Ignoring the genocide topic for the moment, it’s relevant from a speech perspective: that’s an alliance of hard-right groups who have spent the last year conflating criticism of Israel with anti-semitism and trying to shut down voices which disagree with them (e.g. cuts to research grants based on unrelated actions on campus). Consolidating a large chunk of the information space under a unified group opposed to free speech should concern all of us.
Your post is fair, but it's not how I read the OP, which seems less concerned with consolidation of power than with people supportive of Israel having power. And while I appreciate that criticism of Israel is not anti-semitism, believing that Israel is a legitimate state that has the right to self-defense is all it takes to be labelled as a "Zionist", and at that point it's practically a euphemism for "Jew". I'm not familiar enough with Bari Weiss's views to tell if that's what's being done here, but the use of a pejorative without clarification, combined with the fixation on "Zionists" and the implication that their intent surely must be to issue pro-Israel propaganda in particular makes it sound a lot like old-school anti-semitism.
The wider context here is that the TikTok ban had significant support on the grounds of, what politicians and Zionist lobbying groups called, "anti-Israel bias" and "support for Hamas". Not just the explicitly stated "China Bad" motivations.
The opposition to TikTok on grounds of it's Chinese ownership had been on a slow burn right up to October 2023, when it picked up steam in the wake of the early response to the Gaza War. US politicians were furious that the youth weren't buying the Bipartisan Approved Position(TM) on Israel.
Considering that major world organisations, even holocaust remembrance ones, are now calling Israel's actions genocide, that fury has aged like the finest bottle of raw milk.
Hence:
> and the implication that their intent surely must be to issue pro-Israel propaganda
That is indeed the implication made, for the reasons above, I don't think it is unwarranted.
That’s fair, I can’t say I know their inner thoughts either. Personally I’m concerned about the political unity and lack of respect for other people’s freedom of speech. We’re healthier with a robust public debate.
I sympathize with the sensitivity of the topic and what dog-whistling can look like. However, we're discussing media that people consume and the control that people have over that media. One of the most critical topics being controlled by media right now is the genocide in Gaza. And we're looking at a large section of media, including TikTok, being controlled by someone who not only denies that a genocide is happening, but is also complicit in it with their military contracts with Israel.
I think this is all relevant to the topic at hand.
I'm sympathetic to your argument, because you set explicit boundaries on the issue of concern, and you mention military contracts with concretely align Oracle with Israeli interests. It takes very selective reading between the lines to interpret the OP this charitably, when a direct interpretation reads more like "Jews who sympathize with Israel shouldn't own media platforms, because they will use them for propaganda." Which is maybe four words distanced from last-century anti-semitism.
I will add that TikTok is already being measurably manipulated, which everyone seems to be glossing over, perhaps because the bias runs in the "right" direction.
Only boomers in the US right wing have a net favorable view of Israel and it seems to me a lot of that is driven by contrarianism in response to the Left. The left hate it to therefore I must like it… that and the evangelicals. As the genocide drags on I think it’s putting many boomers off and more up to date polling may find that Israel is underwater there too. That would only leave the right wing leadership being net pro Israel which simply highlights the disconnect between politicians and the people that vote for them.
I’m pretty sure buying media companies like this is an attempt to stop the bleeding.
> Only boomers in the US right wing have a net favorable view of Israel
One, source? Because it's broader than that.
Two, you're measuing sign but not magnitude. A majority of Americans now have a negative view of Israel. A vast majority of Americans are unwilling to prioritise this issue in elections. (To the degree there are folks willing to do so, they're in deep-blue cities. Their power is in Democrat primaries. Not in general elections, and certainly not over the GOP.)
Republicans aged 19-49 have are split 50-50 on Israel with a strong and clear trend in the negative direction. That only leaves 50+ Republicans, sure a stretch of 'boomer' to include 50-61 in that but that only means it'll take a bit longer for the 50-61 cohort to hit net negative.
This isn't a problem for Israel now but I believe it's existential for them in the future.
