Yes, there were native jews. From what I’ve read there was never a conflict there. The problem came when foreign jews came to settle explicitly to build a jewish state and supplant the local population. They do want an ethnostate. Look at the words and actions of people like Smotrich, Ben-Gvir or go even further back to Herzl, founder of zionism.

I do agree that it’s impractical and immoral to mass expel jews that have settled in Israel for a few generations now; those that are still settling could return to their countries of origin. I do also agree that the only just way forward has to include jews and Palestinians finding some peace living together. I can’t speak for the OP but when I hear the phrase “Israel doesn’t have a right to exist” this is what I understand. Whether you call it Israel, Palestine or something else it cannot continue to exist as a Jewish state. It should grant equal rights and respect to all its citizens. Getting there from where they are now will not be easy but we could start with addressing the international Israel lobby.

Absolutely. There should be very strong regulations on lobbying that, at a minimum, should include the disclosure of the sources of funding.

From my own research it seems LFI is funded by the Israeli state while LFPME seems to have no significant source of funding, relying on volunteers and having been driven in to the ground under Lisa Nandy’s stewardship. In fact, the domain linked from their wiki and twitter has expired. Admittedly I haven’t checked through their recent donations to MPs but if this is anything to go by I suspect it does not rival LFI’s.

I’m interested to know what your own research has yielded on the Palestine lobby?

I take your point generally – at what point do you draw the line? I think there are significant differences though. The USA and Australia have been colonised for hundreds of years and still have ongoing debates around the rights of indigenous people. In Britain the Anglo-Saxons have been there for around 1500 years and even in that case there are still distinct national identities, languages and devolved powers.

Israel is less than 80 years old and is still actively importing colonists to occupy existing territories and expand further, all while enacting a genocide.

On the Jewish state question I just have to ask if you support explicitly ethno-nationalist states. For example do you support the UK or other European countries being “white” nations and all that this implies in terms of mass deportations and segregation?

Almost certainly funded by the Israeli government. I recommend watching The Lobby, a documentary series made by Al Jazeera that covers the Israel lobby in the UK, including LFI.

Good call. I observed the same a while back and have them tagged as “low quality”. They removed at least one previous post of theirs when the poor source became a talking point in the comments. This site is trash.

Thanks for sharing your experiences. I think you touch on some realities that are often ignored. As far as I am concerned unions are only effective in redundancy situations in so far as they are able to keep the company honest with regards to their legal obligations.

I’d be interested to hear any first hand examples of tech workers here that have successfully gotten their union recognized.

Some of the employer tactics described here sound very familiar. One thing that isn’t really touched on are those colleagues that are vehemently anti-union. I have experienced some very vocal people and countering their misinformation is exhausting.

I’ve noticed this sort if thing becoming more common and I think it is very much related to bots scraping the web. I’m sure they’ll be happy to sell access to that data though.

This source is a bit questionable. Wikipedia says it is very pro-Israel and has in the past published articles from a fabricated reporter. Their own “about us” page also says their executive editor was formerly with Fox News. This is enough for me to be sceptical. I couldn’t find a local article but this article says the victims did not file a police report.

I’m not saying this didn’t happen and I do believe there are some antisemites using legitimate criticisms of Israel as a screen but there’s a lot of propaganda out there and we should be mindful of spreading unverified information.

I really enjoyed this film. The whole thing was so tense! Instant classic in the horror genre. It feels like there’s been a bit of a renaissance over the last decade or so.

Thanks for sharing your experience. Interesting that you use company infrastructure for meetings. I guess it’s assumed that somebody will feed info back to the company regardless of platform anyway.

Do you know how the initial bargaining unit was formed and recognised?

What do you think would be a good way to get people to join?

I think getting people on to a neutral platform is definitely the goal. In my experience though many remote workers just do their jobs and keep to themselves so enticing them to these spaces is difficult. The ones I’ve had best luck building solidarity with are those that have attended at least one in-person event and built rapport.

What tactics do you think would work to win the others over in this environment?

I think one option is to seize on a galvanizing moment like a round of redundancies, contract change or merger and use this to get people in to a private group where they can express their opinions with less fear of reprisals.

Of course you would still have to initially communicate via some company owned channel. For this I’ve found people are more willing to talk one on one via voice/webcam than text. Make sure any transcription feature is disabled.

Obviously a big problem here is that you are already on the backfoot since you are relying on the the company’s actions to create the right conditions. You can try instead be proactive with these chats but the momentum is much weaker.