Although personally in favor of Palestinian independence and critical of war crimes committed by Israel in its siege of Gaza, I attempted to explain in a back-and-forth discussion with a user (only afterwards learning was one of the community’s two moderators) why protest voting in the 2024 election to “punish” the democrats in favor of the republicans harmed the ultimate interest of reigning in Israeli violence in Palestine.
To further emphasize the damage caused by such a protest vote, I argued that not only is Palestine worse off with Trump elected instead of Harris, but as are a myriad of other social issues. The other user disagreed, arguing that Trump’s return to office facilitated the ceasefire, rather than my argument that Netanyahu deliberately delayed it to help Trump get elected.
After my fourth reply post in a reply chain that stemmed from my initial reply to the moderator’s comment, I was banned from !palestine@lemm.ee. Having at no point advocated in favor of the violence perpetuated by Israel in Gaza, I think the ban was unjustified, and demonstrates a bad precedent for maintaining echo chambers of moderator opinions, rather than communities that foster discussion.
If it is worth anything I acknowledge that I can’t mod the community on my own anymore and I am looking for mods. The thread that lead to the massive bans had users tacitly or blatantly celebrating the genocide and how worse it might get for Palestinians in the future.
Apply here: https://lemm.ee/post/53822281
I am also willing to handover the community entirely and become a normal member. I’m too emotionally invested in the cause. Not sure how to do this though.
I will not be seeing the responses here. I am temporarily blocking the community to save [what’s left of] my sanity.
You’re presenting a selective history.
And yes, although the Israeli army has plenty of war criminals that should be sent to The Hague along with Netanyahu for their actions in Palestine, Lebanon, and Syria, Hamas was never justified in kidnapping Israeli citizens in the first place. Terrorism is never justified, and terrorists on both sides deserve to be tried for their war crimes, as should be the case in any war.
I suspect that is why you were banned. Nothing about Trump. People like to do this, present one complimentary fact about their case and pretend that innocent thing was the whole reason for the response, instead of the less complimentary things they also did.
You are not by any means wrong in that statement. Hamas has no right to kill, rape, and kidnap a bunch of young Israeli civilians who have nothing to do with the occupation except having happened to be born in a country whose government is committing atrocities, and no amount of war crimes by the IDF would give them that right. However, I will have to say that trying to say that true fact in a Palestine community specifically, is probably a tactical error, and will lead to no good outcome and often to a ban.
PTB, I guess, technically, but asking people whose family members are being killed to sit still while you to tell them their side is also the bad guys is quite a lot to ask.
If it were me, I would focus more specifically on the fact that letting Trump get elected has now absolutely doomed everyone in Gaza and quite a lot of people in the West Bank. With Biden it was already a genocide. Under Trump, it’s now going to be an accelerated genocide, with much grander scope and ambition.
If it were me, I would focus more specifically on the fact that letting Trump get elected has now absolutely doomed everyone in Gaza and quite a lot of people in the West Bank.
Yup. Trump just started pressuring Jordan and Egypt to take more Palestinian “refugees”. I never saw the Democrats advocating for forced deportations despite all their other enablement.
Israel had intel of the October 7 attack at least 3 days before it from Egypt and internal sources and allowed it to happen.
Fuck Israel. A genocidal colonial settler state deserves the violence it receives.
You’ve had awful takes on this, constantly defending Israel’s genocidal actions, and I’m sick of reading them. Armed resistance is warranted in the face of genocide. Blocking your dumbass.
Israel had intel of the October 7 attack at least 3 days before it from Egypt and internal sources and allowed it to happen.
Correct. They’ve also been arranging for funding for Hamas, going to bat for them against their domestic opponents, because having a more violent organization representing Palestine gives them excuses for what they wanted to do anyway. They’ve been pretty explicit about this. They love having Hamas around killing Israelis, because it makes it look a lot more justified when they feel like killing Palestinians, which is always.
You’ve had awful takes on this, constantly defending Israel’s genocidal actions, and I’m sick of reading them.
Ah yes, who could forget all the times I defended Israel’s genocidal actions. Which ones though? Which messages defending Israel’s actions were your favorites?
Edit: Typo
Israel had intel of the October 7 attack at least 3 days before it from Egypt and internal sources and allowed it to happen.
Do you have source(s) on this? Would be interested in learning more.
It’s hard to find this shit on my phone because they’re intentionally memory holing stuff but here’s the times of Israel article about egypts warning, which was actually 10 days in advance.
