The "binary options" scam industry, which is mostly run from a suburb of Tel Aviv, has been targeting the Arab world recently. Mostly by default. The industry isn't allowed to scam Israelis, but the rest of the world's suckers are fair game under Israel law. They've been kicked out of the US, and recently, most of the EU. So they're telemarketing into the Arab countries now.
This requires hiring Arabic speakers, who are available in Israel. Greed apparently overrides Arab-Israeli differences in this area.
(Big 15-part expose in the Times of Israel: "The Wolves of Tel Aviv".[1] Summary: binary options are bets against the house, not against other speculators. Binary options "brokers" are not really brokers, they're shills for the house. Worse, the house cheats, tweaking the prices to make customers lose. Even if customers win, the house won't pay up. 80% of investors lose all their money. This brings in over 0.7% of Israel's GDP, and that's just the part that pays taxes.)
As an Israeli gaming pm I think this niche as well as other gambling related activities like affiliates are a product of a lack of "resources". too many want web businesses, and too few get funding or help. It's easy to re skin gambling solutions and get started with a working business and the mission to convert as many leads as possible. Most of these "businesses" are tiny (4-6 workers) and are not yet at the point where morality beats "let's put food on the table and grow the business guys!"
I only skimmed the article, but couldn't find the reference to binary options companies. Can you please share where is the section that is related to it in the article?
The headline: "The wolves of Tel Aviv: Israel’s vast, amoral binary options scam exposed" of [1]. It's an example of Israel tech firms doing business in the Arab world, quietly.
Forgive my confusion, I'm asking about the op article, titled: "How Do Israel’s Tech Firms Do Business in Saudi Arabia? Very Quietly"
I didn't find a link to the wolves of Tel Aviv article there or any mention of it. Is it directly related to the op article or just a generally related case of an Israeli / Arab Tech related business?
It seems in first look at your comment (without reading the op post) that this is the op's main topic. The op post talk about Cyber Security and other more relatively positive engagement.
It's good in any case to see other aspects to the same story so thanks for sharing
The connection is that the binary options stuff has basically been mostly booted from the EU/US and is now targetting Arab countries, and is a prime example of Israelis quietly doing business with Saudis
> In the U.S., the Securities and Exchange Commission approved exchange-traded binary options in 2008. Trading commenced on the American Stock Exchange and the Chicago Board Options Exchange (CBOE) in May and June, 2008.
Also it seems that in Israel they are working on banning marketing it overseas
> In Israel, where a high concentration of such firms can be found, binary options trading was prohibited for Israeli customers in March 2016, on the grounds that it is a form of gambling and not a legitimate investment technique. A ban on marketing of binary options to overseas customers is under consideration.
Binary options per se are not banned in America, but you have to have proper regulatory approval. The companies running binary options gambling operations wouldn't be able to meet the approval requirements, because usually those companies don't actually match buyers and sellers directly, so they manipulate the prices more like a bookmaking operation than a financial market.
There is a market that is regulated by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission that only has binary options, but they don't take positions in their own market and meet other regulatory requirements. They even offer binary options on events (Fed funds rate movement, for example) so it acts as a prediction market of sorts. Whether it actually provides a net benefit to the world aside from gambling is very much in question though. I find it hard to believe that people are using their binary options for hedging.
I wouldn't take the word "amoral" in the title too seriously. This website has been working very hard (and somewhat successfully, I think) to take down the industry over the last few months. And the subtitle of the report is:
"An industry turning over hundreds of millions of dollars, employing thousands of people, is cynically cheating naive would-be investors worldwide via a range of corrupt practices. It is doing terrible harm to its victims, and it risks doing the same to Israel’s reputation"
I don't think they're particularly ambivalent about this industry being a bad thing.
I'm a Muslim Arab American and I am against Israel's more aggressive policies and actions.
But I definitely respect Israel as a state, and especially the Israeli tech sector. Israel has consistently produced world-class companies in almost every field you can think of. It's quite impressive once you consider all of the factors.
The author of "Startup Nation" argued that one key reason behind this success is how the military ties back into civilian companies, especially with the mandatory service. I'm not sure how important that is, given how many other countries have a similar model yet they've achieved nothing close to what Israel has. There are a few that have, such as Singapore and South Korea.
I'm hoping that my home country Tunisia can replicate (at least somewhat) the Israeli success story. We have a lot of talented people both inside the country and overseas. The biggest thing we're lacking right now is a functioning economy (yep, tough times)... but I hope we can get there in the near future!
I'm hoping that my home country Tunisia can replicate (at least somewhat) the Israeli success story.
