鴉PieFedFeddit.org officially announces they will ban criticism of Israel and pro-Palestinian posts and comments.
Feddit.org announced today that they are changing their rules to match German law despite their server not being hosted in Germany.
Feddit.org now bans:
The sentence "From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free"
Comparing Israel to the Nazis
Calls to end Zionism
Calling for the dissolution of Israel
And much more. The full original post can be found here, or
Hi. In the past few days, discontent regarding mod decisions in this community has been brewing, particularly when it comes to comments on Palestine, Israel, and Israeli politics and actions. There are also misunderstandings regarding mod intention and German law. We hope to clear that up with this post. While the servers of feddit.org are in Austria, most of the mods of this community as well as admins of this server live in Germany. Speaking of, our server admins have also posted a write-up on the same topic. And with that, let's go: In Germany, antisemitism is specifically sanctioned in German criminal law, both for speech and as a motivation for other criminal behavior. In addition, Germany seeks to protect the Jewish state of Israel (the so-called "Reason of State" introduced in 2008) and thus verges toward protecting Zionism as well. Certain criticism of Israel/Israelis is also categorized as "Israel-related antisemitism". Since criminal law is involved, enforcement can mean things like police raids and device confiscations. After such police action, it does not really matter if it was appropriate or if cases are dropped or never charged: The damage is done. All told, it's not that fun. There is also no point in engaging in discussions about the veracity of statements that could get us into legal trouble. In addition, we believe that you can express most opinions without breaking rules. If your comment contains the following, it will be removed from this community: Comments will not be removed for the following: If your comment is removed nonetheless, these are not the reason. I'd also like to stress that this community was never a free-speech-absolutist zone: It is a (usually lightly) moderated community. There may also be times when bans go too far. In such cases, please DM the @[email protected] account (which all mods have access to).Click here for full text of original post:
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Berlin in mid-May [2024] around 6 o'clock in the morning. A loud, continuous "banging" against the apartment door wakes student Alina T. from her sleep. [...] When her husband opens the door, several LKA officers, two employees of the district office and the SEK "storm" past him into the apartment. Puzzled, he looks at the search warrant. [...] The background to this was a Facebook entry in the student's profile: "From the river [...]
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In November 2023, the Federal Ministry of the Interior and for Home Affairs also issued a prohibition order against Hamas.[60] According to the order, "the slogan 'From the River to the Sea' (in German or other languages)" is a distinguishing mark of Hamas[61]. [...] the current legal situation [regarding "Denial of Israel's right to exist"] is - contrary to what the statements of the Federal Ministry of Justice suggest[63] - anything but clear. Whether incitements to eliminate the State of Israel are prosecuted depends on the respective legal opinion and the prosecution will of the respective public prosecutor's office.
Press release from the previous government:
In this context, Section 111 StGB, which covers public incitement to commit crimes, may also be relevant. Incitement to extinguish Israel's existence by force may be punishable under this provision. The same applies to calls to publicly display the Hamas flag. If Hamas attacks are publicly cheered and celebrated, this may also be punishable. This means that people who cheer on Hamas's actions or publicly express their sympathy with the attacks may constitute the criminal offence of "approval of criminal acts" under Section 140 of the German Criminal Code (StGB).
- Another news report > In connection with the controversial Palestine Congress in Berlin, the German authorities have also imposed an entry ban on former Greek finance minister Yanis Varoufakis. "In order to prevent antisemitic and anti-Israel propaganda at the event", several entry bans have been issued, the news agency AFP learned from security sources on Sunday. One of these concerned Varoufakis. (Notably, Varoufakis would have spoken about one-state solutions ...)
- Overview Germany in 2024 by Human Rights Watch
federal reverse (on behalf of the mods of !europe)
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Comments are disabled.
Y'all should actually read the post. They're clear that they don't want to do this but fear extreme repression by the German government, and they even listed examples of what exactly they're trying to avoid. I'm no Israel apologist, but I'm convinced.
I've read the post, and I'm still unhappy with their decision. Capitulation only accelerates fascism.
