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.
Israel is a religious ethno supremacist state, not calling to fix that IS UNJUST.
DEFENDERS OF fascism are fascists.
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 🙄
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.
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?
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.
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.
- Calling for the dissolution of Israel, or calling for a one-state solution without specifying equal rights for all people; Jewish in particular.
All people are equal, but some are more equal than others
More specified, not more equal in this case, really.
Why do they need to be specified? If it’s equal rights for all people, then that includes Jews. There is no need to specify if you are promoting equality for all.
Why is it useful to specifically name the rights of jewish poeple in germany and austria?
Not all Nazis left or died after 45. We simply do not act like they did.
e: typo
And a lot were born after 45.
Thats the same argument as black life matters versus all life matters -> Just in Austria and Germany we have a special responsibility against Antis-Semitism
Not really, BLM was started to highlight issues of racism, discrimination, inequality etc. faced by black people.
I would not have had an issue if the mod had said equal rights for all people, including Jewish people. It’s the fact that they say equal rights for all, but “in particular” one specific group that I take issue with, doesn’t matter if that group is Jews, Christians, white people, black people, etc.
The issue is that both Zionist lobby groups/political activists and authoritarian politicians and law enforcement (or well police, bc. often things later get thrown out in court) like to misinterpret it, if it is not said specifically. Do you remember how shortly after October 7 2023 Pierce Morgan and similiar did the whole “Do you condemn Hamas?” thing over and over again, no matter how displaced it was to the matter at hand? Well imagine that but with the police enforcing it and you get the state of public discourse in Germany for the past two years.
When it comes to speech about Palestine and Israel the executive in Germany will go on the basis of guilty until proven innocent. This leads to arbitrary and often violent arrests, searches of peoples homes, confiscations of devices… Even if all of that is later thrown out in court or the prosecutors don’t even bother to make a charge it has tremendous negative effects for the people targeted.
For instance in Berlin almost no demonstration for the rights of Palestinians go without police violence. Francesca Albanese the UN special rapporteur had multiple events in Germany cancelled or spaces denied last minute because of pressure from the government and reported that she was threatened with arrest. Finally take this example of the radically Zionist Axel-Springer Media specifically targeting activists in Berlin with Names and Pictures. Note how two out of the 6 people they attack are anti-zionist Jews.
There is no rational reasoning with German authorities or Zionist groups in Germany.
Yeah, German policing of the situation has been pretty insane
The meaning is the same. You are splitting hairs over a text written by a non-native speaker.
It’s not though, if you’re working in a restaurant/bar/shop and your boss tells you to give good service to everyone, especially (or in particular) Americans, then you’re being told that it’s more important that Americans get good service than other groups, even if you’re supposed to provide good service to everyone.
The fact they may be a non-native speaker might mean that they intended “including” rather than “particularly”, but it doesn’t change the actual meaning of the words that they wrote.
No, if your boss has to tell you that it is a reminder that you should treat everyone equal and despite knowing that you dislike Americans you still need to treat them the same.
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.
Did you even read the post?
Yes.
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. 👏
calling for a one-state solution without specifying equal rights for all people; Jewish in particular.
Sad that equal rights for every human, and imo all living beings, isn’t just given as natural and needs to be specified explicitly.
What’s the law’s perspective of a global no-state solution?
Ah yes, “just following orders”.
Calling for the dissolution of Israel, or calling for a one-state solution without specifying equal rights for all people; Jewish in particular.
So can I say “screw Israel; dismantle that apartheid state and build a true democracy with equal rights for everyone (including Jews) in its place”? The way this part is worded it could go either way.
Also wow that stuff you listed sounds really dystopian.
I guess I should have let you do an adversarial review of the post before it went up. Anyhow, “dismantle Israel” sounds like you’re intending a violent revolution of some sort. The rest of it reeks of trying to evade the rules as well. I appreciate that this is what people do when you spell out rules but … that’s not really what I posted them for.
Anyhow, “dismantle Israel” sounds like you’re intending a violent revolution of some sort.
Really? Is this a language barrier thing?
Edit: reading this back it could sound rude and that wasn’t my intent.
Israeli jews are probably not going to do that voluntarily …
I see your point. What about dismantling the current government and systems that allowed it the power it now holds?
Doesn’t look like the majority of the population is interested in that, so it’s either going to take a revolution led by a minority (definitely going to be violent) or intervention by a foreign occupying force (still probably going to be violent). TBH I don’t really see a likely solution to this that’s not going to be violent, heavy international pressure could work but the USA are not going to change their policy anytime soon, which also prevents a foreign occupying force; wouldn’t even surprise me if they invaded if there was a revolution.
If you follow that line of reasoning:
Because we can’t stop Israel without violence, any call to stop Israel is a call for violence against Israel.
And violence against Israel is banned.
So stopping Israel is banned.
So the rules enforce allowing Israel to continue a genocide.
The rules are pro-genocide.
By the same contrived logic you are pro-genocide as calling for the destruction of the Israeli state in an online forum also doesn’t stop the genocide.
And anyways, by your logic if the only response to one genocide is another genocide, then yes that is also pro-genocide.
See how pointless such arguments are?
The rest of it reeks of trying to evade the rules as well.
Oh that wasn’t my intention. I just wanted clarification because calling for a one-state solution is calling for the dissolution of Israel, so I wasn’t sure (and am still not sure) what the difference between the two is intended to be. So my question is: What rhetoric is allowed (and, probably more importantly, not allowed) when talking about a one-state solution?
That “how” is indeed an issue here. I don’t know what to say there.
Perhaps, in terms of a practical example, Germany did unite peacefully. Granted, technically, the West swallowed the East, and the East adopted the Western political, legal, and economic system, so one of the two states had significantly more say in how it happened than the other. Which wouldn’t be a good idea for a Israel-Palestine state, to say the least.
(Fwiw, from what I’ve seen, I would say you’re usually arguing in good faith.)
A one state solution can be many things, including a significantly reformed Israel. Sadly a two-state solution with the borders similar to the ones today is about as unrealistic as a one-state solution, as the Palestinian territories alone are not a viable state (and that doesn’t even touch the issue of the many Israeli settlers in those territories).
What? But you just said it was only against the rules to talk about dismantling Israel if the person didn’t specify equal rights for Jews.
And @NoneOfUrBusiness@fedia.io explicitly did so.
That’s what I thought too, but then again depending on where you put the comma it could be read as it being okay to talk about a one-state solution if you explicitly state that Jews should have equal rights in that one state unless you call for the dissolution of Israel, which to be fair isn’t impossible but… yeah.
Ah. So it would be useful is @federalreverse@feddit.org could clarify. Cheers!
Though it seems unintuitive to me that a solution that explicitly guarantees equal rights for jews would be against the rules because it doesn’t include continuity of the Israeli state.
Most specifically, legal issues arise when it can be concluded that you support a violent overthrow or eradication of the Jewish state of Israel. If you make it clear specifically that you do not support violence, I think it should be fine.
In that sense, the way I laid out the rules may lead to some overblocking.
Under international law, that Germany is ostensibly fully recognizing, Palestinians have the right to armed violent resistance by virtue of being an occupied people. Is mentioning that simple factoid an offence under these rules?
Equating Hamas and Palestinians is very troublesome. While they are the group democratically elected to run Gaza, they are also a group that perversely uses Gazan civilians as human shields.
Equating Hamas and legitimate Palestinian resistance is also very troublesome. A propos nothing in particular, they performed the Oct 7 attack, largely against Israeli civilians. They can’t be much of a resistance group if they’re killing civilians and taking civilian hostages rather than actually resisting against an aggressor.
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.
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
Removed by mod
