There's so much fear in the fediverse about bad admins/mods, and honestly it's no different to the days where we had forums with bad admins/mods.
The problem is that largely for the past decade people have been in walled gardens either never thinking of moderation, or actively needing to work against moderation to exist.
And you didn't have a choice, because you were locked into that provider & their moderation policies.
In addition to the fact that we're not used to thinking about moderation, I think a big barrier to entry it usability/accessibility, as currently much of the moderation discussions happen on chat rooms outside of Mastodon.
But hopefully the release of groups in the next few months will help there, so each instance can have a group with only instance members to discuss moderation!
On October 7th, my cousin was camping in the south of Israel, close to areas attacked by Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad. To this day, the thought of her being kidnapped, or worse, haunts me. An acquaintance from my Israeli college days lives in one of the kibbutzim attacked on October 7th and lost family in the attacks.
But despite such close proximity to the victims of Oct 7th, I don’t write much about them.
My mother often asks me: Why can’t you show empathy to both Palestinian and Israeli victims? Why can’t you call for a ceasefire and a return of the hostages?
And she isn't the only one asking this: critics of the student protests claim that the exclusive focus on Palestinian victims shows that the movement is not interested in human rights or in safety for all; that calling for a ceasefire without calling for a release of the hostages is at best a double standard, at worst antisemitic.
I do have empathy for both Israelis & Palestinians. My heart breaks when I see videos of Oct 7th, or think about Ariel and Kfir Bibas, the 4 year-old and 1 year-old brothers still held hostage in Gaza. Israel is such a small place, I feel like I know the Israeli victims & hostages personally.
My mother is right that I should be able to call, loud and clear, for the safeguarding of lives on both sides of the war—not just Palestinians. But there is something that prevents me from doing it.
Initially, I thought it might be because Israel has used Oct 7th & the hostages to justify the extreme violence unleashed against Gaza. Perhaps I was afraid to contribute to the narrative that Hamas' war crimes justify Israel's own war crimes? https://jewishcurrents.org/weaponization-and-denial?ref=onesmalldetail.blog
But that wasn't it. My writing condemning Zionism is at times used by some as justification to call for violence against Israelis or Jews. It doesn't prevent me from continuing to write, because that's the right thing to do.
It turns out, what holds me back from talking about October 7th and Israeli hostages is something that is obvious to the entire world, and that was probably at first hard for me to grasp because of my bond to Israel: what we are seeing in Gaza is not war; it's something far more sinister.
On average, 245 Palestinian children have died every week since the beginning of the war. This doesn't even include 1000s who have not been identified & 1000s still under the rubble. 245 dead children every week.
The scale of the destruction of Gaza is horrifying. And for every day that passes, more people die, more children go hungry, more homes get destroyed. The suffering and the devastation is on a scale unseen in a generation.
Whether or not you think Israel is committing a genocide in Gaza, the very fact that this is a subject of debate shows how brutal and relentless Israeli violence has been.
In Gaza, the West Bank, and beyond, Palestinians have faced dispossession, ethnic cleansing, apartheid, brutal restrictions on their movement, blockades, and violence. And not just physical violence: they have faced claims that "there is no such thing as a Palestinian people", seen emblems of Palestinian culture depicted as symbols of hate, calls for Palestinian freedom are painted as genocidal. It's been a century that Palestinians have had to continuously justify their very existence.
After a century of erasing Palestinian culture and history, insisting on talking about the hostages diverts our eyes and full attention yet again from the suffering of Palestinians at the hands of Israeli militarism. It continues to create a false equivalency between the violence faced by Israelis and Palestinians—the idea that this is a 'conflict' between two equal sides.
245 Palestinian children have died every week since Oct 7th. As I write these words, Israeli bombs are falling on Rafah, Jabalia, Beit Hanoon, and Gaza city. We do not ignore Israeli hostages because their lives don't matter. They do. We center the call for a ceasefire because Gaza is where the relentless, unbearable violence is happening. This is what the global movement of solidarity for Gaza is screaming about. This is what we all should be screaming about.
The author’s direct observations at USC, backed up by national study: “With few exceptions, the encampments have been overwhelmingly peaceful, well-organized microsocieties.” “The image of a lawless, violent, antisemitic pro-Palestinian mob stands completely at odds with the reality.”
Once again, the issue is portrayed as a bunch of extremists who took over Israel. This is not untrue, but it hides the fact that before these extremists were anywhere near power, Israel was already systematically dispossessing, colonizing, and brutalizing Palestinians.
Every Israeli I know hates Netanyahu, Israel's messianic far right, settlements, and settlers. And I mean HATES them.
But Israeli society is still overwhelmingly supportive of the war.
Israel's dispossession, colonization, and brutalization of Palestinians started long before Netanyahu was in power and long before the far-right gained influence. The problem is much deeper and older.