I’ll see if I can find the article about internal reports being ignored but that one’s gonna be harder to find because I can’t remember which paper it was, might of been haaretz.
Edit: that was easier than I thought it would be. Considering all the hits to my head I can’t believe I remembered the paper right!
This was Israel’s 9/11. Intentional. Netanyahu needed this genocide to stay in power. As a Jew I fucking hate my kind. Zionazis disgust me. An insult to the memory of all our ancestors who died in the Holocaust.
Somebody else posted the source, but to go further, Mossad is supposedly the best spy agency in the world, even according to quite a few Americans in the intelligence community. Do you think it’s likely they didn’t know the attack was coming when Hamas was posting their practice runs for assaulting the wall dividing Gaza from occupied Palestine to social media?
If that was indeed the reason, then that only serves to support the notion that general disagreement, rather than just extremism, is what is being banned from that community. They have every right to ban advocates of genocide for extremism, but in no way do I think that supporting Palestine without supporting Hamas is a position worthy of a ban.
Well… you might have a point. Supporting Palestine without supporting Hamas isn’t precisely what you said, though. You said “terrorism” from the Palestinian side. I think without carefully qualifying that to mean that you’re only talking about events like October 7th, it’s easy for someone to assume you’re using the Israeli definition, where any type of resistance at all is “terrorism.”
Like I say, I agree with you on this. In any other community I think it would be a clear-cut PTB case of censorship. I’m just saying that when dead family members are involved you have to be extremely careful what you present and how, because it’s going to be the easiest thing in the world for people to get heated at you for it.
Consider me uneducated.
I’ve always thought “one mans terrorist is another mans freedom fighter” is worth considering.
Oct 7th is hard to parse as a justified retaliation. But what does a justified attack even look like?
Is Palestine’s only moral choice to stand their ground?
It’s just a shitty situation. They don’t have the power to be able to save themselves. And no one from the outside is coming to help them, while they’re dying one by one, families and soldiers, mothers and kids.
Killing, raping, and kidnapping a bunch of people at a music festival is never going to make you a freedom fighter. Not least of which because Israel is going to be ecstatic that you did it, and milk it as far as they can to get away with what they wanted to do anyway, and then hope you do it again so they can “retaliate” and keep cycling the machine. But I can’t really answer your question about what I think they should do. I think someone should come from outside, and help them. There’s a whole damn world that has that option.
you were drawing an equivalence between actions of occupied people resisting their occupation and the people responsible. Saying that they were both terrorists. On the comm for the occupied people.
Israel doesn’t have a right to defend itself, YDI
Everyone has a right to defend themselves.
But, that is not what Israel has been doing.
No, colonizers never have a right to defense.
I think this game theory analysis of why the Gaza ceasefire took so long is really interesting.
I’ve been on the angry end of that mod. I can tell they’re passionate about the cause but yeah, feels like they’re quick to assume the worse of others in a disagreement.
As much as I support the Palestinian cause as a POC raised Muslim (and simply being a person with basic observation skills), I avoid interacting with that particular community because of them.
A lot of good stuff is shared there, so I don’t block them but man, not great with the community building…
I can tell they’re passionate about the cause but yeah, feels like they’re quick to assume the worse of others in a disagreement.
As someone with many hot/slightly unpopular takes around here, this is very common on the Fediverse. Probably more so than Reddit.
Just block the mods. The fediverse is wide
YDI. I like the whitewashing of your own actions here. To go into the comm for an occupied people in the middle of a genocide and start telling them they deserved it is disgusting, and you’re filth for doing so.
Never in anything I wrote did I say that any Palestinian deserves the horrors that Israel has inflicted and continues to inflict upon them.
While I am against the actions of Hamas, since terrorism won’t solve anything, Israel has committed crimes far worse in comparison (approximately 60,000 Palestinians killed versus approximately 1,000 Israelis). There’s no doubt that Israel has gone far and beyond their stated goal of terrorism prevention to instead make progress towards their goal of clearing Gaza out for Israeli settlement.
The problem is that most Americans don’t share my view on the issue of Palestine, and still view the Palestinians as instigators of violence, which is among the reasons why neither the republicans nor democrats were ever going to drop support for Israel. The best course of action, in my opinion, would have been to pick Harris to at least get the better long-term course of action for Palestine, rather than the increased risk of Israeli expansionism after Trump’s re-election.
PTB just like many other extremist anti Israel activist mods all over Lemmy.
