Hey all. I’d like to open an official discussion regarding the upturning of the prior Hexbear party line on an :israel-cool: emote proper with the unambiguous Zionist flag.

I want to preface this by saying this is not in a ‘ceding the issue’ way. Over the past year I’ve been trying to engage in self-crit w/rt the chauvinism I’ve internalized growing up in a Liberal Zionist household, and my personal viewpoint on it did a 180 some months back, so I want to reopen this discussion proper in my personal capacities as Self-Appointed Emote Czar.

The reason it’s taken long enough beyond that is prior to July, I was essentially half-engaged with the site in order to finish out my degree. After that, it’s been mostly inertia of confirming with the admins and other /c/Judaism mods, as well as having to be rigorous about my job search personally giving me little free time to coordinate this.

I do not want to center myself in this conversation more than I inadvertently already have, so I will leave my own opinion on the issue as a comment rather than explaining further here.

The consensus we’ve roughly come to is to open up the discussion in an official manner for a day or so. After that, I’ll weigh the discussion in an entirely vibes-based manner (sorry Dean Norris enjoyers) and we’ll alter Hexbear party line on it accordingly.

lea-bounce

    • homhom9000 [she/her]@hexbear.netEnglish
      46·
      9 months ago

      burning star of david is a very specific reference to the holocaust.

      But we’re not burning the star of David. We’re burning the isreali flag. There is a clear difference, not to be pedantic, but the main one being one is the flag of isreal and other is a lone symbol.

    • MLRL_Commie [comrade/them, he/him]@hexbear.netEnglish
      32·
      9 months ago

      Burning it specifically calls back to the Holocaust? I feel like I’ve only seen recent media do that, not historical media. Can you show me anything more on that?

      And Israel’s current form is in response to the Holocaust??? In what way???

      I’m convinced I’m misreading something, but not sure what

      Nevermind, read it like 10 times and you’re just very wrong. The holocaust as the cause of Israel or the flag explanation is itself a convenient lie by Zionists. The colonialism and flag (plans and starts) were form well before the holocaust

        • john_brown [comrade/them]@hexbear.netEnglish
          37·
          9 months ago

          I’m not talking about media, I’m talking about a burning star of David. You’ve heard of Auschwitz, right? You know what they did there?

          You can’t seriously be trying to conflate burning the flag of a nation with Auschwitz, right? You’re minimizing the holocaust by doing this.

          Well yeah, what do you think changed it from a minority Jewish Palestinian state to dominantly Jewish?

          Terrorism.

          • hello_hello [undecided, comrade/them]@hexbear.netEnglish
            23·
            9 months ago

            Also ahistorical because holocaust survivors had the option of going to western Europe or the US and not just Israel (also THE USSR FOR ONE! monke-rage the people who liberated them)

            In fact, I’d assume people who were cajoled into entering Israel would leave after the numerous wars and racist terrorism that occurred right after the holocaust and the nakba, but it turns out that just being a victim doesn’t excuse you from the consequences of your actions.

            • SickSemper [she/her, they/them]@hexbear.netEnglish
              26·
              9 months ago

              I think the person equating burning the Israeli flag to Auschwitz is probably the contrarian. Jews were killed in the Holocaust, hamas-red-triangle represents the killing of Israeli soldiers who are soldiers of the “Jewish state”, should we remove that too?

            • john_brown [comrade/them]@hexbear.netEnglish
              25·
              9 months ago

              So the link here is fire? Using fire means, in your mind, “this guy wants to burn all the jews”???

              Terrorism worked because of the support they had, you’re just being contrarian.

              What are you even trying to say here. Fuck me for saying terrorism, and also the terrorism they did was effective? Hello?

