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So people often wonder why there isn't an explicitly Anti-Zionist Jewish instance. This is often said by people who hate Babka but wish there was an alternative. Let's explore the challenges of such an instance.

Firstly, there have been Anti-Zionist Jewish instances. There was masto.jews.international, kibitz.cloud, and even simcha.lgbt originally were all explicitly Anti-Zionist instances. So you can make one but what problems happen?

Well, it turns out people who hate Jews don't care if you are Anti-Zionist. They will accuse you of being one despite all evidence to the contrary. Not everyone will believe the bigots, but enough will that you will deal with regular harassment if you have any visibility.

Any visibility here meaning gentiles are broadly aware of your instance's existence, and you push back in any way on antisemitism from gentiles on the network.

1/3

You will get harassed by Zionists that call you fake jews, tokens, and antisemites. This will include both Jewish people and non-Jewish people.

You will also face severe pressure to not associate with Zionist Jews at all. If you do, you will be accused of being a Zionist and then harassed again.

Assuming you manage all that. It's going to be a small instance. There aren't that many Jews on Fedi, and there are fewer Anti-Zionist ones plus allies. At which point for things to be interesting you'll want to connect to other instances with compatible politics. You will face lots of pressure to look the other way on antisemitism or be defedded. And remember this would be a small instance so it's easy to defed.

At which point, many of your members are likely not using the instance as their main and get better safety guarantees just being on a larger instance.

2/3

Even if you manage all that. It soon becomes clear there aren't many people. The server costs are still there, and it becomes boring. Congrats no one has time or motivation to maintain your instance. You close up shop and recommend people just use their main accounts elsewhere.

I'd really love to see an Anti-Zionist Jewish instance since I think there are a lot of people who would like that. But it would face steep challenges. I fully support anyone that wants to make it work and prove me wrong. And this isn't bluster, get 20 active users and I'll cover your costs for a month

3/3

@raf One of the most infamous anti-Zionist-enough-for-JVP Jews on the Internet played a role in getting people not to use Fedi at all and stay on Twitter (Chanda Prescod-Weinstein), due to petty grievances. It takes that kind of personality for a Jew to be in communion, so to speak, with JVP; no shit, there's no instance catering to that.

@Alon

Chanda Prescod-Weinstein also experienced some pretty intense racism on Fedi, and relatively little has changed since then.

@raf "It's racist not to have quote-boosts" is a petty grievance, sorry not sorry. And generally, someone who thinks there's a plot by Zionist doctors in the US to discriminate against black and brown patients and that's why black people have worse health outcomes than whites, and says that pushing back against that conspiracy theory is racist, doesn't get the benefit of the doubt to say "people are racist toward me."

Alon

@raf Well-documented that she said she got threats, yes. She then responded like an asshole to someone asking if the admin of the instance could block instances ("why are you assuming it was on this instance?"). The most charitable assumption is that it's like with Brianna Wu, who got really bad harassment in GamerGate and ended up being so difficult to deal with that she's an asshole to other, often worse-marginalized people. (See also all the cis people asking "what about black trans people?")

@Alon

I think this is sufficiently off-topic that it's better to have this discussion in a different thread