We, the admin team, decry all forms of settler-colonialism, and we recognize that Zionism is a pro-settler-colonialist position.
Therefore we propose that should no longer be accepting of any Zionist accounts on our instances.
Please upvote for agree, downvote for disagree.
Note: we only count votes by instance members of dbzer0 and anarchist.nexus, plus a few vouched-for external users.
Hi mateys, I’ve kept things simple in the above text, for brevity, but in fact it took the admin team quite a while to get to this stage. We have discussed the policy change extensively, and a variety of different perspectives emerged. I will attempt to sum them up below as best I can:
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The “this isn’t that complicated” school of thought goes something like this: If someone is consistently posting comments that mirror Hasbara talking points (e.g. justifying the genocide in Gaza, consistently painting Palestinians as terrorists and Israel as the victim), then they should be instance banned. It’s just not acceptable for Zionists to be allowed on our instances.
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The “slippery slope” / “purity test” school of thought is that banning people for having an “unpopular” political opinion would potentially mean banning half the fediverse, if more and more of these policies were enacted over time. To attempt to mitigate this we are keeping the scope of this rule as narrow as possible, and I also don’t think many of our users will be affected. Also, we typically don’t have frequent policy changes, and I have no reason to expect that to change moving forward.
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Another important discussion point was “how do we decide whether someone is pro-Zionist or not?” We can’t always be 100% sure of someone’s true intentions, we can only go on what they have posted and that is subject to interpretation. I don’t feel there is an easy answer to this one, except to say that we would have to be pretty certain before issuing a perma-ban.
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The “geopolitics don’t matter” school of thought is that trying to be on the “correct” side of every issue is kind of pointless because nothing that happens in lemmy chat forums will ever make an ounce of difference in the real world. Don’t bother moderating users over political/ideological differences, just let people argue if they want. While I can totally empathize with this sentiment, I can also see the case for taking a clear stance on this topic in accordance with our values and the overwhelming support for the Palestinian cause among our users. Personally, I am advocating in favor of the resolution.
Please add your comments below if you want to provide your own thoughts on the topic, or have any questions.
expiry: 7
Acknowledged governance topic opened by https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/u/flatworm7591

This is a simple majority vote. The final tally is as follows:
- For:
(5),
(4),
(1),
(1),
(2),
(2) - Against:

- Local Community: +2.6
- Outsider sentiment: Supportive
- Total: +14.6
- Percentage: 85.00%
This vote has concluded on 2026-01-02 00:56:51 UTC
Reminder that this is a pilot process and results of voting are not set in stone.
deleted by creator
- For:
Add a clause stating unambiguously that this does not discriminate against people with the Jewish ethnicity or against followers of Judaism. Just the specific policy of Zionism is affected.
I’m sure we can all agree to that clause. 👍
I believe that’s a given to any leftist anti-zionist, but it’s good to explicitly state that
To extinguish that specific Zionist rhetoric, absolutely. Great idea
Aye that’ll do it 🤣
I think it might be good to describe what zionism means to avoid misinterpretation, malicious or otherwise. Something along the lines of being against genocide, ethnic cleansing, genocide, apartheid and denialism.
At which point you might as well make the ban more broad. As far as I’m concerned, it doesn’t matter if someone’s making excuses for the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians or denying the extent of the Armenian genocide.

Palestinian here, just thanking you for trying to do what you can. <3
Zionism is so innately wrong (and has been for 80 years). Anyone still supporting it up to now is too far gone to be convinced by reading comments by some people online.
I AM NOT A DIV0 USER. DO NOT COUNT MY COMMENT AS A VOTE
I AM NOT A DIV0 USER. DO NOT COUNT MY COMMENT AS A VOTE
Don’t worry — votes are based on upvotes/downvotes on the OP. They’re counted automatically, and for us landlubbers (people from other instances) it goes into “outsider sentiment”.
(And as you said, shall we get a free world for us all!)
Ah gotcha!
I am slowly leaning towards trying a different instance. On one hand, I kinda like all the goofy comments I’ve made on this account and I don’t want to lose them. But on the other hand if I do switch, I also don’t want my old account taking up space on a server for an instance I’m not contributing to anymore.
I may be overcomplicating this decision haha
And thank you for your kind words, everyone deserves freedom as long as they aren’t doing something that hurts others
As far as I know, old accounts barely take server space; so you can always just leave the old account there, perhaps editing the profile with a link to your new account. It won’t be a burden.
That’s what I did ~two years ago; I don’t regret it, landing in a good instance makes all the difference.
Interesting! You’ve gotten thoughts brewing in my head
من البحر الى النهر يا صديقي!
عالم حر لنا كلنا يا رفيقي!

