Engadget frames Israel’s surveillance of Palestinian telecommunications as extraordinary, but such practices are common in national security contexts. The U.S. National Security Agency, for example, collects vast amounts of metadata and content under laws like FISA and EO 12333. Surveillance of hostile entities is standard policy in many democracies. See: https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/nsa-f...
Israel faces real and ongoing threats from groups such as Hamas, which has a record of carrying out attacks on civilians and is officially designated a terrorist organisation by the U.S., EU and others (https://home.treasury.gov/policy-issues/terrorism-and-illici...). Monitoring communications within the territories controlled by such entities is a rational, defensive measure.
As for storage on Microsoft servers, Israel, like many governments, uses U.S.-based cloud services with strict contracts and data protections. The U.S. government itself stores classified data on Microsoft Azure through its government cloud services (https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/solutions/government/). The implication that Microsoft’s involvement is unusual or illicit is misleading.
Criticism of Israeli policy should account for its security context. The article omits this.
westpfelia · 2d ago
What the NSA is doing should be considered illegal wiretapping. None of this is ok. And trying to justify it is insane. Look at the Snowden leaks. Lets you know everthing you need to know about what our "spy" agencies are actually doing.
nelox · 2d ago
Arguing that “none of this is ok” overlooks the security context in which states operate. Israel is not conducting indiscriminate mass surveillance of its own citizens. It is monitoring communications in territories largely controlled by designated terrorist organisations such as Hamas (see: https://home.treasury.gov/policy-issues/terrorism-and-illici...). That is not equivalent to the NSA intercepting Americans’ domestic calls.
Even Snowden’s own disclosures differentiated between the problematic scope of domestic collection and the more accepted targeting of hostile foreign entities (https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jun/06/nsa-phone-reco...). You may oppose both, but equating them as equally unjustified weakens the argument.
Israel has experienced decades of terror attacks, rocket fire and armed conflict originating from Gaza and the West Bank. That fact matters. Countries routinely intercept communications from adversarial regions, whether it’s the NSA, GCHQ, or Shin Bet. Calling this “insane” suggests a disregard for the protective responsibilities of a state.
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7952 · 2d ago
Funny to talk about "context" while narrowing the frame of reference.
Another piece of context is polling showing that a majority of Israeli citizens support the forced expulsion of Gazan citizens and even Arab Israeli citizens.
> Engadget frames Israel’s surveillance of Palestinian telecommunications as extraordinary, but such practices are common in national security contexts
It's still bad
> Israel faces real and ongoing threats from groups such as Hamas
Israel helped put Hamas in power, FWIW. Maybe instead of stealing Palestians' land, Israel should give them citizenship and voting rights. It's the moral thing to do.
> Criticism of Israeli policy should account for its security context
Criticism of Israeli policy should account for their colonialism and war crimes. It's a moral issue. The rest be damned.
nelox · 2d ago
Israel did not “put Hamas in power.” Hamas won the 2006 Palestinian legislative elections. These were monitored by international observers, including the Carter Center, who confirmed the vote was largely fair: https://cartercenter.org/news/pr/palestine_013006.html. The idea that Israel created Hamas is a misrepresentation of historic tactical decisions in the 1980s, when Israel tolerated some Islamist activity as a counterweight to the PLO. That is not the same as “putting Hamas in power,” and certainly not a reason to ignore Hamas’s current actions.
As for land and citizenship, roughly 20% of Israeli citizens are Arab, including Muslims and Christians, with full voting rights. The Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza are not Israeli citizens because they are governed by the Palestinian Authority and Hamas respectively, per the Oslo Accords. Israel cannot unilaterally give them citizenship without dismantling those agreements, which Palestinians also signed. See: https://ecf.org.il/issues/issue/153.
Calling the situation “colonialism” ignores the fact that both sides claim historic ties to the land and have engaged in multiple rounds of negotiations. That includes offers of statehood rejected by Palestinian leadership, notably in 2000 and 2008. See: https://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/28/magazine/28israel-t.html.
Security and morality are not mutually exclusive. Both sides deserve accountability and safety.
7952 · 1d ago
Talk of colonialism often descends into semantics. I think the main issue with Israeli policy in this regard is that Israelis are attempting and succeeding to expel people from their homes. That is happening on the west bank now.
The problematic actions under discussion are the genocide of the Palestinians in Gaza.
> Israel cannot unilaterally give them citizenship without dismantling those agreements, which Palestinians also signed
So you're saying they wouldn't go for it? Let's ask them.
> both sides claim historic ties to the land
You act as if the land was empty when the Zionists showed up.
> Security and morality are not mutually exclusive
Depends how you define security. Israel is defining it as genocide. And we're not even mentioning the horrible actions happening in the West Bank. Or in Syria and Lebanon for that matter.
> Both sides deserve accountability and safety
This is not symmetrical. One side has modern weapons, surveillance, air power, an modern army and an embargo on the other with the backing of the US (and other Western states.)
Daishiman · 2d ago
> Criticism of Israeli policy should account for its security context. The article omits this.
The context of being an occupying power also factors into this too?
laimewhisps · 1d ago
Israel faces a "threat" from the people it's been ethnically cleansing for 80 years. Also, this is in the West Bank, so has nothing to do with Hamas (not that it would be ok to do this in Gaza). That the U.S. and EU also violate human rights at scale, doesn't make it ok for Israel to do the same. Only they go one step further and actually murder people based on the information they've spied.
CLPadvocate · 1d ago
I think your confusion results from the fact that "Palestinians" was the name used to call the Jews basically for nearly two thousand years, until the early 20th century. And, yes, they have been ethnically cleansed by arabs basically since the arab invasion in the 7th century.