> isn't a problem for Israel now but I believe it's existential for them in the future
"A slight majority of Americans (53%) now express[ing] a somewhat or very unfavorable opinion of Israel" is new, but given "the share of U.S. adults who voice very unfavorable views of Israel" is only "19% in 2025" (up from "10% in 2022"), it's not fair to call the threat existential. If that latter rises into the 30s, one could expect the American-Israeli alliance to start fracturing.
(Given the size of Israel's economy and potency of its military, it's also naïve to assume it couldn't replace America as a security partner. What it probably couldn't get from its new friends would be as favourable, deferential terms.)
It's a bit weird to say Israel could replace the US as a security partner without giving an example of who that would be. Russia? China? The EU? And what money are they to buy the materials with, their own? American? Who would continue to bribe their neighbors they're not at war with and restrain those they are at war with. What if Iran really does get nukes, what if a 3rd country gives them one.
Currently the Americans are trying to figure out how much sovereignty they really have and are discovering that it's indeed effectively none. What do you think that does to a population, especially during a sustained economic recession, where the fed is dropping interest rates, while stocks are at all time highs. It seems like the only thing Americans can agree on is that 'this cannot last', I don't know what'll replace it but there is a reasonably good chance it won't be good for Israel.
> weird to say Israel could replace the US as a security partner without giving an example of who that would be. Russia? China?
China, Russia and India come to mind. (The latter two need Israeli weapons expertise and are transactional about their geopolitics. The last is in the growing throes of anti-Muslim ethnonationalism. The first and third import energy.)
> what money are they to buy the materials with, their own?
Yes. Amercan aid to Israel is less than 1% of its GDP [1][2]. We buy influence with that money, but it's not existential.
> What if Iran really does get nukes, what if a 3rd country gives them one
...Israel already has nukes and superior delivery mechanisms to Iran. Also, if Iran gets nukes, I put Israel becoming a regional hegemon protecting the Gulf from a nuclear Iran on the board.
> Americans are trying to figure out how much sovereignty they really have and are discovering that it's indeed effectively none
This is dumb. America's Israel policy until about 2025 has been broadly popular with the electorate. (Israel could have become unpopular earlier, but nobody particularly likes folks occupying universities and blocking bridges.)
With regards to sovereignty I was referring to US foreign policy, not dealing with annoying libs. Right now the struggle is between the Restrainers and the Primacists to decide if a war with China should be preceded by a war with Iran. Israel is pushing for the war with Iran because it wants to be the local hegemony. No American gets to vote on this and those who thought they were voting against it actually voted for the person most likely to enable it. Hence zero sovereignty, well maybe that’s negative sovereignty.
1% is absolutely huge with regards to a GDP (money spent). Also that’s not all inclusive, you need to throw in all the other money the US spends on the Middle East.
I’m unlikely to change anyone’s mind on this, but I generally am interested in exploring the bounds of others. Unless you have something new and interesting to share I think we’re done here.
> No American gets to vote on this and those who thought they were voting against it actually voted for the person most likely to enable it. Hence zero sovereignty
You're mixing up sovereignty with direct democracy.
We're a republic. We have total sovereignty when it comes to geopolitics. None of that requires Americans voting on foreign policy issues, which in reality, given even informed Americans' international literacy, would be horrific.
> 1% is absolutely huge with regards to a GDP (money spent)
But easy enough to replace, even solely with domestic resources.
> you need to throw in all the other money the US spends on the Middle East
This is nonsense. One, we're not abandoning the Gulf for a variety of financial and geostrategic reasons. Two, even if we do, that's an opportunity for Israel as an emerging regional hegemonic.
> I’m unlikely to change anyone’s mind on this
Wouldn't have expected otherwise. These discussions can still be interesting for us, as you mentioned, and for others.
I know Israel sees its future as a regional, and perhaps global, kingmaker. The fulcrum upon which the multipolar world balances and that this is an attractive proposition to them. But it’ll be entering into a world with a combination of circumstances that have never happened before, which I think is one hell of a risk, a risk that has a good chance of ending disastrously for them, let alone the rest of the world. And what should happen to them if they fail.
It’ll be like singing ‘we’ll be home by Christmas,’ or ‘King Cotton,’ often many of the assumptions that underpin these beliefs do not pan out. I guess it’s now ‘free beachside real estate.’
