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.
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I don't know enough to really have an opinion on what you said. I know the Zionist claim is that they previously lived in that area and were returning, so have a claim to the land. Fundamentally, it seems bizarre to me that anyone can have a claim on land in any permanent way, but also different cultures have such different values (like some cultures don't want women to be able to read) that for now, the world being like this seems unfortunately necessary. Maybe in the future everyone will agree that women should be able to read, gays can marry, and people will all just be cool with each other and be able to go wherever they want.
Deborah Feldman once said how she realized how short the ancient Israelites lived there compared to the overall history. Yet they feel entitled to a land that before and after them belonged to others like Canaanites, Romans, Ottomans ...
Even if true, how is having ancestry 2000 years ago any legitimation to expel people who live there for centuries? I have a lot of ancestry when I go 2000 years back. That doesn't give me the right to do shit.
Anyway, I think it's good to admit that you aren't educated on the topic. Maybe it's time to change that. The afore mentioned Ten Myths About Israel is a good start. It's by a historian who writes against his national interests (and is therefore as unbiased as possible) and is scientific but still easy to read.
They had a nation there 2000 years ago. That's very different from "having ancestry", because after the Kingdom of Israel got conquered, most Israelites remained. They started being "a wondering nation" after persecution got ramped up to 11, which was the state throughout most of the 2000 years.
Considering that, historically, Israel existed over 2000 years ago, Palestine existed... well, never, and the entire region's borders were created in early 20th century by the French and British anyway, I think it's a fair assumption that both of these peoples should be able to have a nation of their own, with their own borders.
They had a kingdom 2000 years ago which wasn't Israel but Judea. Israel was destroyed much earlier. Nation states are a recent phenomenon.
True. Most descends of the ancient Israelites and Judahites stayed and later converted to Christianity and eventually to Islam. They still live there, at least before 1948. On the other hand, Judaism spread through Europe mainly through convertion.
Half of them already lived outside Israel in the first century (hence the Septuagint for Jews who didn't speak Hebrew) which isn't too surprising in a world without nations and boarders.
National identities developed in Europe during in 19th century. Before that, neither Germany nor France or Italy existed. Palestine identity started to form at the end of the 19th century. As Zionism did. Before that, Jewish was a religious identity. They didn't identity as a wondering nation because there were no nations.
What about no nations no boarders? Or a binational state? Einstein advocated for the latter by the way.
Yup. And they left their ancestral home due to persecution.
"Palestine" was the name of a region. Like "Golan Heights", or "Normandy", or "Pomerania".
We aren't developed enough, as humanity, to handle that.
Fundamentalism doesn't care about borders. Hamas will want to eradicate Israelis, and Zionists will want to eradicate Palestinians regardless if there's a border between them or not.
Like I said, after being called "horrible" and "shit" and in favor of mass murder, I'm not interested in learning more. There's other conflict in society, other ways to try to make the world better. I'm leaving this instance and learning more about the genocide in Sudan. I'm not really willing to be an ally or learn more if this is how I'm treated. I still hope Palestinians are treated better by the world, but I'm out. This isn't the only atrocity in the world, even if it is among the worst.
What you said was that you don't want to be part of this community (dbzer0) anymore. If you don't want to understand topics you clearly have an opinion about, I totally wasted both our time. Sorry for that.
It's okay, I think your comments are reasonable, and if the comments were just from you, I wouldn't feel this way. The totality of this feels toxic to me, other people saying horrible stuff to me. I have good intentions, or want to have good intentions, and I feel like people are being super mean. I don't have a thick skin. I can learn about other stuff. Sorry you wasted your time.