I don't believe I'm the only one in Europe that has a special sympathy for your country. But trying to replicate Israel spirit? I don't think so. It's like when people over here talk about making an "european SV", not very realistic. I neither see my country doing anything similar if you find consollation in that :-)
There are two reasons. One that someone pointed in a downvoted comment nearby: funds from governments (Israel and USA). The other one is a ruthless killer instinct. Both are shared by SV. If you've been around here for long enough, you might remember a couple of references that show clearly both factors. For government backing there was an article about SV origins in WW2. The other one is a YC standard interview question about how founders "hacked the system" for their own profit.
Yesterday I got in a somewhat esoteric argument about how righteous people get very strict about abstract ideas like environment protection. This is the default actitude for many smart people. So the questions that matter are: are your government willing to put a lot of money to grow a sharp industry, and is "selfishness" taboo in your society? Otherwise, we're doomed :)
I definitely agree with you that attempting to blindly replicate another country's success is a recipe for failure. Success stories like Israel and SV, or even Taiwan in the semiconductor sector, were formed due to very specific circumstances and needs, and probably arose without anyone really intending them to.
I guess what I was trying to say is that I'm hoping Tunisia learns what it can from Israel and other successes. I think we have the environment and the human capital to at the very least attract foreign companies to setup offices in Tunisia. Ideally, we would start our own local companies to compete on the global stage. And as you've kindly mentioned, this requires serious interest by the government, and from what I've seen, this is starting to become the case.
I could be wrong here, but they kicked off the Arab spring and so far seem to be the only ones that have descended into Islamism. As far as middle eastern countries go, Tunisia seems like a good one to set an example.
>As far as middle eastern countries go, Tunisia seems like a good one to set an example.
Except Tunisia isn't in the Middle East, it's in North Africa; which is as eastern geographically as Western Europe and as similar to the Middle East in terms of culture and way of life because of shared religion as the U.S. is similar to Peru.
Interestingly, Israelis were actually fundamental in the founding of Singapore's military. At the request of the Singaporean government, Israel sent many advisors. It was pretty much an organization copy of Israel's, IIRC.
For those who haven't read Startup Nation, the authors don't argue that the bonds formed in the military are sufficient for Israel startup culture. Rather, the military's unique culture and relatively flat hierarchy in which subordinates can and do challenge superiors (at a frequency unique among militaries) are other important factors in creating the startup nation. But of course, there's yet more discussed, which do indeed fill up the book's pages.
I am decidedly unimpressed by what the Israeli IT sector has been able to achieve, despite the strong branding effort as a 'Startup Nation'.
There can be no question that Israel is firehosed with money, both from states and private sources and everything in between. I personally know of at least a few of the biggest corporations in this medium-size European country that has a stated policy of buying practically any Israeli technology that is punted. Lots of other large multinationals pour money into Israel as a point of policy, see Coca-Cola, Google, Procter&Gamble and many others.
They have very little to show for it in my opinion, in fact the only successful IT companies I know of out of Israel are ICQ (!) and Fiverr. They have a bunch of B2B businesses, but a lot of their revenue can be chalked up to official or unofficial support programs as mentioned, which is probably why they, and their products, are mostly completely unknown outside their small niches.
I also heard accounts from from several IT workers in Israel that the work culture is quite inefficient if not downright lazy.
Another factor in Israeli success must have been immigration. It's the last of the settler "frontier" states, and it has an open door immigration policy for people of Jewish ancestry.
I definitely believe this makes an impact. From a biased American perspective, if I was a non-Israeli Jew living in a country that was outside of the US, Canada or Western Europe, and I am young and seeking more opportunity, moving to Israel would look like a very attractive option. Israel is very happy to woo young, and educated minds to their country which brings in fresh perspectives, which I would assume is great for startups, especially he many that target global markets.
FWIW the US only started giving Israel money in the 70's but Israel was doing fine before and innovation in Israel goes further back. As an anecdote to the importance of science and technology the first president of Israel (1948) Chaim Weizmann had a Ph.D in bio-chemistry. As another anecdote, the Technion, the sort of Israeli parallel of MIT was established in 1912, 36 years before Israel became independent.
The Israel-Arab conflict became a proxy for the US-Soviet conflict and while the Russians were aiding the Arab countries surrounding Israel the US was aiding Israel. As mentioned a lot of the US aid to Israel is a form of subsidy to the US defense industry and comes with many strings tied. A good example of the trade-offs there is that Israel was effectively forced to cancel it's Lavi fighter aircraft program and buy "expensive" F16s instead. Another good example is President's Obama decision to stop providing Israel with missiles for its Apache helicopters at some point during one of the last conflicts.
Saudi Arabia's hypothetical alignment with Israel is a fairly recent phenomena as some sort of my enemy's enemy is my friend. But for the longest time Saudi's money and political influence was invested in working against Israel (and those sums dwarf US aid to Israel).
