[1] Feel free to mentally replace similar with any other word that you think more accurately compares the two scenarios.
https://www.thefire.org/news/combat-anti-semitism-house-bill...
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/5/1/us-house-passes-cont...
Germany accounted for 30% of Israel's arms imports between 2019 and 2023. In 2023 it accounted for 47% of Israel's total imports of conventional arms.
Between October 2023 and May 2025, Germany greenlighted the delivery of weapons and military equipment worth €485m to Israel
They since stopped the export of weaponry 'used in gaza' but it's naive in the extreme to accept assurances from the incumbent Israeli government to the contrary.
https://news.sky.com/story/germany-is-one-of-israels-stronge...
N.B. Israel continues to illegally carry weapons through Irish airspace, and kindly refers our government agency to El Al's Legal department on inquiry.
https://www.ontheditch.com/israels-national-airline-departme...
Because that's not the reason (Israel primarily imports weaponry and munitions from the US and India [0]).
The issue is the other way around. A significant portion of Germany's ground AD and defensive systems are sourced from Israel- most notably the Arrow 3 missile shield [1] deal that recently went through. Germany is heavily dependent on Israeli cybersecurity companies as well [2]. Germany is also subsidizing Arrow 3 sales to Ukraine [3].
Protecting your nations citizens always trumps morality, and in Germany's case, it's become even more critical after what happened in Poland this week.
[0] - https://oec.world/en/visualize/tree_map/hs17/import/isr/show...
[1] - https://www.defensenews.com/global/europe/2025/06/09/israel-...
[2] - https://www.reuters.com/business/aerospace-defense/germany-s...
[3] - https://www.wsj.com/world/europe/israel-sells-missiles-to-ge...
Ireland basically has no army, and is entirely dependent on the UK for it's defense. As such, their politicans are free to say whatever (as long as it is not against the UK) because it's not going to come back and bite them in the behind. That said, that's now changing as the UK is trying to renegotiate the deal [0][1]
[0] - https://www.thejournal.ie/british-ireland-defence-agreement-...
[1] - https://www.irishpost.com/news/britain-and-ireland-to-renew-...
The Irish position should not be underestimated. It tends to be a bellweather for what others will align with in the future. Ireland tends to use it's soft power very effectively at the global table.
This really overstates Ireland's position in foreign policy studies. No one at Bruegel, ECFR, Institute Montaigne, GMFUS, and the 2-3 other major EU think tanks that are the de facto voice of European policy are taking Irish policy into account. Ireland lost any chance it had of being at the table when the Eurozone crisis happened. Even Spain and Italy have barely rebuilt their credibility.
> Ireland tends to use it's soft power very effectively at the global table
How? Ireland barely comes up in most conversations aside from using IDA Ireland as a model for attracting services FDI.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dublin_Regulation
We are also the only EU country where the Constitution ordains a referendum to validate ratification of any amendments that result in a transfer of sovereignty to the European Union; such as the Nice Treaty which we can prevent from passing on an EU level.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_of_Nice#The_Irish_refer...
Putting aside the multiple times we have held EU Council Presidencies, how about you take our two-year term on the UN Security Council from 2021 to 2022, where we got UN Security Council Resolution 2594 passed – the first ever Resolution on UN Peacekeeping transitions.
Since 1958, Ireland has maintained a constant presence on UN and UN-mandated peace support operations to the point where many English speakers in the South Lebanon do so with an Irish accent. 86 Irish soldiers have died in service of the UN since 1960.
We also have a particular legacy regarding the IDF and war crimes - Like in 1996 UN position 6-52, near Maroun al-Ras, a platoon of 33 Irish troops was surrounded and isolated from UN headquarters by a mechanised IDF unit. Or in May of this year when Irish peacekeepers in Lebanon came under fire from Israeli forces near a bombed out village at Yaroun
https://www.thejournal.ie/irish-peacekeepers-in-lebanon-fire...
We have lost almost 50 troops in Lebanon alone. Approximately 50% of our casualties have been inflicted by Islamist resistance groups such as Hezbollah – the other 50% by the IDF and their paramilitary proxies in the area.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/oct/15/un-pea...
