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.
Will one of the people who kept claiming that an emoji depicting the burning of an israeli flag is tantamount to calling for or endorsing the holocaust please provide some sort of substantiation outside your own brains that this is a legitimate opinion to hold, which is not rank zionist propaganda? Does anybody, zionist or otherwise, hold this opinion outside this website?
I looked and here is what I found:
I also specifically searched the ADL website, as they have a very “broad” meaning of the concepts. (The last item was there, although just a brief news item without any commentary.) I searched their hate symbols database which has a terrible web interface so I also checked the PDF Book version of the database.
I tried to find any references to nazis burning israel flags.
I tried to find information about stars of david being burned in the holocaust like the KKK burning crosses.
Nada
I neeeeed to point out about the original post: you cant burn this flag.. original source of the screenshot from what I found. This appears to be wild mis reporting. No other media source Iooked at (The Forward, World Israel News, Baltimore Jewish Times, MSN) reported anything to do with burning.
They were all in line with the actual ruling (SUMRALL v. ALI_12025mc00110_Aug 4, 2025) which was about adding the hate crime multiplier onto an existing charge (in this case battery):
Although I did also find a different case which maybe confused things: Hayward man who burned Israeli flag is sentenced for hate crime. This guy did burn an Israeli flag. But the charge was due to having first stolen it. So he also got a hate crime enhancement on theft.
Not that we should be taking moral cues from people as depraved as american judges but what I am saying is that THIS SITE GOES FURTHER than even they appear to be advocating.
pings with receipts all from the original thread:
[A]: link 6, link 7That argument is so distressing to encounter especially on this site.
I think a lot of people here have been in the crosshairs for resisting this genocide and the generations of other horrible crimes done to the Palestinian people. I’ve been attacked with so many awful zionist talking points from strangers and people I considered family or friends. For some reason it just hits me so hard to see these same talking points being used on this site in such an aggressive way.
At this point there is no defence for such statements and in my view that argument is akin to a defence of the crimes done to the Palestinians and all the other people that have been victimised by this horrible entity. I don’t care about intention, I care about the fact that this argument is exactly the same as and thus legitimises those arguments that are used to criminalise the few morally right people who are actively resisting these indescribable crimes against humanity.
Fuck these people from the bottom of my irreparably broken heart.
If this doesn’t get responses, or this thread gets locked, I would like to see this comment as a post of itself. Good work comrade!
materialists stay winning, death to religious idealism.
Thank you.
My problem isn’t really with the emoji itself, I was following the lead of other Jewish comrades on this site. I was pointing out the hostility of Z_poster and their obsession with the emoji and honestly go fucking look at the thread that my so called “death threat” is in the context of. I am done with this bullshit smear campaign he’s had against me not just over this but for like two years at least at this point.
Fuckin wild that people are so keen to jump on me just for trying to explain that Zionism is a form of white supremacy as much or more than Jewish supremacy which is often used as an insidious way we have had literal anti-semites try to sneak their shit into this site under the guise of anti-semitism. I am so fuckin done with that specific user and their toxic and often bad faith interpretations of criticism of their takes. There is a reason they were banned before and it included DM harassment and ban evasion. If the overall consensus is to add that emoji I fucking don’t care anymore just stop fucking harassing me.
As far as my so called “death threat” go look up the context in which that engagement escalated to that point and remember it was not the first time I had to play whack a mole with their ban evasion alts and prior to that I tried my damnedest to exercise restraint when dealing with them. No investigation no right to speak.
I made no comment on anything to do with z poster and I ignore all of what you said above on the subject. Can you kindly stay on target for 1 min. I also notice you didn’t answer the main thrust of my question which was to provide some evidence from outside your brain, preferably this site.
If this is the best you can do, I’ll do what I can to try to discern.
Well there’s a lot of comments about it considering that:
To be fair to you I found this to be the only effort anyone on your side made at actually articulating a position.