> A good example of the trade-offs there is that Israel was effectively forced to cancel it's Lavi fighter aircraft program and buy "expensive" F16s instead.
"There is a myth that it was American pressure that led to the cancellation of the Lavi program. Nothing is further from the truth. It was a self-inflicted wound, a shot in the foot."
The reason the program was cancelled was because it was very expensive and there weren't enough potential international buyers of the plane. The unit costs of F16:s were unsurprisingly much lower because they have been mass-produced for decades.
There are a lot of stories around this and I'm not quite sure who to believe. What is clear is that those F16s could be purchased by US aid while the Lavi could not and that the ability of Israel to export the Lavi and compete with the US would be greatly hampered by direct and indirect US influence. I.e. a project that was potential competition to the US defense industry got cancelled and replaced by US funding to purchase the competing US product. That must have been a factor in the decision making, right? I think at any rate the point I was trying to make stands regardless of whose version of the story you want to believe here.
I see that the page I linked only titles Moshe Arens with Haaretz contributor... In fact, he was a minister of the Israeli government for the larger part of the 80's and the Lavi project was something he advocated strongly for. Meaning that if he says that the project wasn't cancelled due to US interference he is probably right.
I know who Moshe Arens is. I agree the story carries some weight but it's not conclusive. Arens has/had his own interests and even ministers do not always get the entire picture. At the time he was a "minister without portfolio" which means he was probably excluded from some of the meetings.
WikiPedia says this:
"On 30 August 1987, Israel's cabinet conducted a decisive vote on whether to continue the development of the Lavi; this development was influenced by considerable lobbying by the U.S., who made several compensatory proposals in exchange for the cancellation" and provides 3 references as support which I didn't pursue in detail though the ynet article is fairly recent and has some interesting tidbids: http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4695739,00.html
How can there be doubt that the US aid and influence was a factor? Would the same decision have been made otherwise? Who knows.
I suspected you'd know, but I thought it was good to clarify who Moshe Arens was for other people reading. ;)
The article you link is interesting, and it mentions a special tax that would be levied on the populace to continue funding the project. Which gives you a hint about how expensive it was! It also mentions that the US didn't like the project. But if US pressure was factor, then why was the project started in the first place? Recall that in 1987 the project was over 10 years old.
Fact is that Israel does a lot of things that the US does not like, like building settlements, but it has never used the military aid as a means to put pressure on Israel. So sure, the US could theoretically exert influence by threatening to stop the aid, but it hasn't done so and probably won't. It would be too much like slaughtering a holy cow for them.
The Lavi story isn't unique. Half a dozen countries have tried to build fighter planes but then cancelled the programs because they were too expensive. I believe the only countries currently producing modern fighter jets are USA, Russia, France, EU, China and Sweden. And I can tell you that the Swedish fighter jet program has been incredibly close to being cancelled numerous times over the last decades.
Israel had previously designed and manufactured the Kfir ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IAI_Kfir ) though that design was based on the French Mirage. The Kfir wasn't really that successful though...
US aid to Israel is about 1% of Israel's GDP.
Arguably Israel might be better off without the aid, the aid killed a large part of Israel's defense industry and it restricts the technology they can transfer to secondary markets such as China and India.
One should also note that most of that money isn't actually given as cash, only a few 100's of million of the 3 bln are direct cash allocations intended to fund defense projects within Israel, the rest has to be spent on buying toys from US defense contractors.
So for the most part US aid to Israel is a US job program.
Israel is the 7th largest arms dealer in the world. The US aid has not killed anything of it. On the contrary, it has helped it grow since (until this year) 25% of the aid given was given in cash and could be spent on domestic weapons. Today he Israeli and US weapons industries have many competing products thanks to the aid.
It is true that Israel is supposed to not export sensitive technology to China, but that is more a factor of being a US ally than strings attached to the aid. Canada also shares a lot of stuff with the US, but does not align themselves with China despite not getting any military aid.
And weapons are fungible. The $3.8 billion in weapons the US provides the state with means that it saves exactly $3.8 billion to spend elsewhere. Giving away free weapons is a very poor job program in comparison to funding jobs that would help the US economy (such as building and repairing infrastructure) rather than hurt it.
I once checked this out and as it turns out there's quite a lot of cases where foreign aid is spent on weapons, even sometimes as a condition of foreign aid.
I was was stupefied that Belgium made a foreign aid donation to Saudi Arabia. I found the reason : it was contingent on the Saudis spending about 30x the amount of the donation on weapons made by a plant south of Brussels, with (I'm sure coincidentally) several (then) cabinet members on the board. They bought "weapons for crowd control" with it, because apparently that's what fully automatic machine guns are used for.
