We, the admin team, decry all forms of settler-colonialism, and we recognize that Zionism is a pro-settler-colonialist position.
Therefore we propose that should no longer be accepting of any Zionist accounts on our instances.
Please upvote for agree, downvote for disagree.
Note: we only count votes by instance members of dbzer0 and anarchist.nexus, plus a few vouched-for external users.
Hi mateys, I've kept things simple in the above text, for brevity, but in fact it took the admin team quite a while to get to this stage. We have discussed the policy change extensively, and a variety of different perspectives emerged. I will attempt to sum them up below as best I can:
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The "this isn't that complicated" school of thought goes something like this: If someone is consistently posting comments that mirror Hasbara talking points (e.g. justifying the genocide in Gaza, consistently painting Palestinians as terrorists and Israel as the victim), then they should be instance banned. It's just not acceptable for Zionists to be allowed on our instances.
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The "slippery slope" / "purity test" school of thought is that banning people for having an "unpopular" political opinion would potentially mean banning half the fediverse, if more and more of these policies were enacted over time. To attempt to mitigate this we are keeping the scope of this rule as narrow as possible, and I also don't think many of our users will be affected. Also, we typically don't have frequent policy changes, and I have no reason to expect that to change moving forward.
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Another important discussion point was "how do we decide whether someone is pro-Zionist or not?" We can't always be 100% sure of someone's true intentions, we can only go on what they have posted and that is subject to interpretation. I don't feel there is an easy answer to this one, except to say that we would have to be pretty certain before issuing a perma-ban.
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The "geopolitics don't matter" school of thought is that trying to be on the "correct" side of every issue is kind of pointless because nothing that happens in lemmy chat forums will ever make an ounce of difference in the real world. Don't bother moderating users over political/ideological differences, just let people argue if they want. While I can totally empathize with this sentiment, I can also see the case for taking a clear stance on this topic in accordance with our values and the overwhelming support for the Palestinian cause among our users. Personally, I am advocating in favor of the resolution.
Please add your comments below if you want to provide your own thoughts on the topic, or have any questions.
expiry: 7
I'm not a part of your instance, but this popped up in my feed and I thought it was interesting.
I'm not pro-Zionist and I'm not pro-settler, but I often take devil's advocate stances in Israel-Palestine arguments and am frequently mistaken as being a Zionist. In my opinion it isn't pragmatic to approach this argument in a black and white manner. Too often people on Lemmy boil down geopolitical arguments into what is objectively morally right instead of what is pragmatically possible for the leaders of a country. People on Lemmy often also seem to expect immediate results for decades old issues because "It's so simple to solve, just do X." When you don't immediately agree with these answers because they aren't pragmatically possible you get labelled as a Zionist.
People on Lemmy also seem unable to critically assess sources or research and when it comes to Israel-Palestine news they are willing to accept Pro-Palestine media on it's face while they dismiss any and all Pro-Israel evidence simply because of who it comes from. An independent journalist can write an article alleging something happened with nothing but a Twitter post as evidence, Al Jazeera will pick it up and copy the article almost verbatim with barely more than a credit to the original journalist, Haaretz will then pick it up saying Al Jazeera reported (again with almost no changes), and then it pops up on CBS. The next time you hear about it some guy on Lemmy is telling you that it's well known that XYZ happened because CBS, Haaretz, and Al Jazeera all reported it when it was really one guy with a twitter post. On the other hand you present a 500 page Israeli report to the UN on the details of an event and it's fake news because it came from Israel.
I get tired of people posting Israel-Palestine news that holds less journalist value than saying my friend's brother's ex-girlfriend said so. I get tired of people making arguments in bad faith because they care more about things aligning with their views rather than being true. Also, a lot of people on Lemmy don't really know what they are talking about, and this applies even outside of Israel-Palestine arguments; just the other day I had a guy argue with me about what happened in my life because statistically it should be a different way.
At the end of the day many people on Lemmy say they left other places, like Reddit or Twitter, because of the behaviors that they witnessed there, but it feels more like they just want an echo chamber to circle jerk to. I don't think you should ban accounts for engaging in civil debate so long as it is well sourced, researched, and seems to be in genuine good faith, but I would say that that should also go the other way. If all someone has to contribute to a discussion is a low effort and faithless argument, or just mudslinging, then they should be temp banned from posting (however that works) no matter which side the support.