I would say that Israel is historically worried about the fact that his enemies want it to make it disappear. There are many things to criticize from them but this is the basic premise.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/interactive/2025/israel...
Such groups are so strong in Germany that Hitler used them to strenghten the power of his discourse.
Recognizing Israel / the Jews are the ones now doing Genocide would *in the sight of the extremist groups* prove their belief that Hitler was right / the Jews are the devil. (I repeat, in their regard, not mine)
Therefore, my opinion is that the official stance in Germany must be "historical responsability" mainly not for the sake of the Jews, but for the stability of the society.
I apologize for basically repeating myself. I just wanted to refer to the conspiracy theories you mentioned because calling them that is, ironically, constructive.
On the flip side Germany did a huge amount to bring solar power into large scale usage.
So do we now get to refuse to hire Afghans because of the Taliban too? Or Turkish citizens? Much the same principle, after all. These countries are at war and purposefully attacking large population groups. Or is this yet another kind of "only Israeli" get this treatment rule?
Of course, in reality just about every muslim country I look up has conflicts with population groups in territory they claim. Morocco in Western Sahara. Algeria with the Tuareg (especially the non-muslim Tuareg). Tunisia is still in civil war and at war with it's own citizens. Libya has been caught driving black immigrants into the desert and abandoning them to die of thirst ... AND is at war with it's own citizens. Egypt and Egyptian Christians. Saudi Arabia is at war with it's own citizens ... Or you can go south, and well all know about Sudan. You can keep going until you arrive at Indonesia, even PNG.
And of course, what makes it truly bad: Palestine is at war with it's own citizens. They're at war with Palestinian Christians (near extinct) or Palestinian Jews, who the Palestinians have hunted to extinction ...
And plenty of non-Muslim countries do this. Russia (obviously, and not just Ukraine) for example, or China (the list is long. Nepal, Uyghurs, Mongols, ...). Myanmar. Thailand. Just about every even lightly authoritarian nation is at war with it's own citizens, either with groups of their own population, or just outright their own citizens (state vs anyone else).
And we haven't even mentioned the more dangerous conflicts and countries like North Korea, or Iran.
But of course, this only applies to Israel and Jews. Even that Palestinians do the same to their own population will not count.
In war, nothing changes until BOTH parties genuinly want peace. Obviously Palestinians (justified or not) do not want peace. So stopping the fighting ... just isn't the solution, it will simply restart.
So now it is justified to boycott muslims in general, and refuse to deal with them, because of what the states they belong to are doing? Glad we got this update.
This ended up with a strike lasting two years and nine months - unimaginable in the context of today's retail environments.
https://mandate.ie/2024/07/the-day-10-workers-changed-the-wo...
All countries are equal but some counties are more equal than others?
Meanwhile, the ones who say they would commit genocide if given any chance at all, are the ones Israel is at war with.
What do you make of Netanyahu himself in regards to Hamas support?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israeli_support_for_Hamas
> In a cable leaked by WikiLeaks in 2010, Amos Yadlin, former general of the Israeli Air Force, said in 2007 that Israel would be "happy" if Hamas take over Gaza and regarded it as a positive step, so they could treat Gaza as a hostile state.[37][38]
> In an interview with Israeli journalist, Dan Margalit in December 2012, Netanyahu told Margalit that it was important to keep Hamas strong, as a counterweight to the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank. Netanyahu also added that having two strong rivals, this would lessen pressure on him to negotiate towards a Palestinian state.[11]
> In an interview with the Israeli Army Radio in August 2019, Ehud Barak, the former Prime Minister of Israel from 1999 to 2001, said that Netanyahu's main strategy is to keep Hamas "alive and kicking" in order to weaken the Palestinian Authority, even at the expense of "abandoning the citizens [of the south]."[48]
> Bibi made a deal with Qatar and they started to move millions and millions of dollars to Gaza."[49] At a Likud party conference in 2019, Benjamin Netanyahu said:
> "Anyone who wants to thwart the establishment of a Palestinian state has to support bolstering Hamas and transferring money to Hamas ... This is part of our strategy – to isolate the Palestinians in Gaza from the Palestinians in the West Bank."[50][51]
> Gershon Hacohen, former commander of the 7th Armored Brigade and an associate of Benjamin Netanyahu, said in 2019 in an interview:[54]
> “Netanyahu’s strategy is to prevent the option of two states, so he is turning Hamas into his closest partner. Openly Hamas is an enemy. Covertly, it’s an ally.”[55]
> Bezalel Smotrich, a far-right lawmaker and finance minister under Netanyahu Government, called the Palestinian Authority a "burden" and Hamas an "asset".[56][57]
Israel is committing genocide though.
