Meta has said it will expand its hate speech policy to cover more uses of the word “Zionist” when applied to Jews or Israelis on its platform.
We will now remove messages targeting ‘Zionists’ in several areas where our investigation has shown that the term tends to be used to refer to Jews and Israelis, with dehumanising comparisons, calls to harm, or denials of existence," the company said in a press release on Tuesday.
In December, Human Rights Watch said that Meta was guilty of “systemic censorship of Palestine content” during Israel’s war on Gaza.
Conflating Jews and Zionists is obligatory for Mark “Donated $125.000 to Zaka” Zuckerberg.
Also denial of the existence of israel is now forbidden in Germany and on Meta platforms. Free speech btw.
Denial of Israel as in saying it doesn’t exist, or that it shouldn’t?
Pretending the state of Israel isn’t a form of regional power doesn’t make it go away.
Don’t get me wrong, Israel has shown time and again that it does not deserve that power and must be dismantled. But that doesn’t sound like what the law is talking about.
Maybe I’m being overly pedantic about the language in use
To be clear I’m talking about the government form of one single state and calling it Palestine, Not booting out everyone living there.
Israel could be recognized as a country. In fact Palestinians have presented a two state solution for mutual recognition. If israel accepts it, it will become a country. Even Hamas has said to be open to this
Palestinians have the right to recognize israel as a country as they have stolen their land. We do not have that right. Lucky for israel if they aren’t super Nazis looking to expand their Lebensraum, they can agree to that two state solution right now.
Maybe it’s just me, but calling for the eradication of a country is bad (controversial take, I know)
Calling for the eradication of a religious ethnostate that engages in genocide and colonialism is surprisingly a good thing.
Or do you think it was bad the world eradicated Nazi Germany?
That’s an excellent historical analogy — too bad you’ve misunderstood it. Germany was not dissolved after WW2, and its population was not thrown to the wolves. We only replaced their government. I agree that Likud needs to go (ideally to the Hague) but the people here wanting to wipe the country from the map are dangerous lunatics.
The countries of East and West Germany would like a word with you. The state of Nazi Germany very clearly ceased to exist.
The division was because the winners couldn’t coexist, not because Germany inherently needed to be split. The whole thing could have been treated like West Germany.
No, the division was because the winners couldn’t agree on who gets to build a new country where the old one was.
No one was going to leave the Nazi state in power.
Sounds to me like we’re in agreement here? In any case, the Allies didn’t give have Poland annex German territory or whatever. It continued to exist. Lots of people in this thread on the other hand want to delete Israel altogether and give it all to Palestine (which, incidentally, has never been a state at any point in history)
Why would the Allies give German land to a Soviet puppet state of Poland?
You know what they did? They gave it back to the people living there, so let’s give Israel back to the people who lived there, that is the majority the Palestinians.
The Israelis can be like White South Africans, stay or fuck off, it’s not important.
This is not confusing the two - this is specifically targeting anti-semitism
No this is banning criticism of israel along with it. Using Judaism as a shield for Zionists.
If they wanted to ban antisemitism they would not have included non-antisemitism in there.
You think that dehumanising, calling for harm or denials of Jewish existence aren’t anti-semitism?
Why are you bringing up Judaism?
The article separately mentions Zionism. This has nothing to do with Judaism.
You mentioned Judaism. You think Zionism had nothing to do with Judaism? You think dehumanising anyone - including Zionists is ok?
That is exactly it. Antisemites figured out a while back that they could say whatever they want about Jews as long as they swap out the word Zionist. This has been a feature of white supremacy for ages. It used to be “people with big noses” or “people who wear hats” or even “bankers,” or “globalists.” The latter two are more similar to the use of “Zionist” because they represent actual groups that people criticize. That gives more cover to the actual antisemites.
This is actually a good thing, because it removes that cover from bigots who want to hijack the movement and hide behind it.
Isn’t it incredibly dangerous to ban “Zionist” only because it’s misused? It can be used to legitimately describe people who have a vested interest in Isreal occupying Palestine. I understand it’s used as a slur, but banning otherwise normal words will make the discourse much more difficult.
Who said anything about banning it? You can read the full statement here. As I said, this is about bigots co-opting the word to say bigoted shit, taking into account the nuance of how a word can be used or misused. Literally no one other than propagandists are talking about Meta “banning” the word.
My apologies, I did not read the article on the assumption Meta would choose the irresponsible option. The article was surprisingly nuanced, and I hope the enforcement of Meta’s policies are equally nuanced.
Yes, let’s hope so!