> a combination of circumstances that have never happened before, which I think is one hell of a risk, a risk that has a good chance of ending disastrously for them, let alone the rest of the world. And what should happen to them if they fail
Geopolitically, if America is becoming an unreliable security guarantor, they have no choice. They don't need to be bombing Gaza into oblivion. But they do need to establish the precedent that they can intervene with force in the region at their discretion.
You said conspiracies always land on one place, which clearly implied blaming "the jews". There is no point in debating people like you but I will reiterate a point you should care deeply about. Israel, right or wrong, is losing massive support among the younger generations world wide. And pretending they aren't massacring civilians and intentionally starving them only weakens Israel in the long run. So keep it up, you are actively eroding future support.
You can both care about the issue and not see the dastardly hand of Israel in every shadowy corner. The grandparent comment by volleyball is clearly not a reasoned take and is conspiratorial in it's linking of Jews and Netanyahu and the constant bugbear of certain types, Bari Weiss.
I am neither Israeli, Jewish, or particularly vested in Israel, I just find the constant banging on about Jews lately in the discourse to be troubling. A lot of it has a real Protocols of the Elders of Zion vibe where anything a public Jew does is linked to a shadowy Israeli conspiracy. Particularly this volleyball keeps posting about epstein conspiracies involving random Jews. several of those comments have now been removed.
People like you should be careful about who you're taking up cause with, because eventually you'll find yourself in very unsavory company.
Ellison claims his Zionism is disconnected from his mother being Jewish. He has also distanced himself from his Judaism. It is also worth noting that more American Zionists are Evangelicals than Jews. Last I saw, Netanyahu has a higher approval rating among American Evangelicals than he has in his own country. This issue is very much Zionists vs anti-Zionists. Attempts to frame it as Jews vs non-Jews is just a different flavor of anti-Semitism.
Thank you for saying this. The American Christian Right's staunch pro-Israel voting bloc is way underappreciated by most critics of the lobby money. These people are legion, and would not vote against Israel if you paid them: it's part of their Christian messianic religion that the Jews be in the Holy Land.
If the American Christian Right were purchasing TikTok, then it might be relevant to a discussion about the purchase of TikTok. Instead we have... this whole subthread of pointless crap and justifications for the pointless crap.
The original complaint here is that American Zionists are purchasing TikTok. The point being discussed in this subthread is that American Zionism is more in line with the American Right than American Jews. Therefore the relevant trait of the purchasers being criticized is their right wing ideology and not their religion.
I’m pretty sure the conflation has entered US law at the state level in most states. Not sure where it’s at the US federal level but it’s either conflated there as well or it is about to be.
Recently, I've been shocked to witness how normalized Jew hatred (which I distinguish from criticism of Israel) has become within Gen Z, even among people who exhibit progressive views and are otherwise vocally critical of racial/ethnic discrimination. I doubt it will stop with the genocide/war.
On the flip side, I see very little actual hatred of Jews, either cultural or religious, but I do see a lot of people claiming that any kind of opposition to the IDF flattening Gaza is equivalent to Jew hatred.
I'm gonna go on a limb and guess that since its a social media platform where people have been widely protesting a zionist led genocide by a Israel. the fact that the investor is a zionist and Israel supporter is probably very relevant.
more or less akin to a coal miner operator taking control over the EPA even.
It’s absolutely being missed. The cause isn’t the Israeli sympathy. That’s an effect of the party pushing to put American media under the thumb of the President. (Ironically, by a President who was helped to his position by TikTok.)
There is a lot of tail wagging the dog conspiracy in this thread. It dangerously reverses causation.
He (or she) lists several other characteristics of these people as well.
Ignoring the genocide topic for the moment, it’s relevant from a speech perspective: that’s an alliance of hard-right groups who have spent the last year conflating criticism of Israel with anti-semitism and trying to shut down voices which disagree with them (e.g. cuts to research grants based on unrelated actions on campus). Consolidating a large chunk of the information space under a unified group opposed to free speech should concern all of us.
