The Annapolis Conference was not close to solving anything, it was just another attempt at pressuring Palestinians to politically give more concessions. Bush and his Neo-Con allies had absolute no interest what so ever in a real Palestinian state. In fact Bush did nothing to prevent massive expansion of settlements during his terms and his presidency ended any series possibility of a real 2 state solution.
Protestants and the Israeli lobby have always had a very symbiotic relationship.
Imagine thinking that humanity has the power to influence the actions of G_d
Oooh, then you’d see the actions of the opposition as influenced by the devil
A cycle of hate, mind-blown
Nothing 'odd' here, if one subscribes to the notion that Revelation (the last book of the Bible) is predictive.
The idea was popularized in the 1970s by Hal Lindsey[1] whose 'The Late Great Planet Earth'[2] is amusuingly not for sale ate [1].
I guess that Lindsey was a better book peddler than prophet.
[1] https://www.hallindsey.com/
[2] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Late_Great_Planet_Earth
What’s clear is the USA is for whatever reason very involved in tipping the balance in Israel, and it’s hurting everyone in the region to some degree - regardless of their religion or ethnicity.
Why do you think so many politicians, that claim atheism, are still in favor of our alliance with Israel?
We need them there.
In fact the best choice regarding Israel that the US has ever made is telling the Israeli and the British to stop being colonialist asshats in 1954.
The Israel relationship is the source of far more problems then it solves anything for the US in the middle east.
> sea of enemy-aggressors.
The amount of Israeli invasion of the nations around it, plus the constant bombing and invading of their airspace plus the constant assassinations and support for rebellions in those countries would question who the aggressor is.
Not to mention the constant and systematic reduction in the land that based on earlier agreements should belong to Palestinians.
Only retaliation for a protected activity is illegal. Is interfering with or undermining the company's business prospects in service of a political opinion a protected activity? I don't know, but it would not surprise me if it were not.
To be entirely honest, I'm not sure I think it should be. I can certainly imagine a lot of scenarios where I would not approve of people motivated by certain political opinions actively working against the interests of the company that employed me.
If I were Google I'd fire her for abusing disability leave. She clearly was fit enough to keep up with and protest Google's development in Israel and appear on TV. Meanwhile, she didn't make a single effort to keep up with her team.
https://medium.com/@arielkoren/googles-complicity-in-israeli...
The company is allowed to treat you less favorably or even fire you for any other (non-protected) reason, including your general opinions. In this case, protesting a deal with Israel is an opinion not a protected action, so there's really no question of retaliation.
If I disagree (whether publicly or privately) with my company's product strategy or who they choose to do business with, they are absolutely allowed to fire me.
I mean, who isn't ready to upend their lives, leave all their friends and family to move into a poorer country on another continent for the sake of their employer? There is only one name for that: "huge opportunity", thank you lots Google for not being evil.
Many people is missing the point. "Retaliation" is illegal.
> Google denied retaliation and the National Labor Relations Board found no wrongdoing after an investigation
In my experience this kind of investigation have very high standards on what is considered "retaliation" as it is very difficult to prove that negating promotions, or moving people to new positions is directly related to "retaliation". Maybe it was just a misunderstanding by the employee, but I would like to see more realistic investigations that take into account the timing of the companies actions.