Unfortunately it doesn’t bear much obvious relevance to the question at hand. Is zionism white supremacy, or is it a theocratic apartheid? Who the fuck cares it is one of the worst organizations of humans on planet Earth right now.
Maybe you could argue that the star of david (flag) is a white supremecist symbol, while the star of david (religion) is a religious symbol. Same way that someone else pointed out the nazi and hindu swastika have been rent apart.
Instead, you argue that as a white supremacist project, it should be immune from having the flag burned??? I do not follow the logic.
It matters who those comments were made towards and in what context. they all contain a very clear YOU, referring to specifically Zposter, for being “obsessed” with the topic.
I don’t agree with them, (zposter is an asshole about this and most other subjects when disagreed with, but he did seemingly drop the subject until the next time it came up) but they aren’t contextless rational arguments floating in the ether on the marketplace of ideas, they are part of a human conversation between two people with a long history of butting heads.
Maybe you should do some self criit and think about why people are “jumping on you” instead of doubling down
https://hexbear.net/post/3320265/5310952
What context in here makes it okay to tell a user to die? All I see is really pointless arguments about streamers
You’re literally only even in the thread twice. You escalated massively. You told someone to touch grass six feet under, which I agree isnt a “death threat” because its actually encouraging suicide.
Stop posting. Look in a mirror. You’re acting like a child caught doing something wrong
I am trying to get this person to explain their position on the other issue. do you think it’s possible to just stay on topic for this sub thread? they have 50 other comments on which to bother them about this.
and to be fair i asked them to post so a reply saying to stop posting should be directed to me for instigating not them for obliging.
My biggest mistake was letting them continue to get to me and not simply advocating to ban them for evading prior bans for hostile behavior. I have already acknowledged my comment was in bad taste but it was absolutely not “encouraging suicide” it was an act of extreme frustration with a person that just keeps coming back and stirring shit up deliberately.
I even told the admins to go ahead and remove me as mod if that is what people actually want. What I will not abide are these bad faith accusations of me being a zionist or genocide supporter. I will not however concede to this bullshit reading of events and surrendering to one of the most toxic posters on this site.
Yeah so weird for an arab to be ‘obsessed’ over an emote that is not added because it’s supposedly antisemitic to burn the symbol that stands for the genocide, apartheid, torture and hostage taking of Palestinians and arab people in general.
Z has had a vendetta against me long before this. Their banning has literally nothing to do with that. I was calling him out for the fact he is constantly taking every possible thing in the least generous way and very quick to label people feds etc. The original argument where I got heated with him the first time was with regard to him saying just as bad sort of shit about other users over a fucking streamer while gassing up BadEmpanada who also fucking sucks. I don’t give a shit I stand by the fact he deserved to be banned before that for the DM harassment, deserved to be banned for subsequent evasion of said ban and deserves to be banned now for countless repeated deliberate hostile behavior. I DO NOT CARE ABOUT THE EMOJI.
I don’t care about your past with that user. I care about your zionist talking points and I find them really disgusting.
I find your very obvious misrepresenting of what I have said equally disgusting. At no point have I voiced any support for Zionism and you fucking know that.
There are posts above where you tacitly support the Zionist position in relation to the Star of David and its relation to the flag. That’s not material support of Zionism, but it’s tacit support of its ideological standpoints. I agree that it’s roundabout to say you “support Zionism”, but you defended its ideological grounding for no good reason. So whatever we call that, you need to confront that
I literally only echoed the arguments of other posters here prior and just yesterday we had someone begging for the burning israeli flag that was literally posting anti-semitic shit in the same post.
I am not making assertions of my own I am solely recounting events surrounding this and why it has been a point of contention and you all are trying to paint me as some sort of bigot. I am not responding to anymore of these baseless accusations from people clearly not in the loop about the shit we have had to put up with regarding this issue as mods.
You are oversimplifying this and taking the side a toxic shithead that has had a personal grudge against me for years prior to anything that has been posted in this thread. I am done here.