I think the issue is that weapons production is an industry that is entirely controlled by government action, both in the positive and negative direction.
Governments forbid certain parts of the market on one hand, and they cheat and lie and deceive everyone so their own weapons manufacturers would see more customers on the other hand. US, Israel, France, even tiny little Belgium all engage in this.
US aid killed Israel's indigenous fighter jet program.
If Israel could get drones from the US it would've eventually killed the Isreaeli drone industry.
Overall what Israel gets on aid they don't make and can't sell.
US aid also comes with a leash Israeli arm sales have congressional oversight ever since the Phalcon deal with China.
Without US aid the Lavi would not have been canned and Israeli Mirage clones like the Nesher and the Kfir are considered one of the best airframes of the time even today.
Israel GDP is $290.6B/yr, US Aid is 3.8B/yr. That is 1.3%.
Israel government spending is $64B/yr. US Aid of $3.8B/yr is 6%.
For comparison, if the US got relative aid like that it would be: $170B/yr. US military expenditures is only 598.5, so this would cover about 1/3rd of it.
I'm pretty sure even if you canceled all the US foreign aid it will change nothing for homeless Americans.
Giving foreign aid is the US investing they get a lot of it back too, for example most of the aid money to Israel is strictly for buying military equipment from US companies not to mention that it is part of the peace agreement between Israel and Egypt.
If you think Israel sends military equipment to Al qaeda your nuts.
>If you think Israel sends military equipment to Al qaeda your nuts.
I'm pretty sure that Israel does sends military equipment to AQ from time to time, tho the equipment undergoes rapid unscheduled disassembly upon delivery.
US middle east policy has long called for maintaining a qualitative edge for Israel so that their neighbors (including Egypt) won't be tempted to attack again. Plus Israel has 10x GDP per capita, and a more educated workforce better able to maintain complex tech.
All of the below is factually true and can be verified but was censored from HN. Criticism of Israel != anti-semitism.
>Don't Helen Thomas your career, dont you know mentioning that is a thought crime? Obama promised another 38 billion over ten years, and the real cost including all military and other aid has been estimated at 15 billion per year. Never mind their wall, occupied territory and treatment of Palestinians in their war for a racially pure nation state. The UN actually ruled Zionism a racist institution but now we know you can only be racist if you're a white European. Jews occupying, displacing and killing Palestinians and Arabs is fine.
HN is entertaining a lot of political threads and commentary lately so please enforce this rule equally since you're bringing it up only here. It appears that's the only guideline I broke; my comment was relevant to the parent comment being downvoted for no reason. It's just ridiculous you cannot criticize that country anywhere without being slandered yourself. There's no perfect government or country in history and that's why it's great in America that we can criticize government.
Hacker News is not a site for engaging in political battle. Most politics are off-topic, but a blanket ban would deprive the community of topics that are indeed intellectually interesting, or representative of new phenomena. The political discussions that we do have, then, are for the community, and the expectation is that comments are thoughtful, patient, civil, and substantive.
Creating accounts that only post politically is not good community behavior, nor is reposting comments that have been flagged, nor is making deliberately inflammatory (troll) statements as you have. These behaviors are against the goals of this site and they just don't belong.
On the first two points I agree with you. Those are good community guidelines here. However, HN is allowing many political threads lately and it's out of order to single out someone for political comments you don't agree with. Nowhere did I make troll statements and that's not something you are capable of substantiating. No government is perfect and beyond criticism and you should not attack someone for having the bravery to be a political dissident no matter how scared or biased you are.
We ban accounts that abuse this site from any political angle. You're abusing HN by using it primarily for political battle, tossing Molotov cocktails ("now we know you can only be racist if you're a white European") and reposting flagged comments. That's indeed trolling, in effect if not intent.
That's not appropriate. My comment already accepts and agree with the guidelines about political posts, however, my point was that you can't entertain political posts in general (as HN has recently) while criticizing political posts you disagree with as off-topic, especially
If they are relevant to a parent. You just ignore that double standard though and go right for slandering me and my comments, and claim all accounts are subject to this treatment, which just isn't true and anyone who reads HN lately knows that since the Trump
Presidency. How many users banned for Trump
Comments? Please tell me. Further, derision of political speech that you disagree with as 'throwing molotov cocktails' is nothing more than unsubstantiated slander, which was exactly the thing that I posted about in the first place in response to another user's criticism: you can't say anything without being slandered and having your words twisted (in this case into violent rioting or figurative violent trolling? Give me a break). You can write anything about Trump here, even opinions about his intelligence or character, but address a real double standard with this one country and you'll be labelled as a violent troll causing destruction, and you're proving that. It's Orwellian political correctness and censorship. You are better than this. By the way, the idea that Whites are the only racists is not something I invented, it's a common theme now. I.E. Mic recently ran a piece about "all whites are racist," and it's only possible for Whites to be racist because racism is "prejudice plus power." So calm down and do a reality check on what you're saying, please. I won't use this account primarily for political debate, or repost any comments, I can respect that, but also don't use your authority to project double standards on political speech you disagree with. That's why people would feel compelled to repost censored comments. Even if it is a breach of guidelines. At any rate I can respect that rule in the future. And I don't even disagree with Israel's existence or think they're even generally 'a bad country,' that's what's the most ridiculous about this. In fact, I think They have a lot to be admired for and have done a lot of good. I'll leave it at that.
