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Both sides try to manipulate it, but in certain topic areas, the numbers are highly skewed such that one side wins almost all disputes.

For example, Wikipedia's definition of Zionism was updated to include "as much land, as many Jews, and as few Palestinian Arabs as possible". There are absolutely no other dictionaries or encyclopedias with definitions resembling that; Wikipedia is uniquely biased there.


And there is an entire discussion about that, a vote and 17 citations!

https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?oldid=1276887484#Langua...

When you can't eliminate bias completely, as I think it is the case here, the next best thing is transparency, and you can hardly get better than that! Maybe no other dictionaries or encyclopedias describe it like that, but no other dictionaries or encyclopedias give so much detail on why it is described the way they do.

In the end "Zionism" is just a word, the meaning of it is what people make it to be, not what dictionaries or encyclopedias say it is, and considering the current situation, it means different things if you ask different people, so bias is unavoidable. Of course, if it is etymology you are after, the Wikipedia article covers that too, with plenty of citations.


I think you would have a point if such biased statements had tags such as [1], directing readers to the relevant discussions. Attempts to add such tags are normally reverted by the usual anti-Israeli editors.

So we have theoretical transparency, but no hint to the reader that they may want to look into a dispute rather than accepting the content at face value. Readers could peruse the talk page, but it contains several hundred (mostly archived) discussions.

The main page history also contains thousands of smaller disputes, where communication was done via edit summaries. Realistically, readers aren't going to dig through talk page archives, let alone years of edit history.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:POV_statement


I would say it absolutely violates the NPOV policy, and it's worth noting that both Wikipedia founders share this view [1] [2]. It's the only thing they've agreed on in many years.

Ultimately it's just a numbers game - Wikipedia almost always follows consensus, even when the consensus is to (effectively, without admission) throw neutrality or other rules out the window.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Gaza_genocide/Archive_22#...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Gaza_genocide/Archive_22#...


Larry Singer was essentially running Wikipedia in the early days though, until he was laid off, so in some sense we could think of him as a co-founder who was ousted. It's true that he didn't contribute much (as an unpaid volunteer) after that though.

Friendly fire happens all the time. Israel handled it about as well as they could have, by apologizing and paying reparations. It's also been 58 years now since the accident.

American soldiers have also killed thousands of American soldiers; should the US punish itself?


"Palestine is under ICC jurisdiction" is the court's claim; that doesn't make it a legal reality. It relies on the theory that PA is the government of Gaza, despite never having controlled it.


Even if we had some legal theory under which ICC could assert universal jurisdiction for certain crimes, the ICC doesn't do so. It has to abide by its own jurisdiction rules, which have no such mechanism.

The ICC's jurisdictional claim is here is rather based on the idea that PA is the de facto government of Gaza, even though they never controlled it.


Those were after Germany's defeat, and those put on trial were no longer active combatants.

I'm pretty sure no military in history has ever delayed taking out an active threat in order to conduct legal proceedings. They don't need to, because enemy combatants don't have to be guilty of any crimes to be valid targets under IHL.


Responsible for what? In war, enemies combatants aren't slain as punishment for crimes, but simply because they're enemy combatants. Likewise prisoners of war aren't (typically) detained on suspicion of crimes, they're detained simply for being enemy combatants.


> Israelis fall under Israel's civilian legal code while the occupied non-citizens fall under a harsher military occupation system without due process.

Every country treats citizens and non-citizens differently. Apartheid is about discrimination based on race, not based on citizenship.


You are incorrectly commingling the concepts of legal status and legal system. People can have different status assignments and still fall under the same legal system, which is how most countries work, but not Israel.


Sure it may be somewhat unusual; that doesn’t make it apartheid. The legal system one falls under is still based on citizenship, not race.

US service members sometimes fall under a different legal system; that’s likewise not apartheid because they’re not a race.


It does make it apartheid when one group imposes separate legal systems to intentionally advantage one party over another. That is the most essential nature behind the term apartheid. In both cases of South Africa and Israel the primary motivation is to transfer land from the disadvantaged party without their consent.


It’s like saying that border control with Mexico is apartheid because the main motivation is racism against Mexicans. There’s a grain of truth (racism exists), but it’s not really the reason we have border control, and even if it was it still wouldn’t be apartheid.

To see why Israel ended up with the current system, we have to consider a bunch of possible alternatives (eg giving citizenship to all residents), each of which runs into legal and/or security problems.


Its not like that. The US does not occupy Mexico in any capacity.


Wow, if this is how you think, you must really hate Palestine and even Islam ... after all that is exactly what Islam as a religion proscribes, and the Palestine government applies those laws and makes them worse.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dhimmi, note the laws on ownership and inheritance. That is definitely taking advantage of one party. And, of course, it's muslims taking advantage.

But Palestine, of course, has actually gone further, and has done exactly what you say makes a system apartheid, alter laws to transfer land from a disadvantaged party without consent:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palestinian_land_laws

So now we pretend you see your mistake and you don't just change what was never your opinion on apartheid, just to keep hating Jews? I mean I expect you to call me a racist for pointing out that you're making up excuses for hating Jews, but I keep getting told to expect the best from people.