> Israel isn't committing genocide except in the minds of pro-palestine activists
Do you think this Israeli PM is a pro-Palestine activist? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BMVLt_ncn7E
Protests in Israel would be maxed out if Israel were committing actual genocide. Israelis are good people, they wouldn't stand around while their defence force committed genocide. They don't want Hamas regrouping into Hamas 2.0, and who can blame them.
International Law experts can't go to their filing cabinets and pull out the file on "similar wars" to what is happening.
"Israel isn't doing it right"... says every armchair "free palestine" advocate without actually saying how they should do it.
Let Israel finish it, THEN if they don't leave and help rebuild, with Palestinians under new governance of their own (helped by international peace keepers or whatever) then hold Israel to account, but not before during the war, that's just flotilla levels of useless.
Laughable role, given no access to the place you claim is a genocide, and that's an active war zone with terrorists running around delaying the inevitable and prolonging the suffering.
1. Look at map of Gaza
2. Look at casualty stats, incident reports and statements released from the Hamas media office. (The same information cited by international media)
3. Look at carefully staged photos from journalists in Gaza who have contracts with Reuters but are nevertheless under Hamas who have strict control over the media landscape in Gaza and shape the narrative.
4. Declare "genocide".
Yes, and people are suffering. We all know it and wish it wasn't so. But Israel can't just go home and hide in their bomb shelters. Millions of tonnes of aid including food, medical supplies, shelters, water and other resources HAVE made it through in thousands of trucks. Some of which gets looted, or blocked by hostile groups who seize the trucks.
It's useless to debate genocide apologists as facts mean nothing to them, so I am not gonna try to debate your obvious lies and twisting of the truth.
Netanyahu will be tried for his war crimes and genocide in the Hague and will rot in prison or will die of old age. History will paint Israel's genocide of Palestinian people the same way the Nazis went down in history for doing the Holocaust.
Here is a video of Israel bombing a hospital and bombing it again when crews and journalists went to help. Nothing more is needed to be said.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-cWLFvMcys0
Stop the genocide. Stop genocide apologizing.
Clearly. A disturbing trend of late.
I am sure many folks tried to debate with the Nazis on the big podium of ideas. It's useless to debate with the folks who did the Holocaust.
It's useless to debate with these guys as well:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/sep/12/israeli-ex-com...
It's clear what Israel stands for, it's clear what they are doing is a genocide. The genocide apologists will just deflect and bicker about whether 11 out of the 12 points that constitute a genocide are enough to actually call it as such. And I am not interested in that.
Universities condemn the genocide: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/sep/13/universities-a...
Even Ursula is worried about her position and wants to distance herself from the genociders from Israel:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/sep/10/ursula-von-der...
Hell, even China, a country famous for human rights violations, is disgusted by Israel and denounced them publicly:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gCLkJvsjuqU
The world is, sadly too late, waking up to the genocide that happened just in front of their eyes and is frantically trying to cut off ties with the genocidal Israeli terrorist state. Israel acts like a rabid dog, attacking Quatar, Iran, Palestine, Tunisia, Quatar, Yemen. Terrorist genocider state.
Either way, war criminal Netanyahu has a reserved spot in the Hague and even prominent figures in the US neo-fascist fronts like Charlie Kirk, who was much a white supremacist as he was an Israeli genocide apologist, hasn't posted videos on youtube in defense of Israel as of late.