                • john_brown [comrade/them]@hexbear.netEnglish
                  23·
                  9 months ago

                  Never believe that anti-Semites are completely unaware of the absurdity of their replies. They know that their remarks are frivolous, open to challenge. But they are amusing themselves, for it is their adversary who is obliged to use words responsibly, since he believes in words. The anti-Semites have the right to play. They even like to play with discourse for, by giving ridiculous reasons, they discredit the seriousness of their interlocutors. They delight in acting in bad faith, since they seek not to persuade by sound argument but to intimidate and disconcert. If you press them too closely, they will abruptly fall silent, loftily indicating by some phrase that the time for argument is past.

                • hello_hello [undecided, comrade/them]@hexbear.netEnglish
                  20·
                  9 months ago

                  biden-the-thing : “If Israel didn’t exist, we would have to invent an Israel to protect our interests”

                  I would burn the quran if it were the national symbol of the Muslim State of Islamriel, etched onto the land and its people like a human made cancer and I wouldn’t lose any sleep over my dad being 1% less safe in the dogshit Islamophobic US or whatever (and I wouldn’t know because all cases of islamophobia would be tied to antiIslamrielism).

                  Jews aren’t the only fucking people who were victims of genocide. This isn’t an attempt at holocaust trivialization as it is an attempt to internationalize the understanding of genocide outside of “the holocaust industry” (taken from Norman Finkelstein) that westerners are spoonfed to make them support Israel.

                  Cynically if Israel didn’t exist, then the holocaust would be one of those footnote genocides that only loser leftists would care about. That’s how fucking warping Israel is.

                  • puppygirlpets [pup/pup's, she/her]@hexbear.netEnglish
                    20·
                    9 months ago

                    Jews aren’t the only fucking people who were victims of genocide.

                    Jews weren’t even the only victims of the holocaust. Slavs, Romani, Black people, gays, Jehovas witnesses, disabled people…

                • SuperNovaCouchGuy2 [any]@hexbear.netEnglish
                  18·
                  9 months ago

                  Yes, burning the star of David evokes the I dustrialised cremation of Jews.

                  Unless it’s the pissraeli flag. You are a zionazi shit stain using the holocaust to protect pissrael. Climb into a vat of acid and stay there.

        • Keld [he/him, any]@hexbear.netEnglish
          23·
          9 months ago

          You’ve heard of Auschwitz, right? You know what they did there?

          Did they burn stars of david? I mean no one giving anyone yellow stars here. They’re specifically talking about burning a flag on which a star of david appears. I don’t see how that specifically evokes the holocaust.

        • SuperNovaCouchGuy2 [any]@hexbear.netEnglish
          19·
          9 months ago

          what do you think changed it from a minority Jewish Palestinian state to dominantly Jewish

          Land theft, settler colonialism, genocide, ethnic cleansing. You are liberal zionist (fascist) filth and should be thrown in jail for life for running mass murder apologetics. Stupid fucking deranged filth lower than pig shit. Enemy of the working class, a stain on human history.

        • MLRL_Commie [comrade/them, he/him]@hexbear.netEnglish
          17·
          9 months ago

          Did they burn stars of david in Auschwitz? Or is this referring to the forced wearing of the star of David as recognition at the camp? Or that they were forced to wear it to their deaths? Please believe me when I say I’m genuinely trying to learn this part. I did not ever associate burning a SoD as a reference to the Holocaust, except when context showed it to be so, but might need to change that. That, again, when done outside the context of the Israeli flag, because that’s different as most agree here.

            • SuperNovaCouchGuy2 [any]@hexbear.netEnglish
              19·
              9 months ago

              but it makes burning a star of David rather than other means of destruction a direct reference to the ovens

              Unless the “star of David” is on the pissraeli flag, then it’s a direct reference to how the state of pissrael and it’s genocidal supporters should be destroyed.

              bulldozer pushing it away

              Like the bulldozers pissrael uses to crush people and destroy their homes? You are a fucking abomination.

            • trinicorn [comrade/them]@hexbear.netEnglish
              16·
              9 months ago

              I’d maybe be onboard with this if it weren’t for the long history of flag-burning as protest. Clearly it’s not an allusion to the holocaust, its flag burning in disapproval of the political entity the flag represents, same as any other flag burning. it’s not burning solely the star, nor is it burning anyone in effigy, it’s specifically and only the flag.