That's true, but it's still up to them whether they want to get arrested over social media comments somebody else made.
Sounds like you need to just make sure you're specifying the current government of Israel and their actions, rather than the state of Israel in general terms or as a overall concept.
I agree. Nobody should be risking their safety / livelihood / whatever to host a random internet discussion site. That doesn't mean we should leave the situation as it is. I believe the main concern is to move off the !europe comm there and onto the new one at [email protected]
This is the best solution.
Zionism is a fascist ideology. There is nothing to gain from hosting in a country where people feel compelled to suppress opposition to and liberation against that fascist ideology out of fear of incarceration and police brutality
Free Palestine
ACAB
Feddit users commenting beneath it support this. One of them made this "meme":
Feddit.org has also been banning users for things such as comparing Israel to the Nazis before they made this post. Then they owned up to it as their personal views. This is why they do not say they disagree with the German laws but they "do not wish to discuss it."
Yeah fair enough.
Germany looking 80 years in the past like "let's do that again."
Israel is NOT a Jewish state, it's a Neo-Nazi regime. If I wanted to kill as many jews as possible, I'd convince them that they "belong" in a tiny country surrounded by neighbours who want to destroy them.
Gonna mention that [email protected] has been set up as an alternative for Europe-centric discussions
Thank you for linking!
With communities vulnerable to getting 86'd, I think hosting them on the incredibly strong dbzer instance is best. If it is leftist/non political and non tankie, it is very unlikely to be removed. dbzer FTW!
I get their concerns but we shouldn't be bullied into silence. The Israeli government is a piece of shit and we should all be allowed to say that until they've proven otherwise.
From the text of their original post it sounds like you're still allowed to say that. It's worth reading the post text itself (not saying that to change your stance, I have complicated feelings about this choice by them, but knowing what they're actually saying is worthwhile)
You can do anything except demand things which could meaningfully resolve the issue.
People are not being allowed to call for the dissolution of the Israeli Apartheid government.
Or compare its genocidal deeds to those for which the Germans say "never again".
Because "never again" in Germany does not count for brown people.
People are only allowed to voice slight discontent with Israel. Forcing people to call a major crime a minor crime is a massive form of repression in itself and it serves to downplay reality, while pretending there is no censorship.
Calling a state criminal, expantionist, genocidal, brutal, saying that they should answer for their crimes, give back palestinian territories immediatly, be boycotted by the whole world, even be subject to military intervention is still perfectly fine, and that's clearly not "slight discontent". If you were conscious of this, you message is huge bad faith.
What they do not allow is calling for the end of Israel, in any way. That's indeed a major crackdown on freedom of expression, but it does not leave you wordless for Israel criticism, unless your only goal is to be against Israel, and you don't care being alongside Palestine.
Comparing Israel or Germany supporting it to the Nazis is banned.
This is banned.Do you not understand that all of Israel is on Palestinian land or are you not willing to understand it?
This is banned too. Every group doing this gets designated as a "terrorist" group.
Genocidal : again, genocide is NOT a nazi-only thing. And yes it's bad to not be able to equate, yet alone compare Nazis and Israel government. But you can still say 'Israel is genocidal'.
Palestinian territories : this is my bad, not an expert on the matter + did not think through. I meant territories destined to Palestinians in previous two-state solutions and at least recent territory annexion. From what the message says, you can still say that.
Military intervention : you can support the intervention without supporting people doing it. Also, you can support official interventions of other countries instead of guerrillas groups. The fact that most of those groups use terrorists methods, like targetting civilians (yes, those one that Israel and most states in the world also use) does not help with terrorism part, and i think we all agree that there should be no support for hamas or hezbollah directly, though they fight for objective we should defend. (and yes, Israel is doing worse for religious and racist reasons too, and they have a kind of immunity partly because of the anti-antisemitism rethoric partly because they are a state and states are rarely condemned for use of terrorist tactics, all of this is compatible).
If I was genocided I would want the end of the state genociding me. Especially when that state have been founded to cater for a specific ethnicity. It doesn't take a genious to figure that out.