Your post is fair, but it's not how I read the OP, which seems less concerned with consolidation of power than with people supportive of Israel having power. And while I appreciate that criticism of Israel is not anti-semitism, believing that Israel is a legitimate state that has the right to self-defense is all it takes to be labelled as a "Zionist", and at that point it's practically a euphemism for "Jew". I'm not familiar enough with Bari Weiss's views to tell if that's what's being done here, but the use of a pejorative without clarification, combined with the fixation on "Zionists" and the implication that their intent surely must be to issue pro-Israel propaganda in particular makes it sound a lot like old-school anti-semitism.
The wider context here is that the TikTok ban had significant support on the grounds of, what politicians and Zionist lobbying groups called, "anti-Israel bias" and "support for Hamas". Not just the explicitly stated "China Bad" motivations.
https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/social-media/tiktok-ban-israel-... (Note: Article from November 2023)
The opposition to TikTok on grounds of it's Chinese ownership had been on a slow burn right up to October 2023, when it picked up steam in the wake of the early response to the Gaza War. US politicians were furious that the youth weren't buying the Bipartisan Approved Position(TM) on Israel.
Considering that major world organisations, even holocaust remembrance ones, are now calling Israel's actions genocide, that fury has aged like the finest bottle of raw milk.
Hence:
> and the implication that their intent surely must be to issue pro-Israel propaganda
That is indeed the implication made, for the reasons above, I don't think it is unwarranted.
That’s fair, I can’t say I know their inner thoughts either. Personally I’m concerned about the political unity and lack of respect for other people’s freedom of speech. We’re healthier with a robust public debate.
I sympathize with the sensitivity of the topic and what dog-whistling can look like. However, we're discussing media that people consume and the control that people have over that media. One of the most critical topics being controlled by media right now is the genocide in Gaza. And we're looking at a large section of media, including TikTok, being controlled by someone who not only denies that a genocide is happening, but is also complicit in it with their military contracts with Israel.
I think this is all relevant to the topic at hand.
I'm sympathetic to your argument, because you set explicit boundaries on the issue of concern, and you mention military contracts with concretely align Oracle with Israeli interests. It takes very selective reading between the lines to interpret the OP this charitably, when a direct interpretation reads more like "Jews who sympathize with Israel shouldn't own media platforms, because they will use them for propaganda." Which is maybe four words distanced from last-century anti-semitism.
I will add that TikTok is already being measurably manipulated, which everyone seems to be glossing over, perhaps because the bias runs in the "right" direction.
What the other side is doing exactly? They try to ban every Israeli, including composers, athletes, scientists etc. It's much worse in my opnion.
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Only boomers in the US right wing have a net favorable view of Israel and it seems to me a lot of that is driven by contrarianism in response to the Left. The left hate it to therefore I must like it… that and the evangelicals. As the genocide drags on I think it’s putting many boomers off and more up to date polling may find that Israel is underwater there too. That would only leave the right wing leadership being net pro Israel which simply highlights the disconnect between politicians and the people that vote for them.
I’m pretty sure buying media companies like this is an attempt to stop the bleeding.
> Only boomers in the US right wing have a net favorable view of Israel
One, source? Because it's broader than that.
Two, you're measuing sign but not magnitude. A majority of Americans now have a negative view of Israel. A vast majority of Americans are unwilling to prioritise this issue in elections. (To the degree there are folks willing to do so, they're in deep-blue cities. Their power is in Democrat primaries. Not in general elections, and certainly not over the GOP.)
https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2025/04/08/how-ameri...
Republicans aged 19-49 have are split 50-50 on Israel with a strong and clear trend in the negative direction. That only leaves 50+ Republicans, sure a stretch of 'boomer' to include 50-61 in that but that only means it'll take a bit longer for the 50-61 cohort to hit net negative.
This isn't a problem for Israel now but I believe it's existential for them in the future.
Thank you for the source.
> isn't a problem for Israel now but I believe it's existential for them in the future
"A slight majority of Americans (53%) now express[ing] a somewhat or very unfavorable opinion of Israel" is new, but given "the share of U.S. adults who voice very unfavorable views of Israel" is only "19% in 2025" (up from "10% in 2022"), it's not fair to call the threat existential. If that latter rises into the 30s, one could expect the American-Israeli alliance to start fracturing.
