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:
- Calling for the dissolution of Israel, or calling for a one-state solution without specifying equal rights for all people; Jewish in particular.
- Calling for a destruction, annihilation, an end of all Zionism or the like.
- Equating Israeli actions and (historical) Nazism.
- The slogan “from the river…”
- Endorsement of or justifications for Hamas or Hezbollah, or slogans or graphics positively referring to these organizations. These are considered terrorist organizations in Germany.
- … and obviously: Any of the common antisemitic tropes or calls to violence against Jews or Israelis
Comments will not be removed for the following:
- Denouncing genocide.
- Denouncing Israeli war crimes.
- Criticizing Zionism as an ideology or political movement.
- Referring to the current Israeli government as “criminal,” “expansionist,” or “far-right”.
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 @EuroMod@feddit.org account (which all mods have access to).
To help you understand why, I'll leave an assortment of sources here (translations via DeepL).
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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.
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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).
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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 …)
federal reverse (on behalf of the mods of !europe)
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This is just sad. The community about Europe makes steps that are against Europe’s own Charter of Fundamental Rights.
As a result, Germany has cracked down on legitimate criticism of the actions of the Israeli government, including on Jews and Israelis, academics, civil society and artists, who face restrictions on their rights to expression and protest, alongside funding cuts and bans on organizations.
https://www.hrw.org/news/2024/11/11/germanys-muddle-antisemitism
The only recourse here should really be to move the community.
These kind of posts will, sometime in the future, be referenced in a memorial of some sort as complacency in the face of crimes against humanity.
History will not look kindly at you.
Thank you guys. You make these communities bareable.
You should be fucking ashamed of yourselves.
Zionism is a fascist ideology. Gtfo with this fucking nonsense. This post muddies the water and conflates Judaism with Zionism which is fucking dangerous. This type of conflation breeds antisemitism. Israel does not speak for all jewish people. Zionism does not speak for all jewish people. “Well if Jewish people say that Zionism and Judaism are one in the same, I must hate both!”
You are now a breeding ground for antisemitism. Congratulations. 👏
Thanks for putting effort into this community. Sorry for all the hate you have to bear.
I’m in agreement with this decision. But I don’t share the reasoning and context behind the conclusions regarding free speech. I’m non-europe, so the slogan “from the river to the sea” doesn’t strike me as an impression that calls for Hamas. I suppose german lawmakers often make contextual decisions centered around their own experiences. That explains their legal stance, and I don’t agree with it. I do agree with the decision to avoid the wrath of law enforcement agencies. As I understand it, i think it is reasonable enough since I’ve had members of my community vanishing without a trace until this day.
Throughout history, governments (WW2 and others) do commit atrocities and human rights violations. I think moderation teams allowing ample space for genocide documentation is good. As I understand it, other social medias such as Instagram don’t allow genocide documentation at all. Granted, I think more should be done about it even in smaller communities like this. But that’s besides the point, and I’m not an internet regular. And where real or digital spaces don’t outright endorse “absolute free speech”, I think spaces that allow specifics in their discourse is a good enough space to live in. After all, It is never ideal to let governments run fascist mode without accountability.
If you’re going to act like a standard corporation in terms of what speech is allowed, why should users use this comm over say, reddit, which has the same rules but a MUCH larger community?
You’ve kinda defeated the purpose of Lemmy by doing this. Corporations forsake ethics for the convenience of law anyway, so from a logical perspective, people might as well use something else.
You could easily just get new mods who are NOT in Germany if you’re this terrified of legal action, but instead you’ve chosen to follow unjust and unethical laws - no different than Reddit and whatever justification they make up as well.
By your own logic and stipulations, if Germany is taken over by the AfD in the future as well and they pass racist laws making it illegal to ban anyone using racist language for example, you’ll also comply and allow racist language too. Either because ethics don’t matter to you, or because they align with the law passed. Those are the only two logical conclusions.
And before you say “well it’s a lot of resources to change things” - it was also a lot of resources to start this whole thing up and grow it in the first place too, yet that didn’t stop you either, did it?
Newsflash: Not every country practices free speech
I didn’t mention free speech, and this was about the comm, not the country, in particular.
If this was a community specifically about the middle-east I would agree with you that it would have been unwise to host it on feddit.org due to the legal situation affecting its admins and some of the moderators here.
But it is not, and generally speaking Germany is not an autocratic state with severe repression of political activism, so for most topics it is a better place to host communities that might involve such.
The whole post is about how this moderation is happening because of the threat of law, so I’m not sure what you mean by “the legal situation affecting its admins and some of the moderators here”.
