emoji

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

FWIIII ^Huh!^ ^Hooh!^ ^Huh!^ ^Hooh!^ ^Huh!^ ^Hooh!^

i would like the anti-semitic mods to be removed from the site and the emoji added. as a jewish person it's very distressing to see hexbear allows their admins to cater to zionists by associating all jews with israel. it's honestly sickening. probably won't be on the site for a while. fucksake.

i've held back from ever voicing my opinion because of the rabidness of the zionist antisemites. sincerely. i dont want to deal with internet drama but some admins are rabid about defending zionists over a few fucking pixels. makes me sick.

it's not my flag and it's NOT my symbol.

death to the idf. death to israel

free palestine

edit: just wanted to edit saying i got not issue with ysf i hope it wasn't interpreted that way. also i guess this i was a colder take than i expected which was pleasant to see thank you everyone for being correct

1: Add the emoji. Having the exemption for the zionist rag is accepting the zionist point that they represent Judaism and Jews as a whole. This is antisemitic.

2: Ban professorowl_PhD. Calling people holocaust supporters for saying the flag should be burned is an identical position to zionists like the judge who recently banned it in . If someone were to lock the doors or a zionist barracks and burn it down, would that be bad because it's like the Holocaust, or should it be celebrated as an act of resistance?

Holy shit we gotta do a purge of the Zionists on here

Just remember that it took 22 months of livestreamed genocide with over 400,000 dead Palestinians and tens of thousands of hostages kidnapped in tortureremoved/concentration camps for this "discourse" to reach this point. 😑

On behalf of the news mega, fuck the mods.

All of the interesting posters with challenging takes have been banned by shit mods that get away with deplorable behavior.

Constant betrayal of comrades over inane shit like "maybe we should protect the genocide flag" on a site where everyone clearly distinguishes between settler colonialism and religion.

The only people that muddy the waters are the people saying "oh maybe I should defend the genociders as potential self-preservation" - i'm sorry but who's side are you on??

I think using anything other than the real flag of Israel has always been a tacit endorsement of zionism's special status. The flag of Israel is not the Star of David.

Always believed the 'no burning pissrael's flag' rule was just a vestige of this site's residual rad liberalism, I ignored it and didn't make a fuss because I suspected the site would get over it in due time as the true extent of zionism's fascism became obvious even to the most dense cracker

I was patient because frankly most of you haven't been on the fuck zionism train as long as I have, the tears you're shedding I shed in 2008, and most of you would've downvoted my ass during r/arab's site wide offensive against reddit Zionism in 2016

You're not burning the Star of David, you're burning the flag of a genocidal nazi state, the star was already desecrated by being printed on the white and blue, to conflate the two IS ACCEPTANCE of the zionist argument that they embody all aspects of Judaism, that is an antisemitic and fascistic lie no different from taking Nazi German occultism and blood myths seriously

we need an israeli flag burning emoji, and z_poster should be unbanned because they were entirely correct

Will one of the people who kept claiming that an emoji depicting the burning of an israeli flag is tantamount to calling for or endorsing the holocaust please provide some sort of substantiation outside your own brains that this is a legitimate opinion to hold, which is not rank zionist propaganda? Does anybody, zionist or otherwise, hold this opinion outside this website?

I looked and here is what I found:

• 1 account of a palestinian group burning wooden star of david + swastika in protest of violent and deadly settler incursions
• 1 account of some jews in the US possibly burning a star of david
• 1 account of egyptian journalists burning the israeli flag, photo of benjamin netanyahu and photo of sameh shoukry

I also specifically searched the ADL website, as they have a very "broad" meaning of the concepts. (The last item was there, although just a brief news item without any commentary.) I searched their hate symbols database which has a terrible web interface so I also checked the PDF Book version of the database.

I tried to find any references to nazis burning israel flags.

I tried to find information about stars of david being burned in the holocaust like the KKK burning crosses.

Nada

I neeeeed to point out about the original post: you cant burn this flag.. original source of the screenshot from what I found. This appears to be wild mis reporting. No other media source Iooked at (The Forward, World Israel News, Baltimore Jewish Times, MSN) reported anything to do with burning.

