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
Acknowledged governance topic opened by https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/u/flatworm7591
This is a simple majority vote. The current tally is as follows:
- For: (5),
(3), 
(1), 
(1), (2), 
(2) - Against:
- Local Community: +2.1
- Outsider sentiment: Supportive
- Total: +14.1
- Percentage: 89.00%
This vote will complete in 1 days
Reminder that this is a pilot process and results of voting are not set in stone.
- For:
Add a clause stating unambiguously that this does not discriminate against people with the Jewish ethnicity or against followers of Judaism. Just the specific policy of Zionism is affected.
I’m sure we can all agree to that clause. 👍
I believe that’s a given to any leftist anti-zionist, but it’s good to explicitly state that
To extinguish that specific Zionist rhetoric, absolutely. Great idea
I think it might be good to describe what zionism means to avoid misinterpretation, malicious or otherwise. Something along the lines of being against genocide, ethnic cleansing, genocide, apartheid and denialism.
At which point you might as well make the ban more broad. As far as I’m concerned, it doesn’t matter if someone’s making excuses for the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians or denying the extent of the Armenian genocide.
zionism and anarchism are mutually exclusive idealogies. you cannot believe in solidarity for all mankind and also support an ethnocutural supremacist movement.
I support banning zionists from dbzer0 to match them being banned on Anarchist Nexus.
i’m not from your instance but good.
fascists should bot be allowed anywhere.
Loving y’all’s instance more and more by the day.
I don’t know what this means bot. But I’m here for it!
Ban the motherfuckers, I’m tired of seeing Zios post their apologia and propaganda all over the internet anyways. People hand wringing about it in the comments need to shut the fuck up and read the god damn code of conduct.
One thing I’ll say is that this’ll probably put more load on the admins, so I hope y’all have factored that in. It’ll be well worth the effort in my opinion, both to protect our m@teys (did that ever take off?) at large as well as our Muslim, Arab, and Levantine friends.
I support:
- banning Zionist DB0 accounts
- banning Zionist users being a nuisance here
- wide admin & mod discretion on what counts as a violation
- clearly disambiguating Zionism from Judaism
- transparency about such bans (maybe even a wall of shame with all known info about each banned acct, were it low effort to implement)
I do not support:
- excessive hand-wringing over potential collateral damage (we do not need to platform ideas that “walk and quack like a duck” - the entire rest of the Internet and meatspace already provide such)
- burdening admin & mod team with significant new ongoing effort
- shaping what DB0 users see and interact with more broadly (e.g. defederation, other decisions based on activity on other instances, etc.)
(Any of that is subject to change over time of course and is only valid for present conditions re: instance leadership quality, communication, etc.)
I want to focus on the structure of the proposal rather than on defending Israeli state policy, which I oppose in many respects.
As written, the proposal does not clearly define Zionism so much as treat a particular interpretation of it as self-evident, namely that Zionism is inherently a form of settler colonialism. That is a position many people hold, but it is also a contested one, and the policy depends on that premise without unpacking it.
If the core concern is behavior such as genocide denial, dehumanization of Palestinians, or the repetition of propaganda talking points, those are concrete harms and seem like appropriate moderation targets on their own. Framing the rule around an ideological label instead of specific conduct risks conflating belief, state policy, and online behavior, which are not always the same thing even when they overlap.
I also share some of the concern about how “pro-Zionist” would be determined in practice. When enforcement depends on interpreting intent or identity rather than observable actions, it increases the risk of inconsistency and misclassification, even with good faith moderation.
I am not arguing against taking a clear moral stance in support of Palestinians. I am suggesting that the policy would be stronger, clearer, and easier to defend if it focused explicitly on the behaviors and arguments that cause harm, rather than relying on a broad and disputed definition of Zionism to do that work.
Generally support this rule, but I’m a bit wary as a Jew
who’s been accused of being zionist (I’m not) solely for reminding people that ‘globalize the intifada’ means calling for a global genocide against Jews and shouldn’t be used in support of Palestinians(I was misinformed about the meaning of intifada). A lot of people, especially on the internet, don’t seem to understand that not all Jews support zionism/the Israeli government. As long as there’s a reasonable attempt to ensure that we’re not just promoting anti-semitism (not to be confused with calling out zionist propaganda), I’m for this rule in the same way I support a rule blocking any sort of bigotry.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intifada
No where does that mention shit about global genocide against Jews, stop spreading hasbara propaganda.
it’s a call for global resistance, which is what’s needed because they cannot achieve it on their own.
I was misinformed, thank you for the clarification
We can only try our best to be even handed. We just banned someone for antisemitism a few days ago, in fact. No matter what the current Israeli government does, there is no justification for antisemitism as far as I’m concerned.
I think it’s great you updated your POV with new info and left the original comment. That’s the kinda people I want to interact with and I think a good representation of our instance in general.
That is not what “globalize the intifada” means! Globalize the intifada is the recognition that Pissrael is the vassal state of seppoland. That it’s funded, armed and politically covered by other countries that need to be fought as well since they will not relent on the oppression of palestine especially, and the global south generally, of their own accord.
And I have yet to meet an antizionist on lemmy who buys the hasbara that pissrael represents jews. Usually its the zionists or those on the fence still.
A lot of people hate Jews completely irrespective of Israel’s actions. I’m sorry that that’s the case, but the rest of us need to be faithful to ourselves in rejecting racism regardless.
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It’s a Zionist talking point to claim anti zionism is the same as anti semitism.
I believe they’re not the same. There are many Jews who says the Jews from other countries going ban to Israel en masse is defying God’s punishment.
fuck zionists, fuck israel free palestine
Hard agree on this, let Nazis into your bar and it becomes a Nazi bar.