There’s no place on Lemmy where this conflict can be discussed openly. r/israelpalestine and r/israel_palestine on Reddit aren’t particularly great, but better than anything here.
“You can’t discuss the holocaust anywhere these days. The proprietors of all these establishments are extremist Anti-Nazis.” - you in 1944
Are you seriously comparing the Holocaust to the war in Gaza?
You should be ashamed of yourself.
Pretty sure you can’t discuss genocide or war crimes there, so how is that now open?
PTB just like many other extremist anti Israel activist mods all over Lemmy.
Til it’s extremist to be anti genocide
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I’ve interacted before with that mod and I don’t remember how it went down but I ended up adding the tag to their username “Potential Tankie”.
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You know the libs are definitely losing hard when they waste all their time nostradamusing the future and arguing about imaginary scenarios.
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That doesn’t seem like a reply to this post in the slightest
It was more intended as a reply to other comments trying to convince people that not voting is a valid option.
PTB or CLM… I’m torn.
Your take on this is as shit as any other emanating from the lemmy.world liberal hivemind, but I don’t think the ban was justified (at least not according to the available information).
I think op actually has a point. Yeah the democrats were weak when it comes to Gaza. But, they didn’t say “the west bank is yours for the taking. Go get!” Not to mention the largely peaceful anti-israel protests that were commonplace under the democrats will now get violently shut down by autocratic style policing. Protest votes only work when the only other outcome isn’t literal fascism.
Also trump has an extremely pro Israeli track record and is extremely racist, so I’m not sure why anyone would think he cares about Palestine at all.
Trump has advocated for, and put some rules in place that would allow, deporting international students who take part in a Palestine protest. That is in some ways worse that shooting the protestors, because killing young protestors is a quick way to get the entire country to rise up against you.
Yeah the democrats were weak when it comes to Gaza.
The Dems were not “weak” on Gaza - they very strongly supported their favorite little genocidal white supremacist colonialist project.
But, they didn’t say “the west bank is yours for the taking. Go get!”
Nobody “handed” Israel the West Bank - the IDF can concentrate on the West Bank now because they were too entangled by their abysmal failure to beat Hamas in Gaza.
largely peaceful anti-israel protests that were commonplace under the democrats will now get violently shut down by autocratic style policing
Good. The people doing “peaceful” protest needs to learn what “peaceful” protest amounts to one way or the other.
Also trump has an extremely pro Israeli track record
So does the entire US political establishment, including anyone the Dems will allow as a presidential candidate.
What I’m saying is that in order to convince people to show up to your protest now, you also have to convince them it’s worth getting shot over.
you also have to convince them it’s worth getting shot over.
When they start shooting protestors, the time for protest is over.
PBT
censorship of opinion
With that being said said, these mod abuses are creating a funnel of freedom enjoyers who need communities to speak their minds.
Blaze posts alternative communities, just look up his handle and review his posts.
We are seeding alternative world news and privacy subs already.
Your opinion is wrong. If Biden or Harris were going to do anything they would have before their term ended. Harris made that clear. You thinking that democrats would have done anything when they didn’t for four years is just silly. That said, haven’t ann incorrect opinion isn’t ban worthy.
“Dems are bad” is not a good counterargument to “republicans are worse.” Choose the lesser of two evils.
or stick them both in prison for their crimes against humanity and find a better option. not that difficult, dumbass.
The lesser evil is which ever will hasten the collapse of the US Empire, because it’s clear the mass exportation of genocide is bipartisan policy.
It’s still insane to hear people say that. “Chose the lesser of two evils”.
You do understand how fucking insane it is that you’re saying that, right?
Do you think we like it???
Judging from the gloating as Palestinians die, despite the fact it was 20 million democrats who stayed home because they’re white enough Trump won’t bother them, yes. I do believe you like it. Democrats refuse to do anything to prevent fascism when they have power, and do nothing but complain about it when they don’t.
I’ll believe you don’t like it when you lot stop acting so smug and morally superior while you watch Trump kill brown people slightly faster than Harris would. Because at the end of the day, you’re still happy they’re dying, because it makes you “right”.
Nobody is fucking gloating. Fuck you.
At least own up to it, dipshit.
I spent months on this website breathlessly pleading with morons like you, spelling this shit out in every possible way that I could.
It is not gloating, it is frustration. And clearly, you’ve learned nothing.
Do you think not choosing either evil somehow prevents both? I would fucking love if it worked like that, but it doesn’t. There are only two possible outcomes. You either receive the greater evil or the lesser evil.