The arabs themselves never wanted to be called Palestinians - they used the name "Syrian Arabs". Yassir Arafat, former leader of the PLO, was one of the most prominent opponents of the word "Palestinians" with regard to the arab population - he only changed his mind as Jordan and Egypt signed a peace treaty with Israel, because he wanted to distance himself from these "traitors".
One of the problems he (and also most arabs) had with the word "Palestina" - it has exactly ZERO relationship to arabs and to Arabic languages. It's a greek word with actually Hebrew roots. It means "land of the Philistines" - and the Philistines, according to many historians, are a mixed group of people, mostly from western Mediterranean (modern-day Italy, France, Spain, northern Africa), also called "the sea people", or, in other words - pirates. The Romans introduced this name to the region to wipe out the original names Judea and Samaria (which IS actually a sign of a genocide).
laimewhisps · 20h ago
The Palestinians are native, the Ashkenazis are European. Your hasbara doesn’t work anymore.
nielsbot · 2d ago
It would be nice of Microsoft would decline this business. Wonder if we can muster enough public pressure to force them to.
gbil · 2d ago
Too many connections on too many levels for this to happen, from MS having a huge R&D office in Israel to political connections between the countries involved etc.
SanjayMehta · 2d ago
If they had been using a NAS, the outrage would have been against the NAS manufacturer?
(was flagged, because of course)
Israel faces real and ongoing threats from groups such as Hamas, which has a record of carrying out attacks on civilians and is officially designated a terrorist organisation by the U.S., EU and others (https://home.treasury.gov/policy-issues/terrorism-and-illici...). Monitoring communications within the territories controlled by such entities is a rational, defensive measure.
As for storage on Microsoft servers, Israel, like many governments, uses U.S.-based cloud services with strict contracts and data protections. The U.S. government itself stores classified data on Microsoft Azure through its government cloud services (https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/solutions/government/). The implication that Microsoft’s involvement is unusual or illicit is misleading.
Criticism of Israeli policy should account for its security context. The article omits this.
Even Snowden’s own disclosures differentiated between the problematic scope of domestic collection and the more accepted targeting of hostile foreign entities (https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jun/06/nsa-phone-reco...). You may oppose both, but equating them as equally unjustified weakens the argument.
Israel has experienced decades of terror attacks, rocket fire and armed conflict originating from Gaza and the West Bank. That fact matters. Countries routinely intercept communications from adversarial regions, whether it’s the NSA, GCHQ, or Shin Bet. Calling this “insane” suggests a disregard for the protective responsibilities of a state.
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Another piece of context is polling showing that a majority of Israeli citizens support the forced expulsion of Gazan citizens and even Arab Israeli citizens.
It's still bad
> Israel faces real and ongoing threats from groups such as Hamas
Israel helped put Hamas in power, FWIW. Maybe instead of stealing Palestians' land, Israel should give them citizenship and voting rights. It's the moral thing to do.
> Criticism of Israeli policy should account for its security context
Criticism of Israeli policy should account for their colonialism and war crimes. It's a moral issue. The rest be damned.
As for land and citizenship, roughly 20% of Israeli citizens are Arab, including Muslims and Christians, with full voting rights. The Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza are not Israeli citizens because they are governed by the Palestinian Authority and Hamas respectively, per the Oslo Accords. Israel cannot unilaterally give them citizenship without dismantling those agreements, which Palestinians also signed. See: https://ecf.org.il/issues/issue/153.
Calling the situation “colonialism” ignores the fact that both sides claim historic ties to the land and have engaged in multiple rounds of negotiations. That includes offers of statehood rejected by Palestinian leadership, notably in 2000 and 2008. See: https://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/28/magazine/28israel-t.html.
Security and morality are not mutually exclusive. Both sides deserve accountability and safety.
I said helped put Hamas in power. https://www.timesofisrael.com/for-years-netanyahu-propped-up...
> not a reason to ignore Hamas’s current actions
The problematic actions under discussion are the genocide of the Palestinians in Gaza.
> Israel cannot unilaterally give them citizenship without dismantling those agreements, which Palestinians also signed
So you're saying they wouldn't go for it? Let's ask them.
> both sides claim historic ties to the land
You act as if the land was empty when the Zionists showed up.
> Security and morality are not mutually exclusive
Depends how you define security. Israel is defining it as genocide. And we're not even mentioning the horrible actions happening in the West Bank. Or in Syria and Lebanon for that matter.
> Both sides deserve accountability and safety
This is not symmetrical. One side has modern weapons, surveillance, air power, an modern army and an embargo on the other with the backing of the US (and other Western states.)
The context of being an occupying power also factors into this too?
The arabs themselves never wanted to be called Palestinians - they used the name "Syrian Arabs". Yassir Arafat, former leader of the PLO, was one of the most prominent opponents of the word "Palestinians" with regard to the arab population - he only changed his mind as Jordan and Egypt signed a peace treaty with Israel, because he wanted to distance himself from these "traitors".
One of the problems he (and also most arabs) had with the word "Palestina" - it has exactly ZERO relationship to arabs and to Arabic languages. It's a greek word with actually Hebrew roots. It means "land of the Philistines" - and the Philistines, according to many historians, are a mixed group of people, mostly from western Mediterranean (modern-day Italy, France, Spain, northern Africa), also called "the sea people", or, in other words - pirates. The Romans introduced this name to the region to wipe out the original names Judea and Samaria (which IS actually a sign of a genocide).
I don’t understand the point of this article.
No comments yet