bartolomeo

If you had to recommend only one piece from the linked library, what would it be and why? I keep seeing (really good) Rosa Luxemburg quotes but I have never read her.

Palestinians are at #8.

This article is not from Israel's current assault on Gaza but from the one in 2021. Hasbara is an important topic, though, because it is creeping into Lemmy more and more.

Hasbara can be defined as

Israel's efforts to communicate directly with citizens of other nations to inform and influence their perceptions, with the aim of garnering support or tolerance for the Israeli government's strategic objectives.

and this takes the form of people trying to manipulate the public discourse to suit a political agenda, often done on social media.

In the current western political climate, hasbara is used to minimize and / or justify Israel's occupation and genocide in Palestine, and to excuse or ignore Israel's blatant and egregious violations of human rights and international law.

Some examples from social media platforms:

Twitter notes

Hasbara App

Facebook

Facebook again

Massive (and distasteful) ad campaign on X and YouTube

Hasbara is used not only on the platform level, but also in person-to-person online communication. Hasbara is a form of propaganda, so logical consistency is not required, as you can see in this recent example of someone arguing in the style of hasbara right here on Lemmy:

I would personally reject this deal.

The Palestinian people do not deserve to live under the rule of Hamas. In 19 years of living under Hamas, after all the money given to them by the US, France, the UK, Qatar, Iran, and even Israel, the only thing they built for the Palestinian people has been tunnels to commit terrorism from.

then when people pointed out the complete inaccuracy of the statement, the commenter pivoted to

Building tunnels as the sole piece of infrastructure for your people is the sole response to a 30 year genocide?

I don’t think that is true, and I don’t believe you think that is true either. It sounded good when you said it though, and I’m sure it felt even better.

Here we can see several hasbara strategies- the commenter feigns concern for Palestine (deception), uses bad faith arguments which are completely made up, moves the goalposts, projects, contradicts themselves, and then tries to gaslight the other person when they get called out.

A hasbara agent tries to keep the other commenter(s) busy defending themselves or correcting the hasbara agent's ridiculous statements and accusations, so that the original point is forgotten and the hasbara agent's own dishonest (and often narcissistic) behviour is never addressed.

Some manipulation tactics that are characteristic of hasbara are

• bad faith arguments

• false accusations

• straw man fallacy

• moving goal posts

• deceptive distraction (answering an honest question with a loaded question)

• hypocrisy (especially accusing people of putting words in their mouth, being dishonest, or using any of these listed manipulation tactics while accusing the other party of doing so)

• victimization

• gaslighting

• aggression

• projecting

Hasbara in it's current form is a method of psychological manipulation ranging from propaganda to historical denialism to calls to violence against obstacles to the Israeli government's strategic objectives (e.g. "there are no innocents in Gaza").

Fortunately Lemmy users are usually smart enough to downvote hasbara posts and comments to signal their falsehood, but since hasbara comments spread misinformation, aid human rights violations, and attempt to radicalize people, they should be treated as the abuse they are and reported, blocked, downvoted etc.

Although hasbara actors are a very small, yet very aggressive, minority here, let's keep Lemmy a safe, fact-based place to exchange knowledge, culture, and opinions.

Reading about the current events got me looking into the history of Palestine and Israel, and I noticed a lot of Israel's politicians (like Yitzhak Shamir, Menachem Begin, and Ariel Sharon to name a few) were Zionist terrorists (using the word literally, not subjectively) since before the establishment of Israel. The groups they belonged to, like Haganah, Irgun, and Lehi have been designated terrorist organizations by the United Nations, British, and United States governments, and

Albert Einstein, in a letter to The New York Times in 1948, compared Irgun and its successor Herut party to "Nazi and Fascist parties" and described it as a "terrorist, right wing, chauvinist organization".

The Zionists have explained their view as follows:

Neither Jewish ethics nor Jewish tradition can disqualify terrorism as a means of combat. We are very far from having any moral qualms as far as our national war goes. We have before us the command of the Torah, whose morality surpasses that of any other body of laws in the world: "Ye shall blot them out to the last man."

and

Late in 1940, Lehi, having identified a common interest between the intentions of the new German order and Jewish national aspirations, proposed forming an alliance in World War II with Nazi Germany.[22] The organization offered cooperation in the following terms: Lehi would rebel against the British, while Germany would recognize an independent Jewish state in Palestine/Eretz Israel, and all Jews leaving their homes in Europe, by their own will or because of government injunctions, could enter Palestine with no restriction of numbers.[32] Late in 1940, Lehi representative Naftali Lubenchik went to Beirut to meet German official Werner Otto von Hentig. The Lehi documents outlined that its rule would be authoritarian and indicated similarities between the organization and Nazis.

It just gets worse the more you look into it, but it does give important context to the current genocide in Gaza, and to the decades old conflict in general.

I just tried osmand. It took forever to locate me and then the map would freeze for minutes, then the blue arrow would finally jump to my location. It seems useless for real time navigation, is that normal? Google maps works fine on the phone (Android) so it's not the hardware. Is there maybe some setting I haven't found?

Edit: nevermind, my phone is just on the fritz. Location doesn't work at all anymore :/

For example that red "no person" symbol. I've seen another one that looks like a redish pinkish "no message" icon. What do they mean and are there more symbols like that on Jerboa?

EDIT: While I do appreciate the input, it's surprising that there is no authoritative answer. The git also doesn't specify what these icons mean.

I'm using Jerboa and I sometimes see symbols next to peoples' username. One looks like a "no message" symbol, and the other looks like a "no person" symbol in red. What do they mean? Are there more symbols?

I've tried a web search but I only found results related to Motorhead and some kind of desert rodent.

Also, is it possible to search the content of posts on Lemmy? At least in Jerboa the search function seems to be only to search for communities by name. Surely someone has asked this before but I couldn't figure out how to search posts.

Thanks!

Edit: added an example of the "no person" icon

And tell me how proud of it you are.

![](https://suppo.fi/pictrs/image/6e9f6b39-915c-4078-9e8d-a9d82af662cc.webm