I want as little evil as possible, so I choose the lesser evil. If you don’t choose the lesser evil, you’re saying you don’t care how much evil there is in the world, and you allow the greater evil. Why would you choose to allow the greater evil?
That’s some real neoliberal bullshit. You lot have absolutely lost it, you know that? You’re straight up admitting your candidate is evil, and moralizing it like you’re the good guys. Yeah, you got me, Harris would have killed brown people a little slower. Congrats, that’s the fucking bar for politicians you’ve set. You’re never going to get anyone who isn’t an absolute monster, and you’re apparently perfectly fine with that, because it lets you be a smug little shit on social media.
I don’t have any respect for you as a human being, if that’s your attitude. Evil is evil, and your support of that evil makes you just as evil as the ones dropping the bombs. Those dead Palestinians? Their blood is on your hands, for refusing to demand the “greatest nation on earth” be a little bit better than nazi Germany.
because it lets you be a smug little shit on social media.
I find it funny you said that.
be a little bit better than nazi Germany.
I also find this funny. There was a choice between “a little bit better than nazi Germany” and “nazi Germany.” You let “nazi Germany” win, then condemned everyone who supported “a little bit better than nazi Germany.”
You obviously can’t read, dumbass. I said you wouldn’t demand your candidate be a little better than nazi Germany. You gave us the choice between nazi Germany, and someone who thought nazi Germany didn’t go far enough. Naturally, I did the only thing I could, and voted for Harris, since she wanted to kill brown people a little slower and I thought maybe we could protest hard enough she would stop being a fucking piece of shit liberal and actually stand up to Israel.
Meanwhile, you sat at home and voted for nobody, because democrats don’t give a shit about people who aren’t white. Now be a good little nazi and take that neoliberal bullshit back to lemmy.world.
No you didn’t. You said you wanted the “greatest nation on earth” to be better than nazi Germany, not the political party. Why am I the only one who’s read your comments?
Please stop making things up about me. I’m British. It’s impossible for me to have voted, and impossible for you to have known if I voted or not.
But if I could, I would have done what you did, which is what I said to do from the very start, and voted for the lesser evil. Why the fuck are you trying to act superior for doing the same thing you’re condemning?
Honestly? Given how vocal you are against Trump’s opponents, how bad-faith your arguments are, how often you insult people (with ablist language, too), and how you seem to treat the word “liberal” like a bad thing, you sound more like a Nazi than anyone else. And I block Nazis, soooooo…
They literally support the same things. Not subscribing to neoliberalism is definitely better. Did Biden/Harris do anything to stop the genocide? Did they do anything to help the average person? No. You’re still choosing evil.
Disengaging doesn’t stop evil, it allows it. You’re not preventing evil by choosing nothing, you’re just passively allowing whichever one wins. It’s the same as supporting both.
It’s literally a trolly problem. You can do something and cause a lesser evil, or do nothing and allow a greater evil. Choosing to do nothing is still choosing evil.
leave it to a democrat to look at a trolley problem and think the solution is killing people instead of taking them off the tracks. fucking liberals and murder, what is it about the two?
America will never change for the better if you think voting against both does not send a message. Who said disengaging? There are other options and clearly stating why you’re abstaining is engaging.
Y’all don’t understand the concept of opposition…
Vote for either side is a vote of confidence in the regime. They never have to make any changes since they win everytime.
One of the two parties was promoting fascism. If you support neither you were enabling fascism. Fascist enablers do not have a moral high ground.
Democrats very much enable fascism. They aren’t push back or vote against it. When in office they hardly make it so republicans can’t promote it. Democrats would rather play by the rules than actually help America. One who thinks either parties will ever help America hardly have the high ground. It is clear the democrats either do nothing, enable, or do the same actions. Same neoliberal imperialist coin.
Democrats very much enable fascism.
Interesting that you changed a word there. Weird. Wonder why.
Democrats can enable fascism but the attitude of the person I replied to supports fascism 100% of the time even when they theoretically oppose fascism.
If you are letting the fascist party win you do not have moral high ground and never can have a claim on morality. This is why as a gay man I often don’t see dedicated cis-het leftists as actual allies as far too often they will sacrifice my safety for their sense of moral superiority.
Not subscribing to neoliberalism is definitely better.
Most Americans can’t even mentally operate outside of this box.
Until, they can, third party vote is just a protest vote to document that you don’t support the whores owners plants in the elected offices.
