Yes, I would ask the same questions of any similar group living under a fascist regime while focusing their efforts on other fascists, as it would trigger the exact same logical incongruity. Please drop the straw man arguments. You’re actively attributing intentions to me that a) are not explicitly expressed in my writing, and b) don’t know me, so can’t have any basis for saying this beyond my writings. I can assure you, no such intentions were there, whether implicitly nor explicitly.
As for whether I would say the same of French hackers and the Front National or German hackers and the AfD? Not quite, as neither of those are (currently) in power, and there are thus better reasons to not target them, and the need to hurt them is less dire. Right-wing parties out of power love to play the underdog and present themselves as victims, and this has shown time and time again to be an effective tactic for them to gain support, so not attacking them as directly and overtly makes sense in some contexts. The same can’t be said for right-wing extremists in power. I would definitely say the same if the hackers were Hungarian, for example, or Polish.
It’s also rather interesting that you’re effectively stating that all critical discussion of any activity that doesn’t involve the people involved in the activity is “just sniping” and cannot in any way be constructive. That’s a rather bold stance, no? Isn’t reflecting upon the (possible) reasoning behind the actions of others and finding ways of improving upon this a worthwhile endeavor, potentially leading to learning something?
As for this:
Seriously, get a grip. You have zero basis for this claim, at least in my posts - I’m not speaking for anyone other than me here. You directed your reply at me, so I’m assuming you are addressing all of this to me, but please feel free to correct me if that’s wrong. But by saying this, all you’re doing is playing into the tired, old dumbing-down of any debate involving anything related to Israel. Please don’t sink to that level. My only reason for pointing out that they happen to be Israeli was to highlight the distance (cultural, geographical, political, social) between them and their chosen targets, which lies at the core of why I found their choice of target odd.
I mean, seriously, you accuse me of
That’s a pretty … uh, let’s go with peculiar reading of two posts that, while highlighting that they are indeed Israeli and their target in the US, argues around physical and cultural distance, as well as local and international politics and the most efficient use of resources. Yes, all of that ties into the countries in question, but it would be literally impossible to avoid doing so, and it would apply to anyone in a similar situation, as I said above.
If you are “not stripping nuance [but] pointing out prejudice”, as you say, then please feel free to point that out in something I actually wrote without paraphrasing it into oblivion or entirely rephrasing my arguments.
Also, criticizing them for their choice of targets is precisely criticizing them for what they did. Actions are in no way isolated from neither the actor nor who or whatever is acted upon. I mean, again, you’re effectively categorically denying the possibility of criticizing an action for being directed at the wrong target here. The target of the action is obviously just as defining of the meaning of the action as the action itself.
As for your last argument (the foreign aid one): sorry, but that’s not true. First off, the foreign aid argument is based on a logical fallacy, an assumption that (government/large organization) efforts in one place can translate 1:1 into matching efforts elsewhere (which they can’t), with the further misleading argument that “X money could be spent here on Y schools/hospitals/nurses” or similar. Of course this is in addition to them being dog whistles for xenophobic stuff of all kinds, but accusing someone of that (rather than, say, being naive or selfish) requires some level of proof. You’re making the accusation, yet have no basis for it beyond people calling them Israeli, which … they are. It’s kind of unavoidable. Or should we just call them “non-US”?
Secondly, it’s not actually the same argument at all, as the foreign aid argument focuses on a transfer of resources from relative wealth to somewhere with a lack thereof (hence the concept of aid), even if a core part of it is presenting the relatively wealthy place/group as not really all that wealthy (one of the many ways this classic argument is fundamentally built on twisting reality). Of course “wealth” can come in many forms (in this case: hackers), but you’re making a false equivalency here: that classic dogwhistle argument would be the same only if the aid in question was going from a poor country to a wealthy one. I would agree entirely that this was the same if, say, someone in Yemen was sending emergency food supplies to … I don’t know, Ireland? But the other way? No. My argument was precisely the opposite of what you are saying. You can’t simply pick away the premises of an argument and say that you’re “not removing nuance, but pointing out prejudice” when the parts you remove fundamentally reverse the logic of what is being argued.
Wow, there really ought to be some kind of straw man argument trigger warning here. It wasn’t pointed out “just because of the country in which they were born”. It was pointed out because of the glaring logical incongruity of the actions taken and the context in which they were taken. While both hacking and fascism are indeed global phenomena and enabled by the global(ish) internet, political power still scales with physical/geographical proximity. The closer you are to something, the more likely you are to know it or be able to know it, the more likely you are able to find effective ways of acting in support of or against it. This applies to literally any situation - fixing it locally is always more efficient than fixing it remotely as long as local resources actually exist. The reason for foreign aid existing is because those resources don’t exist in the places targeted. Yet here we have a situation where the resources exist, are needed, yet are used elsewhere. Doesn’t Occam’s razor alone then tell us that the most reasonable explanation for pointing out the incongruity of this is that it is incongruous rather than prejudice?