Every commenter we chide (or ban) for abusing this site with political battle thinks we're siding with their political enemies. That's understandable but it's not based on data—it comes from the partisan passion that drives the political battle in the first place.
Muslim and respect Israel. I don't think that can go together!
You are impressed by their technology success, I understand it, I do either. But respect!
I respect what they have been able to achieve given their situation (geographic location, limited resources, small population).
As I said in the beginning, I am completely against the illegal settlements, the blockade of Gaza, and other similar issues. I regard my fellow Palestinians as brothers and sisters. That doesn't mean that I cannot respect what Israel has been able to build.
I as a muslim too respect jews and israelis as a hardworking , intelligent community but that does not mean we need to agree with everything they do as righteous .
I don't think there is a government that has ever existed that has not made a mistake. As an American, I can proudly criticize specific actions of my government I may disagree with, but I still feel, despite its flaws, generally does relative good for a majority of its people and the world. I feel similar about the Israeli government. Yes, they too, like the American government, and <insert other government here>, have made decisions not so well-received in the past, and likely in the future. But overall, I feel the Israeli government, like the American government, does much more good for its people and in the world than otherwise. Despite how you feel about the Israeli government, I cannot think of another government that takes in wounded people, who may be willing to risk their lives to destroy your very government, and provides medical aid without question.
As someone with direct experience with this, it's nice (and important) to see this reality get more recognition. Something unmentioned in the article is that the military/intelligence relations are far stronger and better integrated than the tech relationships.
The article correctly points out that the Arab states involved (this doesn't seem to apply to the non-arab muslim states) will not normalize formal relationships, without movement on the Palestinian front. However, despite this, these dynamics have made Arab countries much more susceptible to pressuring the Palestinians, and not putting diplomatic pressure on Israel on the things they care about (ie Operation Protective Edge).
An important point to note is that as all of the Arab countries becoming friendly to Israel are non-democratic, and their citizens don't view Israel along the same lines as their governments.
Hacker News is not a battleground for ideological warfare, and we ban accounts that were created to behave as though it is. We also ban the main account if it continues, so please stop.
Criticizing Trump = 'people are allowed to have political positions;' criticizing Israel = 'people should get banned for gimmick/troll accounts.'
I don't have some opinion about Israel in which it is one of the worst countries in the world; they have clearly done good for their own people and for others, and have a vibrant economy and technology. However, just as our ability to criticize our own government, or governments in Europe or Asia, increases well-being for citizens of the world, so too should we be allowed to criticize Israel. Nobody is perfect and equating any criticism with thought crimes needs to stop.
This makes me think of an interesting experience I had in my first job, almost 20 years ago! I was working for a small company that was at the time pioneering on-demand video systems. We were a software company but did sell our stuff as an appliances as we did need some control on the hardware.
I was once flown to Ryad to deliver our best system to our client, a wealthy hotel resort with a cost-no-object kind of attitude in terms of what perks they supplied to their clients. Our marketing strategy was basically not putting too much emphasis on the hardware and we'd typically be very open in terms of what we had assembled and how much the components retailed for. We'd typically give them a 'dossier' (trendy these days uh?) with hardware details and the manuals of all the components we had assembled.
Things went well, the engineers I was working with were super cool, first demos went without a hiss, we were just rolling the whole week! The night before I was flying back home, my boss called me from Europe in panic mode: someone had read those damn manuals and found out that our mpeg2 decoding hardware was made by an Israeli company and wanted us to cancel everything.
What was interesting was how all engineers I talked to the next day went out of their way to apologize and tell me how completely stupid this whole matter was. Few months later, when the client found out there was basically all alternatives to this card basically sucked, the finally changed their mind :)
"I talked to the next day didn't apologize and tell me how completely stupid this whole matter was"
I dare say you should not be so presumptuous to assume that local customs and values are 'stupid'.
There can be lot of resentment between two groups of people, and not all of it is unwarranted.