I like it. I think it does really limit the scope and maintains a clear focus.
It avoids the religious BS - there are plenty of Zionists who aren’t Jewish and plenty of Jews who aren’t Zionists.
If you’re a Zionist, then you don’t beling here; it’s the same with Nazis, white supremacists, et aliīs.
Edit: removed an incomplete sentence.
Unbelievably based. Zionists, like Nazis, shouldn’t be platformed.
I will say: on the topic of banning Zionists, I think it would be helpful if someone from db0 or maybe a bot would reply to the comment that caused the ban with the Wikipedia entries for the Nakba, pogroms, and just the entire history of Palestine’s enslavement to Israel. Kinda like how YouTube links the Climate Change Wikipedia entry for videos that deal with that topic, or like Twitter community notes.
Free Palestine
Zionism is giving yourself permission to kill/oppress people who don’t have the same religious beliefs that you do. That’s bullshit.
Hey, the drones were circling over my fucking Christmas lunch this week. We were cranking up the Bublé to cover the constant buzzing, and the bad/worst part is that the kids seemed used to the sound. The only reason those things were in the air over an area with no militia activity is psychological warfare basically. This was a good 80+ km from the border. People in Santa hats were sticking their heads out of the window and looking up. I struggle to get across how normal we are while discussing what we’re dealing with, and I figure mentioning how it’s affected me filling myself with wine and carving a comically sized bird could help get that across to people who also do this every year, or to who the idea is less foreign than the idea of being constantly surveilled by a hostile expansionist entity. I’m not trying to use my sect to say I’m special and don’t deserve this, I’m just trying to see if it can help bridge a gap to discuss something difficult, to be clear.
That said, my opinion might still come off as a bit too lenient to some of you and I think I should write it out. But I am from and live in Lebanon, and I am directly affected by these crimes.
I’ve got a lot of users (I think literally every single one on German instances lmfao) tagged in my client as “Zionist”. I think most of them just pop into a few threads naturally and make a few reality-denying comments from force of habit. I see them in other places and they fit the typical description of internet dude with opinions on Rust and Linux making interesting comments about random stuff. They’re mostly well-behaved outside of beliefs that are upstream of me being chucked into a concentration camp so the US military’s contractors can make my home a parking lot at an exorbitant cost. When I catch them in a thread about solar panels or something, I’ll even find them making comments that I want to read. Normal people with good insight.
The average person in the West has been fed such a blatantly false narrative that I find myself not blaming a few of the milder opinions. It’s on par for me with progressives talking up and down the potential greatness of the American experiment. I think Zionism is one thing that people can learn about and understand and clearly see that the status quo is not normal or natural or inevitable or even self-sustaining.
This might all be downstream of me moderating the way I have tended to handle this stuff on Reddit, my old online home which I’ve spent well over a decade.
Therefore we propose that should no longer be accepting of any Zionist accounts on our instances.
My opinion is a two sided thing because I don’t know if this means blocking users from other instances from federating, blocking them from posting or voting on our instance’s posts and comments, or blocking them from signing up.
I think blocking them from signup is very reasonable. Probably morally necessary.
I think blocking them as external users, regardless of the extent of it, might be heavy handed if it’s a one-off comment by a normal human being, often German, who has been propagandized since birth that Jews will all immediately die if Arabs aren’t treated like cattle. I think these people can learn. OTOH there are what seems like dedicated Hasbara accounts that have an RSS feed of every post with “Israel” or Palestine and have to respond to every single one with a comment that would immediately get you banned from literally any webpage with a text box if you swapped the words Jewish and Muslim. If we can block those outright nothing will be lost.
What I propose is a three/five strikes system for external users with a relatively gentle warning message with some good links like someone already proposed here. Probably a little thing in German to get the attention of those with Nazi baggage who are completely delusional and intentionally ignoring reality.
Personally if I was the one writing it I’d also include that, as a Westerner, believing that Jewish people may inherently leave the West for a colonial frontier far away from you is literally anti-Semitism if you think about it for 20 seconds. Nothing says ancestral homeland like having to rename towns and treat the local population like inconveniently located bags of blood.
I’m also in favor of extending the window since a lot of people are not going to be online much this time of year. I hope, at least. For their own sake.
Happy New Year everyone; I hope Natenyahu lets me and all of us see the untold horrors that await us in 2026.
thank u for sharing ur perspective.
What I propose is a three/five strikes system for external users with a relatively gentle warning message with some good links like someone already proposed here. Probably a little thing in German to get the attention of those with Nazi baggage who are completely delusional and intentionally ignoring reality.
i second this proposal.
I don’t even know what instance I’m posting on but I just wanted to say that I too am amazed how well you moderate your handling of this stuff.
Fully support extending window.
Therefore we propose that should no longer be accepting of any Zionist accounts on our instances.
My opinion is a two sided thing because I don’t know if this means blocking users from other instances from federating, blocking them from posting or voting on our instance’s posts and comments, or blocking them from signing up.
I think blocking them from signup is very reasonable. Probably morally necessary.
I think blocking them as external users, regardless of the extent of it, might be heavy handed if it’s a one-off comment by a normal human being, often German, who has been propagandized since birth
I completely agree with this. I like to troll badguys, and I can’t do that if they’re instance banned; I think it should be up to individual users to block people from other instances.
I also like to assume that anyone commenting from a dbzer0/AN account is a good person, and I can’t do that if Zionists are allowed to have an account here.
Edit: Unruffled answered this in a comment

Don’t see the need to limit the voting to two days, especially during holidays when people are not as online.
I set it to 3 days because we nearly always have a clear outcome by then. But we can extend it if you want.
Can you reset the timer in threativore to 7 days, db0? I changed it in the post but it never picked up the change.
Replying to yourself won’t work. You’re in luck I noticed this. You’re not in luck that I can’t actually do that. But honestly I don’t think it’ll make a diff.
Doh, oh well it’s a pretty emphatic response.