Maybe for Palestine at this point in time a Harris administration could potentially have been less harmful. But do you see what has happened to America and the world by people choosing the lesser evil over and over? The entire narrative has shifted so much to the right, most people consider it normal when the “lesser evil” is openly pro fracking, pro guns, pro Israel, pro big corpo etc etc just to name a few. In that context I think it’s weird to blame third party voters in this election. And don’t forget that for American voters the situation in the middle east is just one of the issues they need to vote on and it’s probably not their first priority.
Choose the lesser of two evils.
No, deny these parasites engagement and legitimacy
This is how you get the greater of two evils.
here we go with the “lesser of two evils” bullshit again. just liberals rationalizing being racist murderers so they can sleep at night.
Im potentially going to a camp because of people who think like you!
Thanks for your moral victory though. It is super important that you be right regardless of the consequences to others because society is all about you!
The problem is that no republican wound be swayed by your argument, because they have wet dreams about committing these atrocities themselves. They are living vicariously through Israel. The only thing they like less than a Jew is an Arab. Now that trump is in a position of power, it’s Palestinians who will pay for your inability to think rationally.
And there it is, the fascist goes mask off.
You think a fascist is someone who doesn’t support neoliberalism? Lol
No, you’re a fascist enabler because your position is what permits fascism to spread but again great that you can tell yourself you made the moral choice when Im being placed in a camp.
They’re both fascists.
I’d say a fascist is someone who tries to promote fascism and doubles down when they realise the party they supported is fascist.
Who is promoting fascism here?
Literally anyone who is defending Trump or Musk
🤡
Netanyahu accepted the same peace deal that Biden proposed back in May, to the letter.
Yes, on the eve of Trump’s inauguration. This isn’t a point for Biden.
Have you ever considered why Netanyahu did that? What exactly did Trump offer Netanyahu outside of the deal text that made him accept?
Nothing, that’s it. He didn’t need to offer anything; Biden was just a pushover. Sometimes things are just that simple.
Do you genuinely believe Trump put any sort of pressure on Netanyahu? Especially given his recent “let’s ethnically cleanse Gaza”-comments? That sounds terribly naive.
I worry time will show us it really wasn’t that simple.
It seems the most likely explanation, but I’m not fanatically committed or anything. If I see a better explanation I’ll accept it, but for now “because Trump” seems the most likely.
The way I see it is that Trump isn’t ideologically committed to anything; he’s not a true believer like Biden, he doesn’t care. And someone who doesn’t care wouldn’t want to worry a second about Israel’s genocide in Gaza because it’s just a complete and pointless headache. He was then faced with the other headache of what to do about the apocalyptic hellscape of hopefully postwar Gaza, to which he—likely with some amount of bad intention— said “hey let’s just put the people somewhere else”. It perfectly fits someone who simply doesn’t care.
By the way because I’ve seen this gotcha way too many times: Biden tried to do the same thing (can’t tell you when) and Sisi said what basically meant “hell no over my dead body”.
Did Biden/Harris stop giving money or actively supporting the military? No. The peace deal was never worth anything.
Did Trump? Oh no, he’s now sending the even bigger bombs to Israel.
What point do you seek to make? Or just arguing
the throughline is the comparison, trump is very obviously not better, directly worse in fact. it didnt even take one day for that to be true, but the fascist despots get credit for helping each other apparently forever now for the most blatant politikking.
They’re pointing out the failure in your thinking.
Trump lifted at least two sanctions imposed by Biden:
- delivery of 2000-pound bombs
- asset freezing of illegal settlers
So while Biden’s effort was mediocre at best, Trump’s approach is objectively worse, and will result in even more suffering for the Palestinian people.
I think I must have misunderstood because I meant to criticize both the dems for doing nothing and Trump as well.
Thanks for specific examples!
Thing is, the Dems weren’t doing nothing. It was far too little, yes, and people were right to protest and put pressure on them.
But Trump literally said Gaza is destroyed (never mentioning why, mind you), and that the best course of action is for the Palestinian people to just give up on Gaza and go to Egypt or Jordan. He doesn’t care at all, except for the prime beachfront properties of course.
It’s true they weren’t doing nothing, they were actively supporting Israel to the fullest of their ability. The fact that American blue fascists are trying to rewrite history to defend the Democrats prove that neither side of your fascist political system give a shit about foreign lives, and that the lesser evil is whatever hastens the collapse of your Reich.