Yes, of course, this law and its appliance in feddit.org is bad for Palestinian support, and it's okay for Palestinian and their supporters to wish for the end of Israel, especially in this situation of a very recent state.
My point is, end of Israel is not the only thing you want when Palestinian. You can also want, and should want more, things like end of genocide, authorization of aids to enter gaza, etc.
Of course buddy. You know i have a loved one in the region i just want her to be safe.
I disagree with Feddit s decision, but you're still allowed to say that.
The title of this post is sensationalized, click-baitey, and factually incorrect according to the posted text. It's as if OP either didn't read the text they copy/pasted or they are trying to intentionally stir up shit...
50% of the post here are. Echo chambers rely on most users never reading the article.
Nothing in the post is incorrect or sensationalized. You did not read it.
"they will ban criticism of Israel" : they will only ban calls for end of Israel and equating Nazis and Israel. You can still criticize Israel. Its like saying "They ban fruits" when they only ban oranges. It's still a problem, but you're making it larger than it seems, that's on the path of clickbait/sensationalism (i do not think that this was intended of you though, it's just what comes out of the way you wrote it).
Apartheid South Africa needs to be dissolved.
Israel needs to be dissolved.
What is the difference between these two sentences and why is one of them banned on feddit.org?
As you explained in your post, because of some bullshit german law and admin decision. It's bad. We agree on this.
Your title should still be 'bans calls for end of Israel and calling Israel nazis' or at the very least 'bans some criticism of Israel'.
Equating Nazis and Zionists, if the shoe fits. You should be allowed to say it.
Overall agreeing with you, you should at least be able to defend this pov.
But that should be the title instead of 'bans all criticism of Israel'.
"Bans all* criticism of Israel" is not the title. The title is that they are banning criticism of Israel, which is true. It's also true that if someone bans oranges, then they are "banning fruits," it would only be untrue if they said, "banning *all fruits."
The title does leave it ambiguous in a way that people might think it extends to all criticism, but that's not actually what it says.
Two out of three. I read the post and that's exactly what the admins of F.O say will do. It's them who are stirring up shit.
Ezpz. Just added feddit.org to my instance block. Freedom of the fediverse at work.
I did that already. Can't read German and the apps don't translate yet.
From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free.
Fuck the zionist genocidal bastards.
This kind of seems... reasonable? Like, they have and convey a compelling legal reason for needing to do this. There's plenty of other Lemmy instances where these opinions and statements can be freely expressed. Further, they're explicitly allowing discourse that conveys similar sentiment but doesn't go against German law.
I guess my question is, what's the objection here?
They do not. Their servers are not hosted in Germany. If their moderators feel like they would be endangered for not following German law they should step down instead of applying their German censorship to a European server.
Their moderators and German users appear to proudly agree with these German censorship laws in the comments beneath their post. So the legal part looks more like a convenient excuse.
Agreed. They support the genocide and are hiding behind the law to save face.
Jesus fucking Christ. Witch hunt much?
I’m not calling for the admins to be burned at the stake. If you don’t perceive an obvious slant in their words that’s fine - I’m sharing my take just like they’re sharing theirs.
They still allow you to call out on the genocide, how are they supporting it?
The admins are also German, though, and seem to suggest that they feel at risk by this, as well. Maybe it's just time for another European instance to start up, with admins not in Germany, who feel comfortable hosting this discourse?
Given that the main issue is they're the host for !europe, an alternative comm has been set up at [email protected]
Mostly that they host the main Europe-centric comm, [email protected]. You can see the problem when criticism of Europe's most powerful country is censored in said comm, and users banned, for relatively innocuous comments.
which country, and what kind of criticism?
Germany, and any criticism of Israel, or dealings with thereof, that crosses a somewhat arbitrary (for those of us living outside Germany) line.
That's a fair concern; maybe the recourse is just to move the community to a different instance? If the community as a whole is largely in agreement, this shouldn't be a difficult task. Even less of one if the mods agree.