(Given the size of Israel's economy and potency of its military, it's also naïve to assume it couldn't replace America as a security partner. What it probably couldn't get from its new friends would be as favourable, deferential terms.)
It's a bit weird to say Israel could replace the US as a security partner without giving an example of who that would be. Russia? China? The EU? And what money are they to buy the materials with, their own? American? Who would continue to bribe their neighbors they're not at war with and restrain those they are at war with. What if Iran really does get nukes, what if a 3rd country gives them one.
Currently the Americans are trying to figure out how much sovereignty they really have and are discovering that it's indeed effectively none. What do you think that does to a population, especially during a sustained economic recession, where the fed is dropping interest rates, while stocks are at all time highs. It seems like the only thing Americans can agree on is that 'this cannot last', I don't know what'll replace it but there is a reasonably good chance it won't be good for Israel.
> weird to say Israel could replace the US as a security partner without giving an example of who that would be. Russia? China?
China, Russia and India come to mind. (The latter two need Israeli weapons expertise and are transactional about their geopolitics. The last is in the growing throes of anti-Muslim ethnonationalism. The first and third import energy.)
> what money are they to buy the materials with, their own?
Yes. Amercan aid to Israel is less than 1% of its GDP [1][2]. We buy influence with that money, but it's not existential.
> What if Iran really does get nukes, what if a 3rd country gives them one
...Israel already has nukes and superior delivery mechanisms to Iran. Also, if Iran gets nukes, I put Israel becoming a regional hegemon protecting the Gulf from a nuclear Iran on the board.
> Americans are trying to figure out how much sovereignty they really have and are discovering that it's indeed effectively none
This is dumb. America's Israel policy until about 2025 has been broadly popular with the electorate. (Israel could have become unpopular earlier, but nobody particularly likes folks occupying universities and blocking bridges.)
[1] https://www.cfr.org/article/us-aid-israel-four-charts
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_Israel
With regards to sovereignty I was referring to US foreign policy, not dealing with annoying libs. Right now the struggle is between the Restrainers and the Primacists to decide if a war with China should be preceded by a war with Iran. Israel is pushing for the war with Iran because it wants to be the local hegemony. No American gets to vote on this and those who thought they were voting against it actually voted for the person most likely to enable it. Hence zero sovereignty, well maybe that’s negative sovereignty.
1% is absolutely huge with regards to a GDP (money spent). Also that’s not all inclusive, you need to throw in all the other money the US spends on the Middle East.
I’m unlikely to change anyone’s mind on this, but I generally am interested in exploring the bounds of others. Unless you have something new and interesting to share I think we’re done here.
> No American gets to vote on this and those who thought they were voting against it actually voted for the person most likely to enable it. Hence zero sovereignty
You're mixing up sovereignty with direct democracy.
We're a republic. We have total sovereignty when it comes to geopolitics. None of that requires Americans voting on foreign policy issues, which in reality, given even informed Americans' international literacy, would be horrific.
> 1% is absolutely huge with regards to a GDP (money spent)
But easy enough to replace, even solely with domestic resources.
> you need to throw in all the other money the US spends on the Middle East
This is nonsense. One, we're not abandoning the Gulf for a variety of financial and geostrategic reasons. Two, even if we do, that's an opportunity for Israel as an emerging regional hegemonic.
> I’m unlikely to change anyone’s mind on this
Wouldn't have expected otherwise. These discussions can still be interesting for us, as you mentioned, and for others.
I know Israel sees its future as a regional, and perhaps global, kingmaker. The fulcrum upon which the multipolar world balances and that this is an attractive proposition to them. But it’ll be entering into a world with a combination of circumstances that have never happened before, which I think is one hell of a risk, a risk that has a good chance of ending disastrously for them, let alone the rest of the world. And what should happen to them if they fail.
It’ll be like singing ‘we’ll be home by Christmas,’ or ‘King Cotton,’ often many of the assumptions that underpin these beliefs do not pan out. I guess it’s now ‘free beachside real estate.’