They were all in line with the actual ruling (SUMRALL v. ALI_12025mc00110_Aug 4, 2025) which was about adding the hate crime multiplier onto an existing charge (in this case battery):

Purposefully yanking on an Israeli flag tied around a Jewish person’s neck to choke them is direct evidence of racial discrimination. The Star of David — emblazoned upon the Israeli flag — symbolizes the Jewish race

Although I did also find a different case which maybe confused things: Hayward man who burned Israeli flag is sentenced for hate crime. This guy did burn an Israeli flag. But the charge was due to having first stolen it. So he also got a hate crime enhancement on theft.

Not that we should be taking moral cues from people as depraved as american judges but what I am saying is that THIS SITE GOES FURTHER than even they appear to be advocating.

pings with receipts all from the original thread:

• @Nakoichi@hexbear.net: link 1, link 2, link 3, link 4, link 5
  • Also if you have the time, please also explain how you are ok with IRL israeli flag burning but emojies go too far link 12; please relate it to you many other posts on that thread that emojis are irrelevant, waste of time, getting mad at people for posting about emojis etc.
• @Lyudmila@hexbear.net [A]: link 6, link 7
• @ProfessorOwl_PhD@hexbear.net: link 8, link 9, link 10, link 11
• @GalaxyBrain@hexbear.net: didn't actually make any direct contributions but earned inclusion through quantity of cheerleading

Since there is near universal approval of having a true Zionist entity flag burning emote, this thread is now about whether ZPoster should be banned or not.

I vote for them being unbanned because they already have a million alts ready on standby anyways, and they're not going anywhere until Nakoichi is gone.

It's funny how the rest of Hexbear always comes around to their point of view eventually even when most people see them as a crank. It happened with the SMO and it's happening with emote.

Unban zposter. Purge the zionists. Scour them from this website. Burn the genocide flag.

burn the fucking flag

Anyone who has a problem with a burning Israeli flag at this point does not deserve to be on hexbear anymore.

We will be adding the isntreal cool emoji.

We are discussing the mod actions taken against z poster.

We are discussing taking mod actions against some of the users making reactionary statements regarding the addition of the emoji.

We express our strongest and most heartfelt apologies to all the users but especially our Arab and Muslim users for this. We should have added the emoji months ago.

We will have an open floor meta post to try and work through the tension but I want to humbly ask everyone to please try and speak to each other in good faith while taking a charitable interpretation of other users.

As discussed in the ND meta post we should try to be patient with each other with regard to written communication.

This is a justifiably so very important and emotionally elevated topic and we truly want to do right by the users as well as the volunteers of the site.

Please keep the discussion to specific mod actions rather than general/vague meta comments.

There are those on the mod team that appretiate zposter and those that dislike his hostility and tendency to take the least charitable interpretation. You can see his moderation history on the origonal zposter account as well as the current one to see he has had actions taken not related to his stance on the emoji.

In closing the only finalized thing is adding the emoji, I would like us to try and discuss the other topics without getting too hostile at each other please

Update the emoji to the real Israeli flag, unban the posters calling for the update, and punish those who were arguing against in bad faith. People who labeled the anti-Israelis as anti-Semitic holocaust supporters should be banned.

Who am I kidding though, we're going to update the emoji. The bans will be upheld. Nobody who should be punished will be punished. Then we're going to sweep this under the rug and move on. Seen it too many times at this point.

Edit: There needs to be more accountability and transparency from the leadership of this site. Actually listen to the consensus of the forum. Until then these issues will keep happening. No lessons have been learned from the last 10 struggle sessions, and I doubt we'll learn from this one either.

use the real flag but change the name of the emoji to isntrael-cool or something to not mess with past use of Israel Kamakawiwoʻole's emoji, ban the liberal zionists from this site and the mod that got away with telling zposter to kill themself, unban zposter, and take liberal zionism from our mods and users more seriously going forward

also mods apologize to our Arab users for allowing the racism toward them under the excuse of caring about antisemitism

Edit: that mod didnt tell a user to kill themself, they told them to "touch dirt six feet beneath grass", sorry for paraphrasing inaccurately, it makes more sense to say they told someone to die

100 years from now, if humans still exist, children living in every continent on this planet will see this picture and know exactly what the fuck it means.

https://mondoweiss.net/2023/09/jewish-settlers-stole-my-house-its-not-my-fault-theyre-jewish/

Reposting from @SickSemper@hexbear.net's comment

Also unban Z, me and Zposter haven't hashed out our beef concerning Zohran and I need my sparing partner alive and well for November when Zohran wins so I can start this sites BIGGEST Struggle Session over electoralism, and I've also been thinking about starting a struggle session on the News Maga over Russian military competence and I kind of need Z to be my foil

RELEASE Z!