They are terrible arguments that you needn’t have echoed. You echoed those arguments in order to shut down the conversation and you implied or outright accused other comrades of being antisemitic. And people rightfully attacked those arguments and your behavior, and you responded in kind.
Enlighten us about the shit you’ve had to put up with. Don’t keep us in the dark then! I’m going off of what I’ve experienced in the past 3,5 years or so lurking and commenting on and off. But be specific and explicit about it so we can understand. You’ll find I’m very flexible in understanding when there’s any reason to. Though any evidence will still be only relevant insofar as it excuses your behavior and gives context to the comments, not your standpoints regarding specific ideological claims
When you are telling someone who calls out the bullshit arguments that are used to not add the burning zionist flag that they really actually want to see the star of david burn, implying that their motivations are antisemitic instead of hatred of the zionist entity, then you’re doing exactly the same as zionists who deliberately blurry the lines between antizionism and antisemitism to defend their genocide. Being so careless about the talking points you use is gross, even more if you seemingly don’t care about the topic.
Ugh, just shut up. Accusing Nakoichi of being a Zionist is bad faith and the worst they are guilty of is getting a little heated at times.
While I do think that the emoji should be updated, it is a weird fucking hill to die on, and misrepresenting the material conditions for not having the Star of David on the flag is gross. I believe that the decision was made before October 7th, and it was a lose/lose situation where if you have the Star of David on the flag, people will smear you as an anti-Semite who hates Jewish people, because you want to throw Jews in the oven or something. And now people like you are arguing “you’re conflating Jewish people with Israel which is anti-Semitic” while ignoring the context behind the original decision to exclude it.
And we can continue to argue this bullshit all night, I could make the argument that removing the Star of David from the flag of Israel is wise, because it separates the Jewish identity from Israel and removes the association of Jewish people and zionists, helping Jewish folk reclaim their symbol from the Zionist entity.
But why the fuck should any of us waste time bickering about this subject further? Maybe we should put our energy into better shit then semantic arguments?
They’re doing it again too, I specifically said I don’t care one way or another whether we have the emoji or not just that I have seen at least one actual anti-semite beg for it to be included. So much bad faith and disingenuous shit leveled at me over this just because I am sick of Z_poster being an asshole.
We literally had a burning zionist flag representation already just without the star of david. So yes it seemed like they are really hung up on the burning star of david part, also as I have shown in this very thread the exact same talking point was used by an actual anti-semite just yesterday. Again this comes from Z_poster repeatedly deliberately misrepresenting the arguments of others, not just me, to make accusations. This has been going on with this individual for YEARS. You are doing the same thing by refusing to acknowledge their history of this behavior. This is not about this current struggle session it is about this specific user repeatedly doing the shit you are accusing me of and I am fucking tired of it. They should have just fucked off years ago when they first got banned yet their contributions to the news mega have afforded them the same special treatment I am now being accused of receiving. I am done here. Go ahead and have your last word I honestly don’t give a fuck.
Also you really wanna frame it as “wanting to add the star of David”, rather than just wanting the actual fucking flag but okay.
We had an imaginary flag of an organization that hasn’t existed for 80 years.
I asked this elsewhere, but enlighten us on this. I’ve seen lots of talking past one another with ZPoster, for sure. But the accusations that this defense of the flag is the same as any Zionist defense of it was just correct and was constantly avoided with discussion shut downs, vague accusations of racism and anti-Semitism, and the like. ZPoster we should deal with for the other stuff in a different thread. And if you want to claim that your actions are entirely because of that, not because of any ideological failures, then handle that there. I’d encourage you to start that thread and I’ll deal with it fairly in that context, where I think you likely have a point about ZPosters behavior (though I’ve still seen pretty limited evidence to now).