Zionist are just Nazis in a different uniform.
I’m 💯 for this.
Now I’m going to play Devil’s advocate for a second here. Are we planning to ban other settler colonialist and or imperialist based accounts?
To me, two important discriminating factors are genocide, and the volume and sophistication of propaganda supporting it.
Banning content has to be done carefully of course, especially here I’d argue, but these criteria warrant special treatment.
Identifying and banning “settler colonialist and or imperialist based accounts” in a broad sense seems like a much murkier challenge with murkier goals (don’t reproduce propaganda for this genocide vs. don’t reproduce imperialist propaganda).
Personally fuck any accounts like that too, just wanna be clear that I’m talking about opinions for instance governance, a subtle but important distinction easy to lose.
The United States of America and Australia are also settler colonialists who committed massacre/genocide of the native population.
But we don’t want to ban people who support these countries because they don’t have ongoing genocides.
Deeply mixed. Pileons online happen for stupid reasons, tone and nuance is hard to convey, purity tests are common, and education is often sidelined in favour of berating.
Otoh lemmy is kinda dogshit and riddled with fucking freaks repeating straight up genocide denial. Opposing state backed mass murder is like a baseline requirement for admission into human civilisation so…
It’s absolutely worth running the experiment, if nothing else.
I would caution against banning accounts for having a particular stance, as that could be a slippery slope.
Forums have a decades-long running history of banning content, possibly for that reason. Having instance rules that forbid pro-zionist content, propaganda, or news with a zionist spin, makes a lot more sense IMO. From there, it’s easy to ban accounts for repeated rules violations, which may be more palatable for both users to report and admins to enforce.
Having a definition of Zionist would probably help?
I think Israel is committing war crimes in Palestine, Netenyahu should be tried by the ICC, and that what is happening in Palestine at present is in fact genocide.
But also, I think Israel should contiue to exist, and should - given the crimes committed against their citizens by Hamas - be entitled to demand that Hamas play no part in governance of a future Palestinian state.
Uncertain whether that counts as a zionist position, or not.
I think Israel should contiue to exist, and should - given the crimes committed against their citizens by Hamas - be entitled to demand that Hamas play no part in governance of a future Palestinian state.
This does not seem like a reasonable stance to me. There is no peaceful Israel, and zionism is about greed not need. Zionists dont want peace, and zionism is a choice, not an ethnicity. Zionists dont see Palestinians or any other non-jewish person as worthy of basic human rights, as evidenced by their refusal to sign the UN declaration of universal human rights, and their multi-tiered justice system, and their adoption of Israeli basic laws that spell out Jewish supremacy and non-jewish lack of citizenship in lands they control. Their racist supremacy not just an idea, its enshrined in their law, and practiced in their state sponsored, and wildly publicly supported actions.
To support Israel as you do is to support that legally enshrined apartheid, and also who they are now (genociders) and what we all know they will continue to do. They will not change because they fundamentally disagree with the idea of ever changing. Jewish people have another homeland they could have chosen if they really need to rule themselves (a tenuous idea and not a need backed up by facts) called the jewish Autonomous Oblast. Or they are also perfectly safe in the US, or countless countries across the world. There was never a need for a homeland to be in the middle east which was already populated-- just a desire. There was no need for the nakba, which was ethnic cleansing, murder, and terrorism-- nor has zionism admitted that was wrong, or that they will ever make ammends. Balfour stipulated that Jewish settlers would respect the local population and live sperately form them, and zionists unilaterally destroyed that idea with the nakba. There is no redeeming zionism and it is an ongoing crime spree with massive numbers of real victims.
And why should Israel be “entitled” to “demand” a say (your words) in the governance of the Palestinian people they have so brutalized? Palestinians are not your people to make demands of. They are not your subjects or citizens. Your demand is backed by murderous force and war crimes, exercised daily. You display the same desire for brutal reinforcement of your own views that the rest of the zionists do. You should be on your knees begging for forgiveness and reconciliation, not making “demands” that you feel “entitled” to, after innocent Palestinians have suffered a genocide and terrorism at zionist hands. – terrorism which you still openly support, despite your professing to the contrary in your statement.
I think your support for zionisms colonizalism and murder – and your demand to dictate the future of Palestinian governance should disqualify you from remaining on Lemmy, and I find your stance to be appalling and grossly immoral. You cant seperate zionism from terrorism and colonizalism, no matter how well spoken you are. And your demand to dictate the governance of palestine is concrete proof of your not belonging here.
Given all these crimes committed by IDF, even before 1948, the IDF should no longer exist.
Who is Hamas is not defined and Zionists have used the Hamas excuse to bomb all of Gaza and kill 70,000 people, half of whom are children under 18.
So basically when Zionists say they want to kill Hamas, it’s code word for saying they want to kill every Palestinian.
It is technically Zionism. If you are anti-Zionist, at this point in time, you think Israel should not exist. If you are a Zionist, you think Israel should exist.
Incidentally, I have similar views as yours regarding the ICC and war crimes, and was called “horrible” and “proud” and “shit” among other things.
I’m deleting my account tomorrow. I don’t know if I would be banned for my views, but I don’t feel welcome here. It feels like if I am against war crimes and want ICC prosecutions, but am not actively advocating for Israel to be destroyed, it’s not enough to be here… or even if it were enough, enough people said terrible things to me that I really don’t want to be a part of this community anymore.
I wouldn’t delete, if I were you. Extremists on both sides - those who would excuse Israel’s war crimes, and those would excuse Hamas’ atrocities - will certainly insult and belittle you. But they’re a vocal minority.
