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.
Also he literally sent his golf buddy to tell Netanyahu to agree to a ceasefire. This is a power that America has had over Israel all along, and Trump wielded it before he even got inaugurated, while Biden refused to use it.
What, the power to make a meaningless performative gesture while he allows the killing to continue unabated? Biden had that power too, and used it frequently. Trump also undid even some of the pitifully weak things Biden actually had done to oppose Israel’s slaughter, like pausing shipments of 2,000 pound bombs or putting sanctions on settlers. And Israel has continued happily killing people in both Gaza and the West Bank during the “cease fire,” with no sign of concern from the State Department.
This alternate reality where Trump is a skilled enough diplomacist to effect a change in Israel’s behavior, and cares enough about the Palestinians that he would want to use it if he did, is a very bizarre thing to see on Lemmy. I think people are buying into it because they want badly enough to criticize Biden that they’re willing to believe absolute nonsense about Trump if it makes Biden look bad by comparison.
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?
the idea that Israel was ‘waiting for Trump’ is ridiculous
I disagree; Netanyahu wants to settle the rest of Palestine, and Trump’s actions demonstrate that he is far and away more in favor of that than Biden or Harris ever were or would have been if re-elected themselves.
Regardless of whether we agree or not, the point of my post here was to emphasize that disagreement should not in and of itself be the basis for a moderator to ban someone from a community.
So far the cleansing of Palestine has been far less intense under Trump than it was under Biden. But I understand that American genocide apologists like you are more than willing to ignore factual reality and make up a new one to defend your genocidal sports team of choice.
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.
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.