I vote in favor of the real flag.

I want to commend OP for your work to make the site more fun for us all, and for providing us with this example of self reflection and comradely discussion around challenging and painful topics. You are showing the type of communication ability that many here could learn from, particularly as leftists and organizers.

I also think z poster should be unbanned but that's probably a topic for a different thread. I don't think z poster is a wrecker, they are clearly a leftist and a hardline anti imperialist and they are no more abrasive than the people they got into it with

Not having the israelcool emote has always appeared to me as a result of Jewish exceptionalism and I’m glad it’s being rectified.

I’ve read some of the struggle sessions on this issue and never joined in because I’m still in the process of getting rid of my own brainworms and biases and I was afraid I would say the wrong things. To everyone who has been consistently fighting on this issue in a genuine way I just want to share my feelings of respect.

I hate the argument that it’s ‘just an emote’ and people shouldn’t care about it. We’re living in a world where syntax and symbolism is being weaponised in order to make a genocide appear like a complex issue. In that context it is not weird for people to be very passionate on the way in which certain symbols that relate to the genocide should be interpreted. The fact that this also affects jewish people as a whole is awful, but it is the blame of the genocidal entity and not of those who strongly oppose that entity. Jewish liberation is not possible without Palestinian liberation.

Also btw, just in case people have missed it, everyone knows exactly what Israel is doing, because they're fucking blatant about.

Memory is a wonderful thing, Satellite images show Star of David carved into Gaza.

We crossed the line quite a long time ago imo.

Zposter should be unbanned and we should have a proper :zionism-cool: flag. As other users have pointed out it's fucked to equate the flag of a genocidal settler state with all Jewish people

Edit: we should try and institute a voting system for new emotes instead of one person having veto powers

I always found the original argument silly that the flag of pissrael represents all jews worldwide and that burning it is antisemitism. I'm glad we're correcting this because in a way it was saying to our arab comrades that "hey you can't burn that flag of your oppressors because of, like, optics". We're all leftists on here and principled ones to know what that flag represents. Besides is waaay more inflammatory than burning a flag, since it's associated with videos of IDF getting blown up, versus people peacefully protesting by flag burning.

Also parroting the desire to add the flag and unban z_poster. Z_poster can absolutely be an ass and has a lot of disagreeable takes, but their input and analysis improves the website.

I want to make one thing clear: At this point, I find refusing to allow a silly little burning israeli flag to stand along side all the other burning flags to be an act of zionism. I find claiming the zionist flag represents jews to be antisemitic.

I don't think it's acceptable to say is permitted and yet a burning isreali flag is not. just picked a random flag for that example i dont particularly care about brazil-cool.

if an anti-semite joins the site and uses an emote in an anti-semitic way, the problem is the anti-semites anti-semitism, and not the emote.

you shouldn't tell people to kill themselves even if their comments make you angry.

zionism is one of the worlds greatest evils and burning the flag is good and throwing a stink over people wanting an emote to go alongside all the other burning flags is a defense of zionism.

again, conflating the zionist flag with judaism is anti-semitic.

i guess that was more than one thing
i think that's everything goodnight

I'll say that since the start of the genocide I have also changed my stance on the optics of the burning of the Israeli flag (and caring about optics in general).

Zionists and their supporters will still smear you as antisemitic just for saying Palestinians have a right to exist.

So yeah, burn that fucking flag.

There are too many crackers who are secret zionists with way too loud egos on this website

All the users that were spouting liberal Zionist talking points less than 24 hours ago now turning around and going “it doesn’t even matter why are you still talking about it” really reminds me of the last part of this Sartre quote:

Never believe that anti-Semites are completely unaware of the absurdity of their replies. They know that their remarks are frivolous, open to challenge. But they are amusing themselves, for it is their adversary who is obliged to use words responsibly, since he believes in words. The anti-Semites have the right to play. They even like to play with discourse for, by giving ridiculous reasons, they discredit the seriousness of their interlocutors. They delight in acting in bad faith, since they seek not to persuade by sound argument but to intimidate and disconcert. If you press them too closely, they will abruptly fall silent, loftily indicating by some phrase that the time for argument is past.