I know my words sound harsh, but I feel they are necessary to be written. I greet you with an old song: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4CI3lhyNKfo that is very catchy.
Your words sound unhinged. Like your anti-fascist label maker is unrolling a mini manifesto of regurgitated anti-Israel nuggets. You're harbouring an array of ideologies, all intersecting and spilling on the page. A diatribe of disturbance.
Meanwhile, my approach is grounded in a singular idea: That Hamas are the enemy in a war. It's a serious problem. Wars are like that.
Not just the enemy of Israel, but of any civilisation that values civil liberties without the punishing cloud of oppressive fundamentalism and stone-age brutality looming over every aspect of life.
Qatar is useless. After 2 years of "negotiating", a few drip-fed hostages including dead ones. Israel released more Palestinian prisoners than there are hostages. What a disgrace that hostages still remain in captivity. A disgrace that Qatar "hosts" the Hamas leaders, and that the Iranian regime funds the whole lot.
An unforgivable situation. Israel is responding to the threat. Obviously the eventual goal is peace. I won't click your links thanks anyway.
The 20k children Israel murdered are also Hamas, right? Hitler also thought the same about the Jewish children he murdered during the Holocaust. War crimes are war crimes, genocide is genocide.
> A disgrace that Qatar "hosts" the Hamas leaders, and that the Iranian regime funds the whole lot.
The irony is that wanted war criminal Netanyahu himself can't be "hosted" in the most of the free world, cause there is a warrant for his arrest.
> Meanwhile, my approach is grounded in a singular idea: That Hamas are the enemy in a war. It's a serious problem. Wars are like that.
And my approach is grounded on the singular idea: Israel is doing a genocide and genocide is bad.
Being in Europe is not one of them - Israel is not in Europe, nor a few others, and Australia is literally as far away as you can get from Europe.
India, China, and Brazil are associate members too so they could all take part, potentially.
So, NBC etc. in the US are Public Service Broadcasters, whereas a local not-for-profit that has laid their own coax in your city is not a PSB.
In the UK ITV is a PSB, as well as the BBC (which you probably think of) and Channel 4 (which is owned by the state) but if your local school media team uploads local affairs videos to Youtube that's not a PSB.
The idea is there's finite radio bandwidth, the government has decided it gets to decide who uses that bandwidth and how, and so a PSB is an entity which got licensed to use some of that finite space to do something approved. Government policies might require or forbid certain programming, for example maybe you can't advertise cigarettes or you can't swear, but you must have a news show every weekday evening.
The EBU exists because of this same bandwidth issue. Radio doesn't care about politics, so even if adjacent country A and country B hate each other and have closed their borders, the radio waves from A propagate to B and vice versa. So radio "regions" exist which try to duck the politics as much as possible to focus on practicalities. That they don't fully duck politics is how we end up with Israel in Europe but not its immediate neighbours...
The insinuation being clear that Jewish diaspora were encouraged to vote heavily.
I'm not defending Ireland's performance but Israel's was objectively mediocre too. Eurovision voting is historically biased but it was weird last year.
That's almost always the case. And both groups were agreed that Ireland wasn't very good :P
> The insinuation being clear that Jewish diaspora were encouraged to vote heavily.
Did you just complain that people voted? Seriously?
No, several national broadcasters did.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Song_for_Europe_(Father_Ted)
European left isn't giving any path to Israel to get respect, they will attack Israel no matter what they do.
> there being no real story.
Ok, dude. I cannot educate you if you actively refuse to follow the news.
No real story like shooting an unarmed civilian, waiting for relatives to come to recover the body, then shooting them too?
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/sep/09/the-gaza-famil...
Nobody with half a brain conflates Israel's government with Judaism or with the Israeli people, ... but Israel's intelligence services have for a long time had the tactic to influence people to conflate them so as to be able to deflect criticism against its state as being anti-semitism — and they have been quite successful at that.
Similarly, antisemitic groups have taken advantage of the worldwide movement against what Israel is doing in Gaza and sometimes managed to insert themselves and their message among legitimate protests. For instance, this summer an MP in my country had retweeted an image containing symbolism that she didn't understand — which caused her party to (over)react and exclude her.