EDIT: I'm the fire starter
See, but your one example related to this precise issue is bad, the 500 page Israeli report cannot be assumed to have any value and should only be assumed to have negative value when you understand that regime, their goals, their actions, and the consequences of it all.
Of course bad info is going to be available, but your example of one that should be granted any trust at all is awful and indicates either your poor understanding of Israel the state, or the facts of the ongoing genocide.
This question is not about general Lemmy behavior. This question is about specific moderation on a specific topic for our instance.
Your take is bad, your frustration experienced elsewhere is not our problem or related to our governance decision here, and genocide accompanied by modern high-tech armies of propaganda whitewashing it does justify some REASONABLE defensive action, again on our own instance.
Meh. The literal Nazis released reports on smoking being bad for you. They were correct to suggest there was a link between smoking and lung cancer. They weren't correct to suggest the introduction of tobacco was a Jewish plot to weaken the master race.
It's the whole argumentum ad hominem /argumentum ad auctoritas fallacy thing.
Just because the source of a report is the Israeli government, doesn't necessarily mean it is entirely fallacious.
Because if it was, by that logic if the Israeli government releases a report where they do admit doing something wrong, that's a lie because it's an Israeli report, and they did nothing wrong.
Obviously, you should double check, etc. Especially when something comes from a questionable source or when it's about a contentious subject.
Don't know if I understood you wrong. Maybe I'm just clarifying.
I think we're saying similar things. My point regarding credibility is that any document coming from the state of Israel:
This is exactly as true for anything that came out of Nazi Germany as it is anything coming out of modern Israel, for exactly the same reasons.
Sounds like we're roughly on the same page, or close enough.
The Nazis could have been reporting on the fucking weather - doesn't make them a trustworthy source for anything, let alone matters relating specifically to the defense of their existence.
If a Nazi says it's raining, that doesn't necessarily mean it's not raining. When the Nazis exploited the bombing of Dresden for propaganda purposes, that didn't mean Dresden was never bombed.*
If a source is unreliable or has a vested interest, you take what they say with a pinch of salt and double check, but you can't assume everything they say is a lie.
Also, Dresden has largely been rebuilt and is well worth a visit.
If only there were journalists on the ground that could report impartially so we didn't need to both-sides this issue. Oh right, Israel killed them all.
You can't take devil advocate for a settler colonial power. Would you do the same when it comes to Russian invasion of Ukraine?
You can always take a devils advocate position, that's why it's called the devil's advocate. In a room where everyone agrees on a conclusion someone has to argue the minutia of the argument in the spirit of debate. Without this the argument simply becomes a mutual appreciation society and is prone to logical fallacy, lazy arguments, and poor source review. Basically if no one calls out bad arguments because they say what you want to hear then your argument is no better than stupid conservatives watching Fox news.
Just because you are right doesn't mean you can ignore logic, reason, research, or due diligence and you should be called out on it when you share bad sources of information or ignore reasonable sources without just cause. You might be morally correct in your belief, but if your rationale is based on a heresay argument or a logical fallacy then you're only eroding the validity of your argument.
This is the spirit of Socratic debate.
EDIT: And yes, if large groups of people on this platform were sharing shitty sources that were pro-Ukraine then I would point that out as well.
People like you should be cast into hell with your devils advocate position
Your post is proving my point though. You vilify me because I said I often take a devil's advocate stance to point out poor arguments, but clearly stated that I'm not pro-Zionist or pro-Settler. I stated the types of poor argument I dislike and my reason for pointing them out, but I haven't said how I feel about any individual policy or action by Israel.
In the context of this thread you have no basis to attack me, but you have anyways and in the process of doing so you're displaying the behaviors I criticized in my original post.
This isn't really about constructing lines of defense for specific acts committed or not committed by Israel or Palestine. The perspective being expressed by this poll is about whether there is any justification for supporting a settler-colonial apartheid state from an anarchist or marxist perspective, and the answer is resoundingly no.
There are plenty of people on the internet claiming to be the 'devil's advocate' - especially on reddit, especially on .world. You can have those places to test lines of defense for the state of Israel - but on an anarchist sub, it's reasonable to ban them because they are incompatible with anarchism. Generalist forums like reddit are cesspools for nazis for exactly this reason, and it's why I am in full support of the motion at hand - even for people 'just playing devil's advocate'.