I want to focus on the structure of the proposal rather than on defending Israeli state policy, which I oppose in many respects.
As written, the proposal does not clearly define Zionism so much as treat a particular interpretation of it as self-evident, namely that Zionism is inherently a form of settler colonialism. That is a position many people hold, but it is also a contested one, and the policy depends on that premise without unpacking it.
If the core concern is behavior such as genocide denial, dehumanization of Palestinians, or the repetition of propaganda talking points, those are concrete harms and seem like appropriate moderation targets on their own. Framing the rule around an ideological label instead of specific conduct risks conflating belief, state policy, and online behavior, which are not always the same thing even when they overlap.
I also share some of the concern about how “pro-Zionist” would be determined in practice. When enforcement depends on interpreting intent or identity rather than observable actions, it increases the risk of inconsistency and misclassification, even with good faith moderation.
I am not arguing against taking a clear moral stance in support of Palestinians. I am suggesting that the policy would be stronger, clearer, and easier to defend if it focused explicitly on the behaviors and arguments that cause harm, rather than relying on a broad and disputed definition of Zionism to do that work.
It’s absolutely worth running the experiment, if nothing else.
I would caution against banning accounts for having a particular stance, as that could be a slippery slope.
Forums have a decades-long running history of banning content, possibly for that reason. Having instance rules that forbid pro-zionist content, propaganda, or news with a zionist spin, makes a lot more sense IMO. From there, it’s easy to ban accounts for repeated rules violations, which may be more palatable for both users to report and admins to enforce.
This seems like a reasonable take.

I don’t want to share any space, physical or otherwise, with Zionists or their apologists. They add nothing and deserve nothing but the worst.
Kick them the fuck out, thank you.
zionism and anarchism are mutually exclusive idealogies. you cannot believe in solidarity for all mankind and also support an ethnocutural supremacist movement.
I support banning zionists from dbzer0 to match them being banned on Anarchist Nexus.
Already reported for antisemitism, can’t make this shit up lol
Edit: and now racism. The brainworms are activating.
Reported… to whom? Where do you think reports go?
Genocide supporters really are exactly as dumb as they seem, huh?
YarrMatey was saying some dumbass reported the post as antisemitic, not that she reported it herself lol.
It’s like they’re asking to be banned once this gets approved 😅
Removed by mod

The Jewish people have a right to rape their victims to death and then eat their children to larp their favorite book. Suggesting otherwise is antisemitism. It’s really not hard to understand.
I want to be 💯 clear that it’s not Jewish people we are sanctioning here, it’s Zionism. You can be a Zionist without being Jewish, e.g. see Trump, Biden, Kamala, Bush, and basically every other establishment US and Western politician. And there any many Jewish folks who agree that what Israel is doing is genocide and speak out againt it. So let’s not fall into the trap of actual antisemitism.
You can be a Zionist without being Jewish, e.g. see Trump, Biden, Kamala, Bush, and basically every other establishment US and Western politician.
Does expressing support for an establishment politician of this sort make one a Zionist as well?
No.
Ok, thank you for explaining.
Sorry, should’ve added a bit about ‘the weak diaspora Jew’ or something to make it more clear.
Dude it’s not about Jew vs Not Jew, it’s about genocide justification. To be clear here, the people on this genocide campaign are the Israeli government, the settlers that support the genocide, and the world leaders that continue to support the Israeli government. Trying to paint this as “Jews Bad” is no different than saying that Americans love Nazis just because we have Nazis in our government – in actual fact some Nazis are American but not all Americans are Nazis.
So watch out with your broad brush buddy, you seen to be cruising along the slippery slope of eventually accusing Jews of operating space lasers.
Maaaaaybe a bad example. Americans love them some Nazi.
And, um, read that back. I normally don’t clarify satire, but this is an admin thread, I was talking in Zionist voice there. Do you think all Jewish people share a single favorite book? One that says they eat children?
I do get it was satire, but sometimes we need to talk very plainly and leave no room for ambiguity,
Hence the clarification.
I’ve seen enough people espouse insane shit and mean it sincerely that I no longer assume satire when it’s unclear to me. Sorry for the confusion.
Not here to vote, but I hope more instances and websites follow suit.
You can still vote, it will not influence the result, just the “outsider sentiment”

Having a definition of Zionist would probably help?
I think Israel is committing war crimes in Palestine, Netenyahu should be tried by the ICC, and that what is happening in Palestine at present is in fact genocide.
But also, I think Israel should contiue to exist, and should - given the crimes committed against their citizens by Hamas - be entitled to demand that Hamas play no part in governance of a future Palestinian state.
Uncertain whether that counts as a zionist position, or not.


