I am sure that there is a lot of misleading propaganda going left and right within Israel as well.
It is important to be careful and identify things for what they are.
By the looks of it, besides Ireland (in OP), Iceland ( https://www.ruv.is/english/2025-09-09-iceland-may-not-take-p... ) and Spain ( https://www.theolivepress.es/spain-news/2025/09/11/spain-thr... ) have also stated their intention to boycott.
Just because activists say a thing doesn't make it true. You should make more objective factual claims instead of ambiguously defined or made up ones.
But sure all of them are wrong and you are right.
But many Israel supporters live in a reality distortion field where they're eternal victims and therefore can do no wrong. No amount of well documented war crimes or obvious lies from the Israeli government will make a dent, because Palestinian lives have exactly zero value to them.
6.1.1 DIRECT ATTACKS ON CIVILIANS OR INDISCRIMINATE ATTACKS It lists 15 cases of air strikes which it uses to support its claim of killing/harming members of a group which is part of the definition of genocide. However, all/nearly all of them say "Amnesty International did not find any evidence of a military objective.". So it seems possible Amnesty just doesn't know the secret military information and Israel didn't disclose it to them. Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. Do you believe there can't possibly have been any military objectives that make those air strikes legitimate?
[1] https://www.amnesty.org/en/documents/mde15/8668/2024/en/
Leaving aside, of course, the fact that attacking a civilian hospital, even one that has some military targets in it (say wounded combatants), would also certainly mean killing or injuring many invalid targets, and at that point you should really provide not just evidence of a military target but also evidence that you couldn't attack the target in any other way and that the target is valuable enough to justify the deaths of innocent people.
Which Israel has not done, and really, can't do. Because there really aren't many targets worth bombing a hospital for.
Hamas had bases in hospitals. Not just wounded fighters being treated. They stored weapons and housed fighters in them. They also built underground bases directly underneath hospital buildings. They specifically chose hospitals because they thought that would protect them from being attacked but it does make those hospitals a legitimate target.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-67453105 https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/nov/17/idf-evidence-s...
We don't know for sure that Hind Rajab wasn't planning attacks when she was supposed to be learning the alphabet either.
Maybe she was leading a Hamas cell with a crayon, but the intelligence is too crucial to share!
This style of argument is absurd.
Killing 10,000's of women and children from a specific ethnic group, razing a significant percentage of buildings to the ground and forcibly displacing almost 2 million people while using starvation as a weapon of war, that's genocide.
Over 65000 people were killed by the Israeli "Defense" Forces in Gaza since October 7th. 31% of them were children.
When “roughly half” of Gaza’s population “are under the age of 18,” your statistic actually describes discretion [1]. As for total kills, the data I’ve seen on CCRs put the IDF’s actions in the precedents range of guerrilla wars.
The way the IDF is conducting the war is, unfortunately, normal. What is not normal is the restriction of food, detention conditions and Netanyahu joining the Russia/China/Turkey club (along with Trump) on throwing out international law.
[1] https://www.npr.org/2023/10/18/1206897328/half-of-gazas-popu...
https://www.npr.org/2024/03/14/1233395830/ireland-pro-palest...
There are 38 million Americans who identify as Irish. Is America the Irish homeland? No, it's Ireland.
To those who say Jews are colonizers: where is the Jewish homeland?
I've heard people say Poland, where Auschwitz is, thus revealing their true colors.
You are being dishonest or severely brainwashed.
Ethnic groups doesn't have homelands, people born under a nation state [2] have homelands.
Israel was founded in 1948. You already know this.
1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Israel_(1948%E2%80%...
Similarly the Irish are famous for being ethnically a Celtic people. The Celts originated in Hallstatt, Austria, so does that entitle any Breton, Cornish, Irish, Manx, Scot or Welsh person to turn up and settle on the shores of the Hallstätter See?
All humans trace their origins back to Mesopotamia, can we all claim some land in Iraq too?
/s
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/interactive/2025/israel...