The mods don't seem to think it's a major issue, I haven't heard any of them actually admit this is a problematic situation to have. Some folks have set up a new community at [email protected]
To all you folks who're downvoting this comment: Are you basing your opinion on OP's biased, slanted account of this policy, or did you read the actual post from the Feddit admins? You don't have to answer me, but if it's the former, maybe self-reflect that you're here complaining about censorship and propaganda, yet you're doing so in response to a very propaganda-laden post that misrepresents the actual situation.
Hand over control of the instance to someone else or shut it down completely.
They should just shut it down rather than comply with laws which punish antipathy towards a genocidal state.
It does not strictly punish antipathy towards a genocidal state, but rather antipathy towards a genocidal stage when they take the forms of call for an end of this state or equating this state with Nazis. It's a problem, it's bad, but please stop saying 'they won't let me say Israel is bad' cuz that's not the case (for the instance, don't know about actual german state itself)
It amuses me that expressing understanding with the retaliation is forbidden. I definitely understand why a militant extremist group has arisen after decades of oppression and genocide.
Like, how do you negotiate your way out of that peacefully? Where in history has oppression on that level been defeated through diplomacy?
I seem to have forgotten the part where the allies defeated Nazi Germany by asking nicely. Surely no war was fought for recognising black people as humans in the U.S.
Perhaps Ukraine should put down their weapons and ask Russia to pretty please stop invading their country and killing their people.
Ugh.
This one here, right?
I don't think expressing understanding is either endorsement or justification. So as written, it should be fine, but since it comes down to the mods interpretation, who knows what the outcome would actually be.
Retaliation? i think you got it backwards.
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There was a report that Israel killed more children in 2023 than any other year. It was released before October 7.
Not being able to criticize leaders that the International Criminal Court has issued arrest warrants against is bonkers and simple censorship.EDIT: After reading the official announcement thoroughly, I have to say the title seems... wrong? There are very specific things that are not allowed, some of which I can agree with. Others however, I do not.
I bet they think they're just "following orders" like their forefathers...
Despite all the culture of remembrance, despite all the memorials and despite all the history lessons, the general public is simply not aware of how efficiently, ruthlessly and industrially the Nazis carried out the Holocaust.
At its peak, in Operation Reinhard, from April to November 1942, 2.5 million Jews were murdered. 10,000 every day. In specially built camps to which people were transported by rail and sent directly to the gas chambers, where there was practically no chance of survival. In Majdanek, over 18,000 people were murdered in 9 hours. By 1945, two thirds of European Jews had been murdered and in the end only the advance of the Allies prevented the rest from being murdered as well.
This is the much-vaunted singularity of the Holocaust, namely the systematic, industrial murder in special murder factories. This industrial rate of murder is unique in the long history of genocides. Stalin's camps were cruel, but they were not extermination camps with gas chambers. This also applies to other genocides.
So if you honestly compare the Gaza War with the Holocaust, you quickly realize that it is something completely different. And anyone who seriously equates the two is trivializing the Holocaust to an extent that almost borders on Holocaust denial. This is guaranteed to lead someone here to call me a “genocide denier”, but: if Israel acted like the Nazis in the Gaza Strip, all the women and children would be dead by now and a few last surviving men would be maltreated to death as work slaves. And yes, we all know why Israel of all places is constantly compared to the Holocaust, even though there is no factual basis.
*automatically translated from a feddit.org user I very much agree with. Not citing the account to not disclose them to save them from brigading.
Saying "the Israeli government is acting like Nazis" is not the same thing as saying that "the current genocide being perpertrated against the Palestinians is equivalent to the Holocaust". The former sentence can be true regardless of the truth or falsity of the latter sentence.
While I think calling the Israeli government "Nazis" is a simplification and kind of weakens the meaning of the word Nazi, I absolutely agree with you.
Fair enough. People also use the term for e.g. american fascists. I think it would be reasonable these days treat the word as if it has two meanings, one historical, and one a more general synonym for "fascist".
Did people have an issue with a particular Seinfeld episode ?
When somebody calls it the "Gaza WAR", they are a Zionist and support the genocide in Gaza.