Zionist gets to stay

People mad at a mod get banned

Endorse the full emoji, deal with the Zionist propagandists calling people antisemites, unban Z

Are we really letting zionazis on here now? Fix this, don't fumble it this bad.

i swear to god i don't login for a weekend because i have a life outside this stupid ass website and every time i do this i come back to some 500+ comment thread about the dumbest shit i've ever seen in my life.

time and time again it is the usual suspects too

allow the damn emote and unban whoever was banned for it. tell Nakoichi to calm the fuck down and ban all the fucking zionist owls (sorry it has to be this way)

Unban zposter. They have interesting views and made salient points in the other thread. Having thought provoking discussion is valuable if someone is actually bringing good faith intelligent points as long as they're not objectively consistently wrong or objectively reactionary.

And add the real flag of course.

~~The current emote for it is terrible. What's with the fist? ~~ Ok apparently it's the symol of the Stern Gang so it's not terrible, but it still muddies the message. The message should be clearly and unequivocably: fuck the nation-state of Israel, and making it the one flag that doesn't get a burning emoji is still treating it with kid gloves. Giving that flag special consideration is not ok and is disrespectful to all the innocent people who've been murdered by that military base masquerading as a country.

It's antisemitic to conflate Israel with Judaism. Presumably everyone here knows this and doesn't need that explained. As such I do not understand the official Hexbear party line that burning the flag of the country that is actively and enthusiastically committing the active, lethal, exterminationist phase of genocide, "looks antisemitic".

We already get smeared as secret Trumpers by liberals whose brains have been too broken by 9 years of seething over Russiagate cope in order to understand anything. We already get smeared as antisemites by Zionist freaks who think that nobody could care about Palestinians because Palestinians are humans (Zionists do not acknowledge that Palestinians are people), so anybody who says they care about Palestinians must actually just be antisemitic. Pandering to Zionists is not going to make them stop being hateful genocidal freaks.

The optics or having a burning isntreali flag will be confrontational and offensive. But confrontation is what is needed at this moment in history. Not pandering to genocidal fascists. If someone sees that flag and feels uncomfortable, that's an opportunity for them to do some learning and reflection about why they'd feel uncomfortable with it, and why their feelings matter more than criticizing the entity that has enthusiastically murdered what, at least 100,000 civilians by now?

Thinking back to my religious days: If anyone had told me that burning the flag of ISIS was not ok because it's Islamophobic to burn ISIS's flag, I'd have called them a white radlib crackkker, emphasis on the Ks, because equating ISIS and Islam is super hateful toward Islam and extremely disrespectful to all the Muslims ISIS has killed and brutalized.

It's not a 1:1 comparison but there's something transferable.

Related: In 2019 I heard this interview with 3 Jewish MLs who disavowed not only Israel, but the Magen David itself! They went way further in their condemnation than anyone on this site ever does! They said it was a very painful journey to get to that stance, but that's their stance, because Israel has weaponized the Star of David. They argue that other symbols should be used instead, symbols of Judais which have not been used to terrorize, brutalize, oppress, and murder Middle-Easterners. They suggested alternatives such as the hamsa or the pomegranate. They also went pretty deep into the history of symbols in Judaism and argued against the Star on other historical/symbolic grounds which I didn't really follow, not having the cultural background and context.

I thought it was interesting to hear their personal struggles with the symbolism and their attachment to it. I decided while it was interesting, I wasn't able to take a stance on it since I'm not Jewish and the Star of David on the Israeli flag is a co-opted symbol. But I think it's worth a listen for anyone who's struggling with their relationship with these symbols: https://prolespod.libsyn.com/website/special-release-proles-of-the-minyan-ep-1-symbolism-under-zionist-hegemony-dc-dyke-march-the-magen-david-hamsa-flag

Lastly, I was going to take this moment to complain about how the israel-cool emote used to bring up a picture of Hawaiian musician and indigenous rights activist Israel Kamakawiwoʻole, and how disgusting and disrespectful that was. But I see it's been changed.

burn the flag of the genocidal apartheid.

also add burning flags for the nordics too pls

I've stayed out of prior struggle sessions about this, but I think it's absurd that we don't have the real flag. It seems like obviously the correct move to add it. "Stop starving children" is enough for liberals to call us antisemitic now. Burn the flag.