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Anybody else here dislike how beehaw is becoming a bit of a hub for the israel-palestine talk? (beehaw.org)

submitted 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) by bermuda@beehaw.org to c/chat@beehaw.org

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I don't wanna dive super deep into this, but ever since the news broke it feels like this place has become a hub for shit-flinging from literally everybody about the topic. Sure, I've seen some nuanced opinions and some people attempting to have a normal human conversation, but I just dislike people using this particular instance as the "place to be" to continue this endless flame war. Isn't this counter to the goals of the instance? How many of us come here to argue like children about geopolitics?

Plus, a lot of the people I've seen pointlessly arguing about this have accounts from other instances... I've even seen one person post on their beehaw account, get flak for it, then switch to kbin for no reason.

And at the risk of sounding too conspiratorial, something definitely seems off about a lot of these comments. Maybe it's how a lot just seem to be infodumping. I dunno.

It's only been a few days. Maybe it'll simmer down. But I don't like the direction this is going.

Edit: I'm not recommending we censor political discussion, however in this particular instance I would say it's wise to take a step back and think about what we say to each other

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[–] t3rmit3@beehaw.org 44 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

This instance is explicitly about being good to people, so it makes sense that a conflict will be very divisive when everyone but the civilians are being bad.

This isn't some psyop against Beehaw to try to disrupt our ethos; this a major world event where we're watching the mass slaughter of innocent men, women, and children.

People here are also likely more sensitive than most to settler-colonialist and imperialist violence.

I have seen a few people who are clearly trying to turn it into "x side good", usually because they have dehumanized the other side, but that's maybe been 3 posters I've seen, and they're the same ones in each thread. And as much as that sucks, I don't think we need to ban them, we can handle their anger with sympathy.

[–] PaddleMaster@beehaw.org 6 points 1 year ago

Exactly this.

Remember when Ukraine-Russian war was brand new? It was difficult to find news articles that weren’t talking about it. There’s tons of parallels here. All the articles, all the misinformation, propaganda. It’s very easy to get caught up it in all.

I’m glad these discussions are taking place on Beehaw. This is why I made an account here. To see people have discussions about hard topics with the rule to be friendly. It’s very easy to dehumanize the poster on the other side of the computer when you can’t see their face. This is a place that fosters a culture that stops that.

Only big difference between Ukraine and Israel is most people were still on Reddit for Ukraine. I still remember the absolute heartbreaking story from twox of a woman asking for advice about how to live in this new conflict area when soldiers were raping and killing women. She and her family were terrified to go to the store. She gave an update, and then we never heard from her. We can only assume what happened. (Assuming the story was real). We are now hearing these stories from Israel-Palestine.