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They never said it's not a genocide. They said its not the Holocaust. We all agree there is a genocide in Gaza carried out by a far-right Israeli government.
They never said it's a matter of number. They halfly imply it though, i agree, but what they actually explicitly said is it's a matter of it being systemic or not. It's debatable, the use of daily bombing is both quite industrial and not as efficient as death camps, so it's perfectly fine to target on that point. But do not hide behind the number things, which we all agree to be dumb, as a way to avoid considering the potential gaps in a comparison between Nazis and Israeli government.
I think it's okay to say both have huge similarities that they never should have, but you don't need them to be 100% the same for the point to be pertinent, so you can accept it when someone points out differences.
"It wasn't or isn't 'genocide,' because ..." They may enter definitional or rhetorical argumentation.
Not 100% sure what your exact point is, but i think it's a good one as in 'minimizing genocide is on the spectrum of genocide denial'. That i agree, think the comment i responded to can fall in this category depending on the interpretation, and mine too by extension, and for that i apologize. Thanks for pointing it out.
I still hold on the fact that no one said 'there is no genocide', which is different from genocide denial from your definition (or rather, is the extreme version of it). That was my intended point, and the comment i responded to did not claim 'minimizing is denial' but jumped to 'you say there is no genocide'.
I hadn't noticed how pro-cop some feddit.org users are but a cursory glance at people taking police reporting at face value and then openly defending cops punching people in the face with "it's out of context" reasoning is just surreal.
It reeks to me of living in a bubble your whole life and never having experienced police repression - so your only response is "it can't be the police, they've never done anything against me, it must be the protestors that are wrong"
Usually I'm one that hates leftist infighting but defacto trying to suppress a genocide because the "law says so" is rather weak. Still I totally understand wanting to protect yourself from repression but surely if you cared about both justice and your well being you would just hand over the community to someone else? Unless of course you actually agree with the "law"...
I think the post in itself is informational, many of the comments are not.
Post stays, comments get locked.
Can we, as users, prevent our own posts and comments from federating to a given server?
They're not banning me for my accusations of genocide; I'm Banning Them
You can block the instance, which I’ve just done. Fuck these Nazis
From the river to the sea is literally calling for genocide, the death of everyone who lives in Israel. It's good that they're banning it
Edit: this fucking site. Not sure if trolls, or they legitimately don't know
No it isn't
If you believe that, you're supporting terrorists instead of the citizens of Gaza.
Nuh-uh. Just because Israel kills people in order to expand their territory, doesn't mean people have to die in order for Israel to give it back.
Hahaha YES DEFEDERATE THE FEDIVERSE
[…]
really reminds me of the leftie vs leftie thing lol
They have demonstrated that they are not "leftists" by defending the cruelties of Israel. There is no "infighting" here.
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Afaik (i don't want to deal with tiny leftie vs leftie problems that are hugely blown out of proportions like saying germany is fucking genociding again) people get banned for saying that Israeli people have no right to live where they are rn. Already established people who have lived there for their entire life or similar should just what, move away? Afaik this is the stance Germany is trying to have, what's wrong with that?
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Mate your account seems like a sockpuppet. It's under a day old, and its on the generic .world. Gee I wonder who might be controlling this.
So what? Maybe you can comment on the content of what I'm saying instead of the source for once.
I'm just some dude, not the russian illuminatis or whatever you have in mind.
So what? Maybe you can criticize the content of what i'm saying instead of the source for once.
I don't think they are actually zionist or pro-genocide. But they are definitely not good mods, and they just didn't handle it in a good way. It's not the first time I've seen problems with that community moderation team, they tend inho to powertrip. I suppose they are friends or the same people as feddit.org admins and that's why they defend them so much. But I don't think that moderation team is up to the task of moderating a big community.
Nothing wrong with it, moderation is hard, very hard. And not everyone is qualified for it. They should just step back. Or just close the community if they are so heavy censored by their country legislation.
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feddit.de went offline and feddit.org was built as an alternative not so long ago. So 11 month is probably as old as an account can get on feddit.org.