Would you buy software from a company that by de-facto policy did not hire Black people? Maybe not. Someone from another part of the world might consider that to be 'stupid' or 'irrelevant to the situation', because of a lack of understanding of the context (i.e. maybe it's a very segregated part of the world and such weird policies are reciprocated)
I have no love for anti-Israeli antagonists, at the same time, issues such as very illegal Jewish settlements on land upon which Arabs are basically kicked off of at the point of a gun - are real. Anyhow - I take no sides on the issue, other than to point out how these things are very real problems, locally.
It's good to see that 'sound states' such as Israel and Saudi can get along, despite historical antagonisms and despite some pretty big differences in ethos even outside of historical issues ... but I think it's important not to project our own cultural context (or rather dismiss theirs), and try to understand them in their respective situations.
> Would you buy software from a company that by de-facto policy did not hire Black people? Maybe not. Someone from another part of the world might consider that to be 'stupid' or 'irrelevant to the situation', because of a lack of understanding of the context (i.e. maybe it's a very segregated part of the world and such weird policies are reciprocated)
See, you might have inadvertently illustrated exactly what was ridiculous about this, and with my anecdote, I was just trying to show how reassuring it was to see that despite what views the technical people I had been working with had on the middle-east, they didn't do the shortcut between the nationality of the company, and the foreign policy of the country.
How were they right in apologising? Would you have bought technology from apartheid South Africa? It's not a matter of what the people at the company that developed the product actually think or are, it's a matter of boycotting business with a country that it's doing deeply wrong things.
It wasn't at all a question of being right or wrong, I was just happy to see that despite whatever their opinions could be, this didn't prevent them from finding that making the link between a company and a country was intellectually dishonest.
> Would you have bought technology from apartheid South Africa? It's not a matter of what the people at the company that developed the product actually think or are, it's a matter of boycotting business with a country that it's doing deeply wrong things.
To answer your question, I don't know. For the record, while I am personally hostile to a lot of things Israel is doing in the region, I don't think it's very intelligent or realistic to assume that all Israeli companies de-facto support all its most controversial policies. At the very least, a little bit of common sense could be used I think. If the technology you are talking about is sold by a company that obviously encourages and participates in something I disagree with (e.g: an arms manufacturer inherently part of the military industrial complex of Apartheid South Africa, or an Israel company located on illegal settlements in the West bank manufacturing products with prison labor). But in absence of such evidence, isn't it a sort of collective punishment? In our case btw, the whole project was in jeopardy because someone found that our infrastructure had one PCI card made by an Israeli/American company.
When I think about it actually, I'm afraid that the concept of boycott is completely idiotic to begin with.
Let me just give you a funny example: you see, I happen to be French, and I don't know if you remember but circa 2002-2003, there was a little bit of a disagreement between the government of my country and the government of the US with regards to a UN resolution for a regime change in Irak. Rapidly, a classic campaign of demonization and boycott of anything French was activated by some politicians and propagated by the media. I'm not going to remind you the grotesque Freedom Fries or the bottles of wine being poured on the sideways. I have been on the receiving end of this idiocy personally. During this period, I was on vacation on the east coast, and one evening in Boston, as I was having dinner with some buddies, the waiter who had just taken our order came back to the table, asked me where I was from, and informed us that he had just talked to the manager and had his agreement to not serve us because I happened to be French and that was his way to protest against the government of France. The waiter left the table, my friend and I stared at each other in disbelief and left shortly afterwards.
Not doing the crybaby here and needless to say how little i cared about this pathetic incident. In the end, I remember how laughable I found that however noble the patriotic intentions of this waiter were, the only thing this poor soul really achieved was to piss me off, and embarrass my American friends. Politically speaking however, nada. In a way, I almost wish I had been equally as brainwashed, naive, and ignorant of the world at this guy, buying all sorts of nonsense such as links between Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda (lol) - In fact, since he didn't even bother asking me what I thought, he would have made even more of a fool of himself punishing a guy sharing his own opinion.
There is nothing personal in boycotting products from a specific country. It doesn't matter whether the company you're boycotting is an active supporter of the policies you disagree with or not, as you don't mean to punish that company, but to both show that you consider some behaviours unacceptable and to create a political pressure for change.
I repeat my question, would you have happily bought products from apartheid South Africa? The anti-apartheid, boycott and divestment movements in the 1980s put strong pressure on South Africa to end apartheid. If everybody had been patting SA on the back (as they are doing with Israel) probably apartheid would still be going on (as settlements construction is still going on in Israel).
As for your personal experience re. french fries and idiot waiters and restaurant owners in the US, that has very little to do with boycott and much with pure ignorance. But brought up in this context it's a pure straw man argument.
> There is nothing personal in boycotting products from a specific country. It doesn't matter whether the company you're boycotting is an active supporter of the policies you disagree with or not, as you don't mean to punish that company, but to both show that you consider some behaviours unacceptable and to create a political pressure for change.
