Kolektiva Mod Team on Nostr: 1) Analogizing Israel and Nazi Germany We have removed the explicit rule against ...

1) Analogizing Israel and Nazi Germany

We have removed the explicit rule against analogizing Israel and Nazi Germany from our code of conduct. This has been a particularly contentious rule that has led to several users leaving our instance, and numerous accusations that we’re sympathetic to Zionism or the Israeli state – which we are not. Having to constantly rehash these debates has been emotionally and mentally draining for our volunteers. And we’re all pretty sick of perceptions that this rule exists simply to shield Israel from criticism.

What the moderators of Kolektiva have always opposed with this rule was the weaponization and trivialization of the Holocaust against one of its primary targets and victims – in this case, Jews. This rule was initially added in 2021 following discussions with anti-Zionist, Jewish anarchists, who impressed upon several members of our mod team (at the time) that these comparisons were generally a lazy way of criticizing the Israeli state by intentionally poking at the trauma experienced by survivors of the Holocaust and their descendants. And that given how this trauma is already manipulated and weaponized by Zionist politicians, lobbyists and other advocates of Israeli militarism, it was playing into their rhetoric about how the rest of the world (including the so-called ‘left’) doesn’t care about the plight of Jews and is willing to mock the most horrific thing that has ever happened to their people in order to score rhetorical points against the Israeli occupation and military atrocities.

In some of the heated debates around this policy and how it’s been implemented, we’ve seen users repeatedly state that what’s going on in Gaza right now is even worse than the Holocaust. Whatever else one thinks of that statement, we find the direct comparison and ‘ranking’ of different genocides, particularly when made by those not directly affected by either of them, to be a recipe for stoking flames of nationalist division and for the relative dehumanization of entire groups of people.

It isn't lost on us that Nazi Germany is often used as a reference point and a singular, exceptionalized example of evil by individuals who live in settler-colonial states that bear much more of a resemblance to Israel than the historic Nazi regime did. When engaging users around this topic, members of our mod team have often pointed out that a better analogy for Israel would be the United States, Canada, Australia, South Africa or Brazil – all countries where European settlers have carried out (and continue to carry out) genocidal policies against local Indigenous populations. We still think that this is a more politically useful analogy, and we continue to encourage users from settler-colonial societies, who are so quick to refer to Israelis as Nazis, to at least reflect on and challenge their own complicity in colonialism.

We will continue to delete posts that we believe are using this analogy in bad faith, or in a way that is overtly anti-Semitic (defacing the Star of David with a Swastika, for example). That said, we acknowledge that an outright ban on this analogy is overly heavy-handed, and despite its intention, it often comes across as censorship or policing people’s entirely legitimate rage and despair over Israel’s destructive actions in Palestine and the broader Middle East. There needs to be more room for nuance here, even though nuance and empathy are increasingly in short supply these days.

It’s both valid and incredibly important to draw attention to the fact that a state that was born of in the wake of a historical act of genocide is using the slogan ‘Never Again’ to justify and rationalize their own genocidal actions. We also realize that many Israeli and anti-Zionist Jewish commentators have critically examined this contradiction themselves, while attempting to do so in a way that honours both the victims of the Holocaust, and the victims of Israeli settler-colonialism. And so we are removing this rule in the strict sense, while respectfully asking our users to be reflective and intentional when invoking this comparison, and mindful of the weight that it carries for Jews and other victims of the Holocaust – even those who do not ascribe to Zionism or support the policies of the Israeli state.

The horror, anger and despair that many of us feel from witnessing the daily atrocities of the Israeli state must not be used as an excuse to dehumanize Jews or discount the very real and historically-justified fear that many Jewish people feel today at rising levels of antisemitism. Doing so is not only antisemitic, but also plays directly into the hands of those who seek to weaponize Jewish trauma in the pursuit of further Israeli militarism.

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