Please don’t try to distract by changing the subject.

Secondly, I hate on Israel all the time but I have never said anything remotely negative about Jewish persons or the Jewish religion.


I'm not changing the subject, I just pointed out that your description of apartheid really fits the people you claim are victims here. Somehow I think you do not wish to discuss what your definition means about them. Because, well, I'm going to go out on a limb here and say: you checked ... and found that I'm right about at the very least the contents and existence of those laws. And of course that those laws, both the Palestinian ones and the islamic laws are racist and frankly inhumane. That they both violate human rights and are far worse than anything you've mentioned ... and that they are directly related to the subject.


So you're grooving on the Palestinian discriminatory laws he cited but sidestepping that whole issue because it's inconvenient? Or, let me guess, what-about-ism?


What are you saying actually happened? It sounds like the concern is that in a certain context, messages are cloud hosted instead of client-side e2e encrypted? Did anyone even claim otherwise?

How is this different from suggesting Netflix was all a secret plot by Stanford to spy on Europeans' TV binging?


Two anonymous security researchers working at Dutch government found the data is send plaintext [1]. One independent security researcher was able to verify their claim.

This should be a concern if the company is owned by Dutch people, but more so if it is owned by a company with questionable jurisdiction. Which unfortunately the USA and Israel are these days.

[1] https://www.ftm.nl/artikelen/vertrouwelijke-zaken-te-grabbel...


Did they ever claim otherwise? They say "Zivver scans the content of every email" prominently on the front page. The flow seems to be TLS to Zivver first, scanning, then encryption.

If all it takes to convince us that a communication product was created as a front for spying operations is not having a strict e2e design like Signal's, then do you think virtually all of them are fronts for spying operations?


Listen, I am Dutch. I am loyal to the Dutch government, Dutch society, and therein lie my interests. This is also my potential bias.

> Did they ever claim otherwise? They say "Zivver scans the content of every email" prominently on the front page. The flow seems to be TLS to Zivver first, scanning, then encryption.

I worked at a government organization which used Zivver. This was around 2018. It was assumed to be E2E encrypted. I wrote about the issue in my security audit, but it had low priority for a myriad of reasons (they had worse issues at the time). Zivver is more akin to the Lavabit situation.

Proton's OpenPGP.js is slightly more secure than this implementation (it encrypts client-side), but because Proton can decide (and be forced) to serve a different OpenPGP.js, it suffers from a similar issue.

> If all it takes to convince us that a communication product was created as a front for spying operations is not having a strict e2e design like Signal's, then do you think virtually all of them are fronts for spying operations?

I never wrote it was created as a front. I don't believe anyone asserted that. The company was founded by a couple of Dutch people in 2015, it was a Dutch company. So they fell under Dutch jurisdiction. I honestly haven't looked them up.

Fast forward to June 2025 and this company got acquired by an American company where the higher echelons are ex-Israeli spies. This could be a front, I don't know. I very much question this sale should've been ACK'ed by the Dutch government. Because due to the CLOUD act, the data now falls under American jurisdiction. Around the time of the acquisition though, the Dutch government fell. responsible up to then was Dirk Beljaarts. Around that time (June 2025), Vincent Karremans took his place. Fast forward a couple of months later, we had the Nexperia crisis, where Karremans intervened. A fallout from a stopped acquisition due to national security is lower than Nexperia fallout though.

I copied the title of the article verbatim. The Dutch article has a different title, and is IMO of better quality. The title of that article calls it a strategic blunder. I very much agree with that, but not because the top of Kiteworks is Israeli and ex-Unit 8200. That is just a cherry on top, worse case scenario a red herring. No, because of the current geopolitical situation with regards to Trump and the CLOUD act. Can you blame them for trying, given the situation and stakes? The acquisition occurred at a perfect timing.

The TL;DR is not that a American or Israeli entity supposedly succeeded. It is that the Dutch government failed. And while Zivver is heavily in use in The Netherlands, it also is within EU. So we failed to serve the best interests of EU here as well.


Thanks for the added context, that sounds reasonable to have wanted the product to continue under Dutch ownership.

> I never wrote it was created as a front. I don't believe anyone asserted that.

There seem to be vague insinuations of a conspiracy floating around, rather than an explicit conspiracy theory, so I may have mischaracterized it. But for example, you mentioned elsewhere that "Mossad's way of operating is aggressive". Could you clarify what you're insinuating, if anything?


Hmm, from EU PoV, given many other EU countries rely on it, I believe NL is a reasonable host, but other EU countries could be as well.

I'm no expert on that subject, just following Hubert's assessment that it falls in their M.O. (already linked), following Modderkolk's recent assessment on how Mossad operates [1]. Look at all the flak I get in this thread while I just went with HN rule of 1:1 using title. Problem is all these sources are in my native language. And finally, yes my suspicion is on high alert ever since the Maccabi riots in Amsterdam [2], to which Modderkolk also refers to.

And yes, I am well aware every Israeli adult is ex-military [3]. If it were up to me, we'd restart this practice here in NL.

[1] https://podcasts.apple.com/nl/podcast/hoe-de-mossad-overal-t...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/November_2024_Amsterdam_riots

[3] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46036671


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