Hehe, thanks for having taken the time to provide your definition of boycotting, now in all fairness, at this point I was hoping you had realized we basically agreed on what boycotting is but were arguing about its merits. So hey, your definition is spot on, and my personal opinion is that the very idea that punishing individuals or companies will create political pressure and generate change is not only unfair and stupid, but it's also a fallacy.
> I repeat my question, would you have happily bought products from apartheid South Africa?
I thought my answer was clear since I made sure to add some examples but apparently not, so let me try again: I would try to use common sense, if the product comes from a company that supports or encourages the apartheid I probably would pass, in case I didn't have such evidence, or evidence that the company encouraged the end of the apartheid, it would be different.
> As for your personal experience re. french fries and idiot waiters and restaurant owners in the US, that has very little to do with boycott and much with pure ignorance. But brought up in this context it's a pure straw man argument.
It actually does, so in case you honestly didn't get the commonality between this anecdote and boycotting, here we go. In both cases, an individual or a company gets penalized, irregardless of its own opinion, because it belongs to a particular group disagreed upon. But hey let me know if it's still unclear, I'll provide your some images. Now in case you are just interested in rhetoric here, I hate to say it but you need a few more miles to become a master of sophism.
No, if you take as an example of boycotting a waiter who refused to serve you at a restaurant, we don't agree on a definition of it. By the way, and just to show you how completely inconsistent your argument is, in 2003 you probably supported your government's stance, so according to your own reasoning (companies and individuals are the same, let's punish only those who support), the waiter was actually right in not wanting to serve you.
As for your answer to my question, you said: "To answer your question, I don't know".
I worked with an Israeli company that had to do something like this.
While in the country I was going to visit their office, but I couldn't find the address anywhere on the website, only their NY satellite office. I was later told this was because they have manufacturing customers in Pakistan and Bangladesh, from which they hide their true identity.
>If it’s a country which is not hostile to Israel that we can help, we’ll do it
To say Saudi Arabia isn't hostile towards Israel takes one heck of a lot of mental gymnastics, or a burying of your head in the sand. Wahhabism isn't exactly known to be pro-Judaism.
Understanding any politics in the Middle East requires one heck of a lot of mental gymnastics. That doesn't make it invalid.
The relationship Wahhabism has with the rulers on Saudi Arabia is pretty complex. Their interests aren't always aligned to say the least. It's pretty easy to make the case that Wahhabism is the biggest threat to the Saudi regime.
Put it like this: Wahhabism isn't exactly pro-US, and yet Saudi Arabia remains a strong ally of the US - one might almost say a client state. It's in the interest of the Saudi regime to keep that relationship, and good relationships with Israel are also in their interest.
What is Saudi Arabia? If we're talking about the rulers (read: the Saud family), they're certainly friendly with Israel.
Both nations share a common enemy: Islamists who deny the right of Israel and Saudi Arabia to exist. Note: a necessary step in the establishment of a Caliphate is the destruction of the modern Arab states, all of which Islamists generally regard as illegitimate.
The Saudi people are obviously very anti-Israel, which ties the hands of the rulers to some degree. Or at least prevents the rulers from openly being friendly toward Israel.
No, it really isn't. More specifically, just because the Saudi regime maintains a facade of visceral hatred for domestic consumption does not mean that they are actually hostile towards (as in, would ever consider using military force against) Israel, because both have shared enemies that are potential existential threats: Iran, Islamic State, etc.
Of course, this doesn't mean they're BFFs either, but (despite the best efforts of IS...) 200m Shias aren't about to disappear anytime soon.
The Saudi regime is the one that encourage Wahhabism and was the primary source of funding for Al Qaeda through the 90s, and there's been nothing to show that's changed since.
As for that chart, it appears to literally have been made up by the author. Without a citation I'd call BS after the most basic of spot checks.
>The Saudi regime is the one that encourage Wahhabism and was the primary source of funding for Al Qaeda through the 90s, and there's been nothing to show that's changed since.
This is one of those things that sounds smart until you actually understand it, because it's completely ignorant of actual facts regarding SA internal political dynamics. The Saudi government is perpetually held hostage by religious hardliners who have previously tried to overthrow the government, claiming its too tainted by western influence. The current monarchy has made their Faustian bargain, allowing these hardliners control over religious education in exchange for not advocating a coup. There are uneducated critics who are completely ignorant of the regimes attempts to break the power of the religious fundamentalists, and somehow believe weakening the monarchy will somehow pacificy the country, instead of handing over more power to extremists. Those people should be ignored because their ideas are terrible.
Yes, the combined "completely ignorant" intelligence services of every western nation in the world should turn to ycombinator, where you'll enlighten us all to how it really works. Of course, I once again see a complete lack of citation, so I guess I'll just take your word for it.
