this post was submitted on 18 Aug 2025
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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.
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This is all my personal view on this as of late and does not represent mod consensus.
I think there comes a point where a symbol loses any sacrosanct nature and that is long past when it is razed into the ground and branded on the skin of the indigenous by an ethnonationalist enclave that claims it as their primary means of representation.
The thing about symbols is they're ultimately contextual, we differentiate the Buddhist swastika and the Nazi swastika, I think we have the capacity to meaningfully differentiate the Zionist Star of David and the Jewish Star of David (color [blue vs. I've seen a lot of gold/yellow] for one). I think it's ultimately pedantic to dig in heels on it and I don't want to be exceptionalist with how I treat religious symbols on flags.
My current personal stance on religious symbolism in national flags is that national flags ultimately represent nations and not religions, and we have to contend with nations as they exist, even if they latch onto theology to make their representation seem sacrosanct.
My personal stance is that I think the best way to handle this if the change is made is to hotswap
for the flag proper.
I'm sorry for being a blockage on this prior. Regret digging in my heels
You're good imo, I don't think you have anything to apologize for on this one because there's serious intergenerational trauma involved and that doesn't just go away overnight.
User hello hello made a hilarious version that has the resistance red arrow over the star, sort of a graffiti aesthetic: https://hexbear.net/post/5886556
But someone else pointed out that adopting anything other than the Zionist entity's national flag is a tacit concession to the fascist conflation of Judaism with Zionism, and I think that's correct. If Israeli Zionists really want their genocidal project to be recognized as a political entity then it should at least be open to all the same acts of condemnation that any other oppressive nation-state is exposed to.
Otherwise yeah, it's Jewish supremacy/exceptionalism, and if anti-Zionist Jewish people such as yourself and Norm Finkelstein openly recognize it as such, then what's stopping us? I think we're discerning enough to recognize when burning something with the star of David on it is an act of anti-Jewish hatred versus a condemnation of the settler-colonial project that claims to speak for all Jewish people.
The most reasonable argument I can see for not changing this position is that there could be legal repercussions on the site depending on how things go in legislation, but that's a distant hypothetical, and why would there suddenly be repercussions now? I think it's more important to make the site less hostile to Palestinian and other Arab users anyway. Since people do use this site for mutual aid, I think we can't hide behind the excuse that it's a non-serious shitposting site forever, and besides, I want it to be less of a white western echo chamber anyway, but I digress. I'm in favor of changing the emoji to the actual flag of the hateful, antisemitic Zionist entity.
And as to the potential for legal repercussions, didn't some German instance get clowned to shit by our users for using that as an excuse to protect zionism?
You're right, they did catch a bunch of derision for it and rightfully so, it's a liberal move and if hexbear is to be anything other than a bunch of liberals I think this is a fantastic growth opportunity
I might be conflating them with the transphobia incident on the UK feddit, but I thought that the additional wrinkle there was that the potential legal repercussions were also way overblown if they existed at all, which it seemed like they didn't.
If this was a situation where we knew or it was highly likely the site would actually get promptly shut down for this, rather than speculation we might be targeted in the future maybe, you could make arguments about what the course of action should be (and it still shouldn't be "just fold and self-censor"), but the actual circumstances rn just don't necessitate even having that conversation.
I'm gonna go ahead and +2 you on this one
I think there were only 2 arguments that I ended up feeling were worthwhile against burning the Israeli flag;
I'm glad we can be past 2 now, and I commend you for being so open about it. I hope you can find some other symbols, too, which represent your religious and cultural positions, aside from the Star of David. That because I unfortunately think it is on am irreversible trajectory towards losing all connection for all non-genocidal people. I'm not saying that's good, but it's how this will likely shift in the future, and I hope you have peace in that shit storm that you, an anti-zionist, didn't want or need
I think your version of argument 1 isn't quite right. The point was that if a wrecker came here and wanted to stir something, using that emoji would be very effective. We used to get a lot more wreckers when the site was new, so it was a very valid concern.
Well yes, that's one of the accusations of anti-Semitism we would avoid. And that's definitely the strongest of the arguments within that set, for sure! I still find it weak as opposed to just banning those takes and having principled anti-zionism usage only or something.
I agree with you, there is a difference between a flag with a symbol on it (representing a nation) and that symbol alone.
I hope you aren't beating yourself up about it, it's really nbd.
This seems reasonable to me and I'm glad you're willing to reflect on and change your views. Congratulations on finishing your degree, too — I assume you did finish it, right?
I think somebody once sent me the podcast Proles of the Minyan, whose first episode advocates for ending usage of the Star of David as a symbol of Jewishness altogether — and I found this a very striking idea which was of course a bit depressing in context, that at least some Jews feel the need to go a step beyond just changing the color or stroke thickness or what-have-you of the Star of David, in favor of using an entirely different symbol.
Incidentally, my own style generally refers to the Nazi symbol as a Hakenkreuz, as a way to further distinguish it from the Dharmic swastika — my impression is that this is a fairly common practice in India and not so much elsewhere.
As for the burning flag emoji itself, I don't really have particularly strong feelings one way or the other. I guess if I were to say anything, it's that the emoji as it stands really conveys extra symbolism to me by altering the design: the use of the Stern Gang's Schwurhand to me highlights how the Zionist Entity was founded on settler violence and sustains itself through settler violence, and, at that, the Schwurhand emblem itself is as far as I understand culturally rooted in Central European heraldry. However, insofar as other people do not interpret the alteration of the flag in the same way as I do, and rather take the alteration of the flag as representing a form of Jewish exceptionalism by refusing to see the star burned — then I would not oppose changing the flag to its "proper" design.
I did finish my degree
Congrats!!!
For what it's worth, I personally forgave you over this a while ago after I got banned in the initial struggle session on this like 5 years ago. I also didn't realize I was arguing with a teenager at the time lol. Good post, thank you for the work you have put in over the years on this site. I am glad you have stuck around and grown.
EDIT: I also just want to say something that I said to you 5 years ago: Israel and zionists don't get to define Judaism or who you are as a Jewish person because they cynically slap a Star of David on a flag to hide their actions behind. ✡️ and 🇮🇱 aren't the same thing and there are plenty of good things about Judaism that are perverted by a bunch of assholes hiding their despicable actions behind a religion.
I know you don't need to hear this, but know that I'm really proud of you for making this post. And I'm going to echo the others and say I don't think you've got anything to apologize for. We've had to tight-walk on a razor's edge on this issue to keep from siding with nazis.
This is a good personal take. Congrats on learning and growing!