It’s specifically stating that this is happening because of the changed legal situation in Germany.
Secondly, Europe is closely tied, topic-wise, to Israel. The creation of Israel itself and the conflict occuring there is due to a major war in Europe, and many European countries still do a lot business with Israel. The double standards with how Europe has dealt with Russia versus Israel are glaringly obvious as well. It’s also a political topic in many countries, including as mentioned in the post Germany to the point that there’s now censorship laws affecting speech on the matter.
To pretend it doesn’t apply because “it’s not in Europe” is extremely disingenuous since plenty of news and topics about other countries outside of Europe that affect Europe are allowed here, such as the US tariffs or China, who are also trading partners.
If we are to take this comment you made in good faith, then the enforcement would be that only domestic news and topics are allowed strictly, and anything that remotely mentions a different country outside of Europe is not allowed. Not even comparisons.
But that’s not what’s happening here, and instead only speech about Israel/Palestine is being targeted.
Where did I say posts about the middle-east are not allowed here if they are in relation to Europe? They are allowed and we do not remove them as off-topic.
But this topic is only a very minor topic for this community which is primarily about EU domestic news and such topics, so when creating this community there was absolutly no reason to avoid feddit.org as the hosting instance over legal concerns specifically related to the state of Israel.
Where did I say posts about the middle-east are not allowed here if they are in relation to Europe?
Literally this whole discussion is happening under the premise that discussion on Palestine is restricted.
when creating this community there was absolutly no reason to avoid feddit.org as the hosting instance over legal concerns specifically related to the state of Israel.
Yes, and I’ve stated, if legal concerns are so troubling there needs to be censorship on the topic, moving to a different instance outside of Germany would make more sense, assuming the moderation and administration team cared about the censorship about an ongoing genocide of which multiple European countries’ governments are partaking in. Other large communities have changed instances as well successfully.
I, and I imagine many others, would have also understood if such restrictions were in place until such a move could occur. Instead, it’s clear the decision was made to defer to an unjust and unethical law.
Where did I say posts about the middle-east are not allowed here if they are in relation to Europe?
Literally this whole discussion is happening under the premise that discussion on Palestine is restricted.
Restricted, as in “please don’t voice certain opinions here (some of them at closer inspection trollish/unsavory anyway)” but not restricted as in “don’t mention this particular topic”.
Yes, and I’ve stated, if legal concerns are so troubling there needs to be censorship on the topic, moving to a different instance outside of Germany
It’s not hard to start a community here. There are several !europe communities with non-German mods on non-German servers already, too.
But there’s no point in me, as a German, modding the kind of community you want.
I see no reason to move instances as it is absolutely allowed to discuss what is happening in Gaza and Israel here (in so far as there is a direct relation to Europe). The restrictions are basically that two wrongs don’t make a right (or many more wrongs in this case), and it is a bit sad that we were forced to explicitly spell it out to make people aware that any genocide is wrong, not only the one that is currently happening.
If we can’t say our opinion because the mods have to remove content or face the threat of being raided by some gestapo squads for saying what’s perfectly normal to say outside of Germany I think we should honestly just move. Then we could speak our minds and the mods / server hosts can sleep at night. We don’t need to have the same opinion, but no one should get anyone in trouble for saying theirs. I think this is a huge advantage of the fediverse and we could just use that to make everyone’s life easier.
Israel is a religious ethno supremacist state, not calling to fix that IS UNJUST.
DEFENDERS OF fascism are fascists.
Which is why criticism of Israel is explicitly allowed as per the (legally forced!) guidelines above. Which incidentally includes your comment as well.
But apparently you cannot be a critic of Israel unless you call for it’s eradication.
No one of the moderation team or the feddit.org admins are defending the actions of the Israeli government in any shape or form.
No, they’re just removing any criticism of it, nothing to see here
Criticism of it is explicitly allowed as by the above mentioned rules 🙄
According to the rules above we can still compare Israeli actions to Nazism. We are just not allowed to say they are equal (a Israeli action could be said to be worse or better than a Nazi’s)
Unfortunately, in this case “comparing” (in the sense of saying they are similar) and “equating” are typically seen as the same, at least by people who support the israeli genocide like the German police.
One has not only a legal but a moral responsibility to obey just laws. Conversely one has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws
Why should it be necessary to specify Israelis as deserving of equal rights in historic Palestine when it is Israel who denies equal rights to Palestinians and not the other way around?
Go ahead and ban me now if that kind of acknowledgment can get you in legal trouble - I have no interest in participating in a community that is comfortable suppressing criticisms against an ethno-religious apartheid state committing genocide. Fuck Israel and fuck the German collaborators.