But blaming that for your treatment of this topic is incorrect and you should reflect on that. We are all coming to the conclusion that ZPoster was correct on this topic and so your blanket treatment was still wrong and either came out of overreach and defensiveness, or from you being ideologically supportive of the Zionist position regarding the flag.
I’ve said it many times, the emoji isn’t of near the importance that this ideological battle is. And I’ve only seen you digress (give into the new position) and not acknowledge that you contributed and argued for the wrong position in a derisive way
Whatever your opinion is Nakoichi, no Zionist talking points were brought up.
I’ve elaborated my position on this in other comments in clear way so if you have anything to say about the content of my argument you can comment on them there. If you don’t want to call it zionist then call it racist. It’s still unacceptable to imply that someone is antisemitic for passionately hating the flag that represents the murder and genocide on arabs.
I went through your comments. I saw no quotes. You all can disagree on an emoji without Zionist jacketing of each other. I’ve seen you on Hexbear long enough to sincerely believe that you’re not a Nazi or Zionist or whatever, even if we happen to share a different position on what I feel isn’t a serious issue (the damn emoji).
Demod Nakoichi.
Read the thread, I promise you you don’t come off as well as you think you do
(I assume you meant anti-zionism comrade). This is my only concern about the emoji, full stop. We do also have
, which I think avoids the anti-Semitic catnip. I really just think the fact an anti-semite was very excited to get the emoji gives me pause.
Does the fact that Zionists would be very excited about the fact that we don’t have the burning zionist flag emote also concern you? Or is a current ongoing genocide somehow less important than a genocide that victimised Europeans?
See my main post. I want to see an IRL flag surrounded by fighters which would probably piss Zionists off more
I support the irl flag idea but your comment really set me off. I’m so done with people here protecting zionist symbolism over concerns of antisemitism as if a past genocide is somehow more urgent than a current one.
Where do you see me giving a fuck about the feelings of Zionists? I think my position is very clear - it’s not concerns around anti semitism of the flag, it’s the literal use by anti semites that’s my concern. Just because there’s a genocide isn’t an excuse to accommodate racist wreckers. Let’s make it hard for them and at the same time glaze the axis of resistance fighters
Why would an anti-semite care whether it was a real world or emoji art flag burning? I don’t think there’s anyone making that distinction. Even super racist white supremacist anti-Semites will just say “and look, even the Untermenschen (resistance) hate them” and post it. This just doesn’t seem to make that difference?
I’m not opposed, but only because I think it’d be pretty cool to use a real life version to glaze the resistance. Just not convinced it has any impact on the original debate at all
It’s not the IRL as such, it’s the presence of freedom fighters from the axis of resistance that would make it less appealing. But that’s because usually racism and anti-Semitism go hand in hand, it’s not 100% correlation ofc.
When did this happen ?
I could swear there was a poster two weeks ago basically complaining for an israel-cool emoji that was really on the border of anti-Semitism, but maybe I’m misremembering that one. Still, see my main post, I think including armed fighters burning a flag is more anti-zionist and less likely to attract anti-semites
Not just on the border quite literally anti-semitic. It is in the mod log. I have said my piece. All the people calling for my banning over this bullshit can frankly go fuck themselves I am done here.
https://hexbear.net/comment/6386227 specifically check the part about “caring for a group that overwhelmingly supports genocide” referring to us listening to concerns of Jewish comrades that didn’t like the thought of a burning star of david as an emoji even if it was the Israeli flag. This argument is almost identical to the one Z_poster was making but with the added step of essentially saying “most Jews are genocidal”. I never accused Z of being anti-semitic just a total fucking asshole that constantly stirred up shit and was frequently hostile to anyone they disagree with.
Yeah shit like that post is why I think an IRL flag burning by Hamas or other resistance fighters is the correct emoji
That would frankly be better than most of the flag burning emojis in general. Though I don’t think it would be too easy to find a lot of instances of people burning the danish flag by anyone cool for example.
Actually I stand corrected lol
I think that zposter is believed to be an anti semite ?