> a combination of circumstances that have never happened before, which I think is one hell of a risk, a risk that has a good chance of ending disastrously for them, let alone the rest of the world. And what should happen to them if they fail
Geopolitically, if America is becoming an unreliable security guarantor, they have no choice. They don't need to be bombing Gaza into oblivion. But they do need to establish the precedent that they can intervene with force in the region at their discretion.
Let me know when they’ve defeated the Houthis because so far that plan isn’t working, and that’s with US support.
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The most complicated thing about Bari Weiss, who lost in a battle of wits against Joe Rogan (a rather low bar), is how she continues to fail upwards.
Fail upwards? She started a successful business and sold for a large value.
Not sure if that counts if it’s part of all the same influence project.
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You said conspiracies always land on one place, which clearly implied blaming "the jews". There is no point in debating people like you but I will reiterate a point you should care deeply about. Israel, right or wrong, is losing massive support among the younger generations world wide. And pretending they aren't massacring civilians and intentionally starving them only weakens Israel in the long run. So keep it up, you are actively eroding future support.
You can both care about the issue and not see the dastardly hand of Israel in every shadowy corner. The grandparent comment by volleyball is clearly not a reasoned take and is conspiratorial in it's linking of Jews and Netanyahu and the constant bugbear of certain types, Bari Weiss.
I am neither Israeli, Jewish, or particularly vested in Israel, I just find the constant banging on about Jews lately in the discourse to be troubling. A lot of it has a real Protocols of the Elders of Zion vibe where anything a public Jew does is linked to a shadowy Israeli conspiracy. Particularly this volleyball keeps posting about epstein conspiracies involving random Jews. several of those comments have now been removed.
People like you should be careful about who you're taking up cause with, because eventually you'll find yourself in very unsavory company.
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Ellison claims his Zionism is disconnected from his mother being Jewish. He has also distanced himself from his Judaism. It is also worth noting that more American Zionists are Evangelicals than Jews. Last I saw, Netanyahu has a higher approval rating among American Evangelicals than he has in his own country. This issue is very much Zionists vs anti-Zionists. Attempts to frame it as Jews vs non-Jews is just a different flavor of anti-Semitism.
Thank you for saying this. The American Christian Right's staunch pro-Israel voting bloc is way underappreciated by most critics of the lobby money. These people are legion, and would not vote against Israel if you paid them: it's part of their Christian messianic religion that the Jews be in the Holy Land.
If the American Christian Right were purchasing TikTok, then it might be relevant to a discussion about the purchase of TikTok. Instead we have... this whole subthread of pointless crap and justifications for the pointless crap.
The original complaint here is that American Zionists are purchasing TikTok. The point being discussed in this subthread is that American Zionism is more in line with the American Right than American Jews. Therefore the relevant trait of the purchasers being criticized is their right wing ideology and not their religion.
I’m pretty sure the conflation has entered US law at the state level in most states. Not sure where it’s at the US federal level but it’s either conflated there as well or it is about to be.
Recently, I've been shocked to witness how normalized Jew hatred (which I distinguish from criticism of Israel) has become within Gen Z, even among people who exhibit progressive views and are otherwise vocally critical of racial/ethnic discrimination. I doubt it will stop with the genocide/war.
On the flip side, I see very little actual hatred of Jews, either cultural or religious, but I do see a lot of people claiming that any kind of opposition to the IDF flattening Gaza is equivalent to Jew hatred.
I'm gonna go on a limb and guess that since its a social media platform where people have been widely protesting a zionist led genocide by a Israel. the fact that the investor is a zionist and Israel supporter is probably very relevant.
more or less akin to a coal miner operator taking control over the EPA even.
> the fact that the investor is a zionist and Israel supporter is probably very relevant
To that issue, sure. What's being missed is that any buyer Trump signed off on would need to align with his views.
This is literally the entire issue behind why people think things like this are a bad idea.
I don't think it was missed. It was just so obvious that it didn't need to be called out explicitly.
It’s absolutely being missed. The cause isn’t the Israeli sympathy. That’s an effect of the party pushing to put American media under the thumb of the President. (Ironically, by a President who was helped to his position by TikTok.)
There is a lot of tail wagging the dog conspiracy in this thread. It dangerously reverses causation.
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No one missed that.