>Yes, the combined "completely ignorant" intelligence services of every western nation in the world should turn to ycombinator, where you'll enlighten us all to how it really works.
You do realize that just because you remain ignorant of facts, that not everyone else shares in that with you? Nothing I said is actually controversial or even new, and funnily enough, policymakers and intelligence services understand this dynamic as well - I'm not sure why you're attempting to generalize your ignorance to a larger audience.
But since you've asked for sources, here are some quick ones:
In the future, it'll probably be more helpful for you to think of Saudi Arabia as not another sunni gulf state, but as the caretaker of the most sacred site in Islam, Mecca. Once you understand the centrality of Mecca's importance, you can see why the Ulema have such power in the country and why Western attempts to break their power directly will most likely be framed as an existential threat to Islam and beg severe blowback. Again, there are uneducated critics who are completely ignorant of the regimes attempts to break the power of the religious fundamentalists, and somehow believe weakening the monarchy will somehow pacificy the country, instead of handing over more power to extremists. Those people should be ignored because their ideas are terrible.
The Golan Heights have been annexed by Israel, so you might call them conquered but not occupied.
The West Bank is occupied since Israel has never officially annexed it (with the exception of East Jerusalem and parts of the Jordan Valley), and Jordan who previously annexed it waved it's claim to that territory.
The Saudi-Israeli romance has been developing for many years. Bear in mind that it is the Saudi dictatorship that has established these ties. The Saudi people are fiercely opposed to the Jewish occupation of Palestine. Anything the Saudi government says that is critical of Israel should be taken as purely for Saudi domestic consumption.
If you want proof that this romance has been ongoing for years, you need only look at the public statements of the Saudi dictatorship during the Zionist attack on Lebanon in 2006. The Saudi regime supported Israel, while of course the Saudi people supported Hezbollah.
That's a more nuanced relationship than you make it out to be. Hezbollah is a Shia group and funded by Iran. KSA has been adamantly anti-Iran, especially after the fall of Saddam. So in your example, it's more "the enemy of my enemy is my friend".
That type of sectarian analysis is oversimplified at best, inaccurate at worst. Hostility from KSA vs. Iran is largely at the level of the dictatorship and the extreme right wing (eg, Al Qaeda). KSA has a large Shia population.
Yes, but I also said that KSA is anti-Iran, which I intended to be the main point. I mentioned that Hezbollah is Shia to point out its relationship to Iran.
Attack? You make it look like Israel was the aggressor with no reason.
When in fact it was provoked by rockets fired on border towns and the attack on a border patrol where 3 soldiers died and 2 were captured.
? Zionist Groups were already active for decades killing Arabs and Brits and Christians and Muslims and Jews alike that opposed them. Let's just ignore all of the Zionist Paramilitary Groups that founded the IDF that would regularly kill Brits and Palestinians with bombs (King David Hotel Bombing, good place to start), and let's just ignore the Lavon Affair, where Israeli's pretended to be Muslim Extremists and tried to set off bombs, and let's just ignore Israel sinking the USS Liberty deliberately. Miko Peled's father admitted to Militant Zionists always being the Aggressor. You know how much slaughter, fraud and manipulation it took for the Partition Plan to make it to the UN? Militant Zionism was never an accident.
Many of the Intel processor chips are designed in Israel as is the Apple iPhone/iPad processor. Intel employs about 10,000 in Israel and I think Apple around 800.
There are many, many other US firms represented in Israel -- often for buying up Israeli startups.
> Moreover, common sense tells us that in order for Saudi Arabia to get any weapon systems, they have to be bought under trade agreements made with friendly countries that manufacture those systems with official and approved export trade certificates from their governments. It is also certain that Israel is not among the countries that have commercial relations with the Kingdom.
I thought software sales were exempt from trade certificates ?
I'm having a hard time finding a video. Was it in Nov Dec Jan? When I search for terms you have been commenting, I get a lot of links to Zerohedge articles, but not that video.
I found an hour long plus Tucker Carlson Tonight video that has Greenwald in there somewhere, but I don't have enough time today to trawl through it.
This requires hiring Arabic speakers, who are available in Israel. Greed apparently overrides Arab-Israeli differences in this area.
(Big 15-part expose in the Times of Israel: "The Wolves of Tel Aviv".[1] Summary: binary options are bets against the house, not against other speculators. Binary options "brokers" are not really brokers, they're shills for the house. Worse, the house cheats, tweaking the prices to make customers lose. Even if customers win, the house won't pay up. 80% of investors lose all their money. This brings in over 0.7% of Israel's GDP, and that's just the part that pays taxes.)
[1] http://www.timesofisrael.com/the-wolves-of-tel-aviv-israels-...