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this post was submitted on 03 Nov 2026
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This is terrible, but what is even worse is that they partnered with a Zionist Swiss university, that supports Israeli military and out criminal sanctions against students protesting against the genocide of Palestinians.
Partnership announcement.
Israel military connection and student prosecution.
Oh ffs
Oh come on. Guilt by association for everyone that deals with the ETH Zürich.
Eh, everyone's got their moral line they won't cross, and it's up to them to decide how many levels of association they'll tolerate.
Look, as a vegan I know how hard it is to draw lines between people who choose to inflict unnecessary suffering and who merely don't think much about that and live their lives as well as they can. If I would go with that zeal of the antizionist crowd I would expect everyone else to starve because almost nothing is "untainted" (and remain very opportunistic with my own consumption standards)
What zeal? I just posted information that for me is important in how I make a decision. Are you also against the BDS movement for pointing out companies that do business with a government committing genocide? As a vegan, would you buy (vegan) shoes from a company that also makes leather shoes, but only buys leather from a company that skins cows alive? Would you not tell people "Hey, this shoe company is getting their leather from a company that skins cows alive. Maybe avoid them?", if you saw a post about that shoe company? (fyi, not that i think that anything that happens with animal factory farming is ethical)
I am not looking down on anyone in this post or calling them unethical for not focusing on this point. I understand that different people have different thresholds to take action and different things which are important for them. I don't expect anyone to be perfect or to only search for untainted things. Just to try to do better for the world with their choices, wherever they can. I also know I am very privileged to be able to make the choices I have that align with my moral standards, and that a lot of people are not able to do that.
Since here it's about a university, the comparison would rather be "would I buy vegan shoes made from a technology developed at a university that also partners with other universities in which -- among many other things that happen in a university -- also someone busies himself with skinning cows alive."
And here I come back to my original response. Oh come on, how far do you want to go with a moral outrage with guilt by association?
With such a moral attitude, taken seriously, I would starve barefoot. But I don't, and I also don't suggest it to others. Veganism has a hard stance as it is. I would refrain from such a stretchy argument purely to protect the perceived sanity of the movement.
Antizionists quite regularly use these stretchy guilt by association arguments. that is the zeal I mean.
I understand where you are coming from. We have different thresholds to consider this an issue, and that's fine.
My problem with ETH Zurich is not only the collaboration with the Israeli university, but also that thy brought criminal charges against students peacefully protesting their partnership with Israel. That to me shows that they support the Israeli genocide of Palestinians. That makes them guilty. Not by association, but by their actions.
Thanks for that. I am putting the facts as I understood out there, and stating my opinion on it. Not trying to force anyone to side with me.
You know someone's value by the company they choose to keep, in my opinion.
They made the choice to partner with a university that supports genocide. No one forced them.
By that logic you probably also cancel anyone who uses Microsoft, because undoubtedly they also make business with Israel.
First of all, I am not cancelling anyone. I am choosing with my wallet which organization align with my ethical standards.
Unfortunately Microsoft has a stranglehold with M365, so I also have to be practical. But I do not do any business with Microsoft directly, and actually prefer organizations which also do not use Microsoft where I can. It's the same with Amazon or Cloudflare for example. I do not do any business with them directly, but also it is impossible to avoid organizations that don't work with them because they run most of the internet.
In the case of Proton, it's an add-on to an add-on service which is not the core part of their business.
I feel this attitude of it's all or nothing is very defeatist and is used as an excuse to not try to make better choices. Just because not all of my choices are 100% aligned with my ethical values due to the world we live in, it does not mean I should not make better choices where I can.
To me it looks like you apply standards rather arbitrary, not because the standards are reasonable in the first place, but to loudly proclaim your moral stance. Which is antizionist, and in the internet hardly distinguishable from its bigger sister antisemitism. And particularly the arbitration is a reason to suspect your comment has little to do with Protons CEOs stance towards AI, but much more with intoxicating everything with antizionist rhetoric.
How am i being arbitrary? How is it not reasonable to not want to give money to institutions that do business with people directly supporting the Israeli military?
Semitism is a religion, Zionism is a political ideology. Not every Zionist is a Jew and not every Jewish person is Zionist.
I have nothing against Jewish or Israeli people for that matter. In fact I fully support all the Israeli people currently protesting against the genocide.
I just pointed out an addition reason to move away from proton which matters to me. Is it not an important reason to you, then fine.
Hm let's see. Do you support those same Israelis also should they succeed and want to continue to live in their own country?
First thing. Do you accept that israel is commiting a genocode in Palestine, and that its immoral?
Now for my answer to your question. I am not naive enough to say its not a complicated issue. Many generations have passed since Palestinian land was stolen to form Israel. The same can be said for a lot of other countries, but it's not as recent history as here.
I am not smart enough to come up with an answer, but I am sure smarter people can come up with something that is fair to Palestinians whose land were stolen and population murdered, and Israelis who were born there because of actions taken many generations ago.
But while the Israeli government is literally irradicating the Palestinian people, this is an irrelevant discussion. The Zionist goal is to conquer Palestine and get rid of all the Arabs in the process. The fact that they are commiting crimes against humanity, which are on pat (if nor worst) to what the Nazis did to the Jews is unquestionable. Is it too much to say we should boycott any organizations enabling and or defending genocide?
The term genocide has two very distinct meanings. One is the juridical meaning, and I believe there is enough substance to have this disputed at the ICC. I'm all for bringing netanyahu and his bunch to justice, and even should the genocide not hold up for some reason, there certainly will be enough evidence crimes against humanity so they can serve a long long time.
The other is the moral meaning. But in my eyes this is very overused by the antizionist zeal. It was already used right on October 7th before Israel did any reaction to the hamas attacks, and for every single action since. The story of the boy who cried wolf comes to mind.
it's arguments like this which makes the movement seem so uneducated:
The Nazis took every single Jew (and communist, and disabled or homosexual person, or any other scapegoat group) of any age they could find, in Germany, or any conquered country and put them into wagon trains. The trains would take the victims to Dachau or another concentration and working camp, if they were lucky. Dachau is a museum nowadays, school classes go in there joking, and come out very very sober. It's worth a visit.
If they were less lucky they would be brought to Auschwitz or Treblinka or another of the 6 extermination camps. There they were carefully registered, stripped of clothes, dignity and anything remotely of worth, and then either put directly into the gas chambers. Or they were put into the camp from which workers were selected for moving the bodies into the furnaces. Alternatively, from the camp they were picked for a death march, or a ride on a truck, where the exhaust was funneled into the loading area, with the purpose to asphyxiate the victims. Or they were picked for experiments from the likes of Joseph Mengele. Or or or ...
The list of Nazi crimes is much longer than this. And it is also very well documented. These things happened without a doubt.
I see many accusations against the IDF, and the list of accusations of crimes against humanity is long and worth following through before the ICC. But the Nazi comparison only shows you have no real historic perspective.
I am well aware of history, thank you. I've been to Dachau and Auschwitz. It was horrible.
You are making a difference without distinction. All I read is, the mass killing of Arabs is not as bad as the mass killing of Jews. Doesn't matter that they are mass killing Palestinians, starving the whole country, raping women and children, bombing hospitals, using chemical weapons, torturing prisoners. Tell me that the Israelis are not stripping the Palestinians of their dignity and all they are worth. Morally speaking I see no difference.
Even if I were to concede that Nazis were worse than what Israel is doing in Palestine, and that its not a genocide, it does change the fact of the immortality and human rights violalation they are perpetrating because of the Zionist ideology.
You clearly have a bone to pick with anyone with disagrees with Zionism. I'm done.