Free Palestine.
I have no interest in participating in a community
This is your first comment here anyway, isn’t it?
When the rules demand silence in the face of atrocity, the mods become archivists of obedience, not arbiters of discourse.
You should transfer ownership of the server to someone with a set if you’re that worried.
Ah yes, “just following orders”.
Are you also going to enforce the rest of the German criminal code for other kinds of speech? Beleidigung (§ 185 StGB) for example is even more vague and dangerous than the other parts of StGB you’re worried about. The US president would have a great case against the majority of commenters here.
Don’t get me wrong, you should do however you want – I’m not the one paying for your community’s servers… but it’s just depressing to see people falling for these kinds of chilling effects.
This still seems like a one sided approach to moderating the issue.
While law demands the censorship of certain criticisms of Israel and Zionism, there are none in regards to Palestinians.
That doesn’t mean equal rules shouldn’t be applied to the other side.
If you cannot argue for the end of Israel, you should neither be allowed to argue for the end of Palestine. If you cannot defend the actions or existence of Hamas or Hezbollah, neither should you be allowed to defend the actions or existence of the IDF. If you call for a one state solution it should include equal rights not only for Israelis but also Palestinians.
I have yet to see a comment or post Lemmy that actually argues for the ‘end of Palestine’. That would already violate rule 4 if someone did it.
neither should you be allowed to defend the actions or existence of the IDF
Isn’t the IDF Israel’s regular army? Hamas and Hezbollah aren’t exactly Palestine’s regular armies, they’re political organizations that also have military. There’s a reason why Hamas isn’t really active in the West Bank.
I haven’t seen much defending of the IDF’s actions, but fair point, that should probably be prohibited.
Palestine doesn’t have a regular army because they’re not allowed to be a regular state.
Why should that matter? At the end of the day an army is an army, whether it is commanded by an official state, the leadership of a political organisation, a terrorist organisation or by itself. And in the case of Israel-Palestine both commit planned out terrorist acts and atrocities.
Please read the text again. All of that is included.
Can you quote the specific part of the text that bans defending the IDF?
The IDF is not a recognized terrorist organization in Germany. As long as what people write about the IDF is factually correct and not blatant propaganda or misinformation (which is generally against the rules of this community) that is not banned obviously. Nor is it banned to write factually correct information about Hamas and Hezbollah obviously.
Hamas is the Defacto government in Gaza overwelimgly supported by the people of Gaza, and Hezbollah is a political party, that Isreal not to long ago decided to massicure in one of the biggest terror attacks of my life time.
So without pointing to a law, using your own brain, please explain to me how Isreal is not a State Sponcer of terror, and the IDF is not a terrorist organisation, yet the defacto government of Gaza, and a Party in Lebanon, who had to fight off an illegal invasion of lebinon by the IDF are
I am not making the German classifications of such organisations.
As for the rest of your comment, lots of half-truths that don’t change the fact that Hamas and Hezbollah are organisations with a terrible human rights track-record.
Question. Would a comment calling Nethanyahu “facist” be removed?
Not if it had that typo. ^^ On a more serious note: I find these hard to mod and harder to argue against. The guy is in a coalition with outright fascists because this is the only way to save his power; he at the very least tolerates all of Europe’s fascists to come to his government’s “antisemitism” conferences; he wages a war currently that is officially called a war of self-defense but has morphed into being transparently expansionist and genocidal.
but has morphed into being transparently expansionist and genocidal.
morphed? It’s been transparently expansionist and genocidal way before October 7th. It’s a war of self-defense alright, just not Israel’s
Would it be appropriate for people to share alternative communities which aren’t subject to as strict censorship on this issue?
I mean … feel free. (Unless you’re linking to really unsavory communities.)
The thing is, we’re not a Mid-East community anyway (thankfully, I would personally say–as I would be really out-of-depth there!). While this is an issue that may flare up occasionally, I don’t see it as a permanent hindrance to contribution.
So does this mean Eurovision discussion isn’t allowed either, since Israel and Australia aren’t in Europe?
What about the EU? Does everything in the EU count? If so, does that mean South American and Caribbean discussion is allowed because of UK and France for example? Or do you mean only Europe the continent? In that case, are we talking about the 7 continent English model, the 6 continent Greek model, the 6 continent Eastern Europe (/Russian) model, or the geological model? Because some models would include Israel while others would exclude say Azerbaijan.
If you’re going to start restricting discussion on what is and isn’t, you’ll need to start clarifying what is and isn’t too.
