I'm Peter Roberts, immigration attorney who does work for YC and startups. AMA

I've seen recent examples of the government targeting green card holders for their speech. As a naturalized citizen who wants to exercise my free speech rights, how concerned should I be about potentially having my citizenship challenged on technical grounds? Are there realistic scenarios where this could happen despite First Amendment protections?

Until recently, I would have said that the only way a citizen could have his or her citizenship taken away was by committing treason but there has been talk by the current administration about expanding the grounds as well as increasing denaturalization efforts. The first Trump administration tried this but it was largely unsuccessful but it's a different administration and a different Supreme Court so I don't think concerns now are unjustified.

Advocating for Palestinians isn’t advocating for a “terror group”. Which is itself a nebulous term that is used for political reasons.

Now, working to carry out a foreign governments interests against the best interests of the American public IS treason, but that’s okay when you’re the president I guess.

Are you denying that Hamas is a terrorist group? Committing terrorism is literally the central part of their operations. Are you denying that October 7th was terrorism? Are you denying that launching thousands of rockets against Israel to kill as many Jewish people as possible is terrorism?

Is calling out a right wing military state for bombing and killing over 14,000 Palestinian children terrorism? Just talking about it makes you the bad guy, huh?

Presenting it in those false terms makes you a bad guy, yes. Israel is not a "military state" and a left wing Israeli government would have carried out much the same military operations. "Children" were not bombed. Military targets were bombed. Many children died in consequence, not least because of Hamas's eagerness to put them in harm's way in an attempt to win over credulous fools, albeit some of them well-meaning.

There is no left wing in Israel, you are painting a false narrative. It is a fascist state run by thugs (much like ours, which is probably why they are so eager to sell out Americans to Israel).

Children were bombed. They knew the kids were there and they bombed them. Often happily doing it knowing they'd slaughter hundreds to get one supposed terrorist. They bulldozed bodies. They tiktoked the destruction of universities and hospitals.

"Hamas's eagerness to put them in harm's way" is such a tired lie to cover up for the slaughter of innocent people by the Israeli terror state.

The 2021 elections ended with a government of 61 seats, including 7 seats for Labor (left), 6 seats for Meretz (fairly hard left), 4 seats for Ra'am (Islamist), so 25% from what would be considered a "left bloc" from a Western viewpoint. Then Yesh Atid and Blue and White had 17 and 8 respectively, both centrists, so just short of 50%. So there most certainly is a left (albeit small) and a substantial centre. Israel has a pluralistic political sphere.

Israel's military operates according to the laws of war, which forbid targeting of civilians, but do not forbid civilian deaths.

In a sense you're right though. If by "left" you mean "peace movement", that was on life support after the second intifada, and Oct 7th pulled the plug. There will be no substantial peace movement in Israel for a generation. Many of those slaughtered on Oct 7th were from the hard left/peace movement bloc.

And to reiterate, yes, presenting things in those false terms makes you a bad guy.

Seats mean nothing. If there is a plurality and any kind of left movement there, what opposition have they given to the right? AFAICT, Yair's biggest criticism was that the war was managed poorly by Bibi.

80% of Israeli jews support the ethnic cleansing of Gaza. People are arrested for saying the oppressed have a right to defend themselves. You see videos of IDF troops calling for the death of all Arabs while they are on vacation. You see them doing crimes against humanity in Gaza war footage. That isn't a healthy society, it isn't a society with a leftist movement. It is a fascist bloodthirsty society, run by thugs like Bibi, Smotrich, and Ben-Gvir.

Supporting them means you either naive or that you lack any morals. Which makes your "bad guy" accusation meaningless.

Yes, that's my point. Any plausible Israeli government, left, right or centre, would have conducted the war in roughly the same way, including the historical left governments of Ben Gurion, Meir, Rabin, Peres or Barak. Thus attempts to paint Israel as "right wing" due to its conduct of the war are fallacious.

I'm just pointing out that painting falsehoods about Israel and its people (as you have continued to do in your most recent post) does indeed make you a bad guy. I don't expect you to agree with me!

Here's a fact about Israel. It is illegally annexing other countries' land right now with impunity.

Is there any country that does this that isn't authoritarian and right wing?

Israel claims the Golan Heights as part of its sovereign territory. It captured the Golan Heights during a defensive war in 1967, when it also captured the West Bank, the Gaza Strip and the Sinai Peninsula. It gave back the Sinai Peninsula for a peace agreement with Egypt in 1979. The capture of all that territory happened under a left-wing Labor government led by Levi Eshkol. The return of the Sinai happened under a right-wing government led by Menachem Begin, of the party that is the forerunner to Likud. Israel withdrew from the Gaza Strip to leave it in the hands of the Palestinian Authority in 2005. That happened under Ariel Sharon, a right wing prime minister (albeit in a centrist party, Kadima).

The West Bank is still occupied because the Palestinians have not agreed to a peace deal with Israel, despite being offered one including that land most recently in 2008. Given what happened on Oct 7th, I don't think there will ever be such an offer again.

Israel is currently occupying parts of Lebanon and Syria because Hezbollah fired 8,000 missiles at Israel from southern Lebanon during 2023 and 2024, and Hezbollah was supplied with those missiles through, with the consent of, Syria. Hezbollah's presence south of the Litani river was in contravention of UN Security Council Resolution 1701.

So whether Israel captures or returns land has really nothing to do with whether its government is left or right wing. Israel is not authoritarian. It is a constitutional democracy.

The right of conquest, which you are invoking, was ended after WWII, due to the disastrous consequences of its implementation by a group Israel claims to be so against.

None of what you said changes the fact that there are no non-authoritarian, left-wing countries which annex land in war. Russia does it. Azerbaijan does it. Can you give some examples that contradict this? That's what I asked. I didn't ask for a flimsy justification to flaunt international law.

I will also say, though I hope you don't only respond to this and ignore the other parts, as you've done so far, that Israel is a democracy in name only. It has many subjects who have no right to vote who were born in the land Israel controls (The West Bank and Gaza), who have no other citizenship, and who are native to the land stretching back to at least before the founding of Israel. Of course, because Israel wishes to be an state controlled by a specific ethnicity, it cannot allow such people to vote. So how much of a democracy is it really? It's as if we called the US a democracy if it only allowed voting in such a pattern that white people were always the majority, or as if Saudi Arabia transitioned to a democracy but only in such a way that House of Saud members would always be the voting majority. How democratic would that really be?