You do not even understand what the UN general assembly does, it expresses majority opinions, it does not make legally binding decisions. That means the UN partition plan is only what a majority considered the best solution, not a legal decisions to divide Palestine. And the Palestinians vehemently opposed that solution and later violently its implementation.
And should one really be surprised that the Arab neighbors attacked Israel? The Jews had just occupied half of the Palestinian land, violently displaced hundred thousands of Palestinians, and established their own state on Palestinian land.
Do people indigenous to a land have the right to defend their lives and property from a foreign, occupying force with violence, if necessary?
It's a shame that one's answer to this question is entirely dependent upon a bronze-age claim.
Why, why is it essential?
But I have to say that, nearing 40, I no longer care about it. Without the family around to watch it, it's just another bit of TV I ignore. None of the people I know, LGBTQ+ or otherwise, care either.
Still, the media coverage seems to do a lot of heavy lifting to make it seem popular.
Though competing with the deluge of internet media, Eurovision probably has a lot less impact.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
Hacker News Guidelines
What to Submit
[...]
Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, or celebrities, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. Videos of pratfalls or disasters, or cute animal pictures. If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic.
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45094165
[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44714221
[3] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44576782
[4] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44496391
[5] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44402896
Even after being manually unflagged following user requests, the false flag will have impacted its rank in the HN algorithm.
For the record, OP is entirely correct to assert that anti Israel stuff is always quickly flagged here. I've seen it many, many many times. Very often it isn't ever unflagged, despite being extremely relevant to this crowd.
My priors inspired me to look if strenuously denying live-streamed genocide and repeating bad Hasbara are regular pastimes from your account. It gave me no joy to see I was correct.
So trading with terrorist bankers and protectors, giving them money and influence is just business as usual. While when a dozen citizen of the victim country are visiting EU it's a haram and no no. Hypocrites and terrorist friends, that's who they are.
So US president also shook hand of this diabolical emir of Qatar :)
https://edition.cnn.com/2023/12/11/middleeast/qatar-hamas-fu...
The parent really should be attacking the US (of which Qatar is "a major non-NATO ally") and Israel ("Netanyahu continued the cash flow to Hamas, despite concerns raised from within his own government"). I don't see any reason to be so aggressive towards Ireland of all the stakeholders.
For more details: https://www.irishtimes.com/history/2025/05/02/de-valeras-con...
throw8924389•4mo ago
It's antisemitism, plain and simple.
For instance, nobody would ban a US pop star from an international event just because many disagree with the current policies of the US government.
Compare to the countless global conflicts we have seen in the last decades, including the reactions and overreactions and including wars and military force and ask yourself, why Israel is singled out and moreover why individual jews that are living abroad are singled out.
ath3nd•4mo ago
Israel should be double banned then because they are doing a proven genocide on the Palestinian population and their head of state is also a wanted war criminal.
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cde3eyzdr63o
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Criminal_Court_a...
It's like inviting Hitler supporters to a garden party.
> For instance, nobody would ban a US pop star from an international event just because many disagree with the current policies of the US government.
If and while the US conduct a new genocide on a population (their previous one to the native American population is too far in history to judge the current US populace), I hope we don't invite their pop stars to sing for us.
rashkov•4mo ago
Here's 514 scholars calling for IAGS to retract: https://www.scholarsfortruthaboutgenocide.com/
“Genocide is the gravest offense known to humankind; to dilute its legal standards for ideological ends is a form of moral violence. It dishonors the memory of past victims, misleads the public about present atrocities, and obstructs efforts to avert future ones,” the Friday statement said.
grimblee•4mo ago
ath3nd•4mo ago
There are people up to this very day who deny the Holocaust happened as well and call it a libel. Hitler was stopped regardless, the same will happen to the genocider Netanyahu. Its "Never again", not "Again, but this time we are doing it to others".
Israel is doing a genocide.
giraffe_lady•4mo ago
> because their conductor is from Israel
I believe the issue is not that he is "from israel" but that he is currently the music director of the israeli philharmonic orchestra.
grimblee•4mo ago