Ahoy mateys!
A few of our users have recently pointed out that a lot of the pro-Zionist accounts on the fediverse nowadays seem to come from the feddit.org instance.
Feddit.org's explanation for this situation seems to fit into a few common variations:
- They accept both pro- and anti-Zionist members, so it's not proof of a bias.
- They [choose to] comply [in advance] with strict German / Swiss / Austrian laws regarding [overly broad] "antisemitic" language, or they might get in trouble.
- Calling for the destruction of Israel must obviously mean you want to kill every last man, woman and child, rather than simply wanting to overthrow Netanyahu's genocidal fascist regime. Because [bad faith] reasons.
- Lots of Euros (and Germans specifically) are pro-Zionist, so they feel like they have to accommodate this view.
But whatever the excuse happens to be, they need to do better imo. Israel is currently the most violent, fascist and genocidal nation state in the Middle East (if you exclude the US military bases there). And yet feddit.org seems to regard the Palestinians fighting against Israel's ongoing illegal occupation of their land as the real terrorists. As such, I am calling for feddit.org to:
- Explicitly prohibit pro-Zionist accounts from joining.
- Take measures to resolve their claimed legal issues, e.g., moving their server location to a less regulated jurisdiction, and ensuring that admin accounts remain anonymous regarding their location.
- Stop referring to folks who call for "Death to Israel" or similar as though they are the terrorists or violent extremists. The Zionist Israeli settlers, the murderous IDF rapists, and the entirety of the Israeli government are clearly the violent ethnostate extremists we should be worried about, not the Palestinians in Gaza who are fighting for their lives every single day against completely disproportionate levels of Zionist violence.
More context
Our instance already voted to ban pro-Zionist accounts (see https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/post/60585441 for reference) and the rule that was implemented is here: Golden Rule #8.
As further context, you can find relevant comments and discussion in this post by a banned feddit admin in MoG (that fact they chose to post in MoG is in itself quite telling), and this post about their defederation from quokk.au over anti-semitism allegations has recently become active again.
I've also pulled out some choice morsels from the modlog to illustrate the sort of thing we are talking about:
This one says it all... mrdown@lemmy.world being banned for calling out feddit.org users for being Zionist apologists. It's apparently "xenophobic" to state a few hard truths.
If you have had similar experiences on feddit.org, please feel free to share in the comments.
Voting instructions
I am proposing to ban the following communities from feddit.org, which seem to be the most problematic communities in terms of hosting pro-Zionist posts/comments:
- https://feddit.org/c/YUROP
- https://feddit.org/c/europe
- https://feddit.org/c/buyfromeu
- https://feddit.org/c/europa
- https://feddit.org/c/dach
- https://feddit.org/c/deutschland
- https://feddit.org/c/germany
Upvote this post if you want dbzer0 / anarchist nexus to ban these communities.
Downvote this post if you'd prefer not to ban these communities.
Note 1: Votes from external instances do not count, unless one of our admins has vouched for you.
Note 2: If you think feddit.org deserves a full instance ban instead, or have alternative suggestions, then please leave your comments below. If enough people think that's the better option, then we'll do that instead.
Note 3: Although I don't really expect this to happen, if feddit.org agrees to make policy changes to address these issues then we are willing to reassess the situation.
anti-zionist jew here. my observation has been that i see the most true anti-semitism coming from .ml, hexbear (when i venture out to see what's going on there) and .zip. i see the most zionism coming from .world, sh.itjust.works, and feddit. and both sides seem dead set on saying for jews what it is to be jewish.
the most concering to me is how many supposed palestine supporters repeat the hasbara talking point that palestinians are arabian. this is ethnographically and historically incorrect. palestinians are indigenous to the levant. the jewish relationship to the land is far more complicated with most diasporadic teachers emphasizing that our role in the world and in the diaspora is to listen to and hear the workers of the world and teach them the organizational techniques that have worked for us. in essence, if there is to be a jewish presence in the levant it needs to work the opposite of how israel is doing it. land management will have by needs changed since last we were there, and we should treat the palestinians, who have been there all along, as our respected cousins and teachers. we have not been part of that land for 1700 years now. many of the foods that are seen as quintessentially jewish are eastern european in origin.
anyway.
yes.
there's so much antisemitism in the fediverse masquerading as antizionism. there's a lot more genuine good antizionism, and there's also more zionism than antisemitism (though zionism is itself an antisemitic world view), but the people spouting the antisemitism always do so with a veneer of how what they're saying is about anti-imperialism, most often from accounts who are less anti-imperial and more campist
Got any concreate example because I follow daily Palestinians discussion on lemmy. I never saw anybody saying Palestinians are Arab
It is so sad to see pro Russia anti Israel people . People can read the Wikipedia page about Israel and Russia relation the relation is basically two loving couple with occasional fights like any couple.
There is many content that is spot on on Palestine but still defend Russian invasion of Ukraine. So I have to not post it.
Shameless plug. I create this community where both zionists and tankis can spread their propaganda https://piefed.social/c/apologiafreenews
https://slrpnk.net/post/28551182/18481907
So we're clear. Generally speaking, this user has his head on right about this specific conflict. But in this particular comment they are accidentally advancing something that Israel wants you to believe about Palestinians
I agree. Many Palestinians simply are descendent of ethnic jews that was converted to Islam and was Arabized since when Arab took control of the land there was no major mass expulsion of jews
mmm don't feel comfortable with putting it this way. before ~300 when the romans cracked down on religious minorities it'd be more accurate to say that Palestinians and Jews were two groups of Canaanites with a high degree of cultural interplay. yes there are a lot of modern day Palestinians descended from Canaanites who identified as Jewish, but to say the primary culture they descended from was Jewish is another form of de-idigenization.
for what it's worth, my family is from a region of Europe that is today part of Ukraine. the way I'd describe my relationship to Ukrainians and Palestinians is we are all cousins, brothers, and sisters divided by centuries of trauma. part of why i despise Israel is they want to take my connections to my people away from me and dictate to me who i am and how i should feel about them. they want me to hate and fear Palestinians and Ukrainians because i don't live on Levantine or Galician soil anymore. but the songs i've inherited and the foods i eat speak a story of kinship and friendship, and a familial promise to meet again and share the foods and songs we still share as well as the new ones we've learned.
Zionism wants me to reject the connections my mother, her mother, her mother's mother, going back thousands of years worked to maintain and sustain across famine, genocide, and oppression. But still, it would be wrong for me to say that Palestinians are of me or that i am of Ukraine. this would be to disrespect all of our identities in our shared struggle to find the freedom we once, long ago, worked together to fight for
I see the distinction you're making about Canaanite roots, and I agree. But I think what I’m trying to get at goes even deeper than a general 'common ancestry.'
I didn't mean to generalize . When I mention that many Palestinians are descendants of Jews who stayed, converted, and became Arabized, I’m pointing to a direct, unbroken link. It’s not just that we are 'cousins' from a distant Canaanite tribe; it’s that in some cases, we are the same family that over time developed distinct identity characteristics. I think it is an even better framing against Zionists.
Acknowledging that some Jews became Palestinians through history isn't meant to erase their unique identity today, but to highlight that our roots are so intertwined they are often one and the same.
this I can absolutely get behind and is what I was driving at, too, just from a different angle.