    • FunkyStuff [he/him]@hexbear.netEnglish
      29·
      9 months ago

      Nobody ever denies it evokes the holocaust, they just give excuses as to why they should be allowed to.

      The claim is “burning an Israeli flag evokes the Holocaust”

      The counter-claim is “It doesn’t”

      Because it’s impossible to directly prove the counter-claim, because you can’t prove a negative, the argument goes:

      “The general claim that burning flags that contain religious symbols is itself a symbol of hatred toward those religions is proven false by the existence of england-cool or :saudicool:”

      In the thread from last night, this particular formulation of the argument was never addressed because Zposter was banned.

        • FunkyStuff [he/him]@hexbear.netEnglish
          33·
          9 months ago

          How do you want me to phrase it? If you expect me to say “I want to burn the Star of David” then I’m sorry, I won’t say that because I don’t feel that way at all. I want to burn the flag of Israel, though, because it’s the flag of Israel. That looks pretty simple in my mind.

          What do you mean, “no it doesn’t”? Do you not know about the ovens they used in the extermination camps? What the actual fuck, you can’t just skate over that and pivot to someone else’s argument.

          This bit is only coherent if you think Israel represents Jews.

            • FunkyStuff [he/him]@hexbear.netEnglish
              24·
              9 months ago

              Course you won’t say it, that would be disgusting. But the only way to not say it is to not mention that it’s the most prominent feature of the Israeli flag.

              I’ll happily say that I want to burn an Israeli flag whose most prominent feature is the star of David, because I think context matters. If you understood dialectics, you’d understand this too

              WRT your second point, if there was one Jewish person in this thread who felt that way then I’d have to cede that the argument was at least somewhat valid (because you’re ultimately basing it on Jewish people’s feelings) but @DirtyPair@hexbear.net’s own comment already argued the diametrically opposite point, that they feel that it’s antisemitic to not have the emoji. So how do you square that circle?

            • teledildonics [none/use name]@hexbear.netEnglish
              22·
              9 months ago

              This is the exact argument used by the judge who just recently created federal precedent to charge anti-zionist protestors with hate crimes, immediately escalating them to federal crimes. This precedent, and your argument here, will be used to fuck over activists across the country with trumped up federal crimes.

              "The Star of David — emblazoned upon the Israeli flag — symbolizes the Jewish 
race,” the judge said, comparing attacks against the Star of David to using racial 
slurs against Black people, and dismissing the defense’s argument that such an 
offense could be “an objection to state policies.”

In future lawsuits alleging antisemitism stemming from anti-Israel activism, for 
example, plaintiffs will be able to cite the Sumrall lawsuit as evidence that there 
is a legal standard equating anti-Zionism with anti-Jewish discrimination. 
Mainen said the case would likely be “heavily cited” in the future.

              https://archive.is/MTtAM

              and if you want to attempt to nullify equivalencies by arguing scope and context you can make that argument, but its undeniable that this stance is at the very least normalizing rhetoric that will be used to fuck over anti-zionist activists, and for no good reason besides “optics”

            • SuperNovaCouchGuy2 [any]@hexbear.netEnglish
              17·
              9 months ago

              A star of David only represents Jews when it’s not on the pissraeli flag you brainless genocidal dog. Its just that simple but you fascist scum like to equate Zionazism with Judaism. Death to pissrael and it’s enablers.

    • SickSemper [she/her, they/them]@hexbear.netEnglish
      29·
      9 months ago

      This is ahistorical liberal Zionist mythology and I’d encourage self crit along the lines of YSF. We all know the settlement of Palestine was executed decades before the Holocaust and even the Star of David on the flag was prior

      Your feelings are not greater than the historical reality that the flag has been a symbol of oppression for decades and will be treated as such