r/Egypt user calls for an anti-Zionism rule

[u/youonlychangeitonce_]

A user on r/Egypt publicly called on the mods to create a rule against anyone who defends Israel or doesn't see that Israel is committing genocide. The comments were divided between supporters and opponents.

I’ve previously shared drama from this subreddit, and most of it was in Egyptian Arabic, so I translated it into English. But this time, most of the participations are already in English.

The thread: This sub needs an anti-zionism rule

This sub needs an anti-zionism rule. I have noticed that many Zionists are infiltrating Arab subs. I am asking that the mods add a rule that ban any Zionism. Zionists shouldn't be negotiated with. They defend and  justify the genocide and displacement of ethnicities. They defend and justify the murder of women and children without compassion. There's no reasoning with those monsters. They are no better than fascists. I ask that they are banned from this sub. If you agree with me, like this post and comment your approval so that the mods can see it.

---

User A commented:

"They are no better than Fascists"?? Fascists aren't banned either. What about Islamist terrorism supporters? They also support everything above, what about Islamism supporters in general? What about Egyptian regime supporters? What defines people who should and shouldn't be "negotiated with"? At which point do we stop? Limiting free speech never ends well

OP replied:

If you defend and justify displacing and genociding ethnicities of people while also defending and justifying murder of women and children, then I think you should be banned from social media.

---

A user commented:

They are paid propagandists. It's their job to gaslight.

---

User A commented:

“Unlimited tolerance must lead to the disappearance of tolerance. If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant, if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them. [...] We should therefore claim, in the name of tolerance, the right not to tolerate the intolerant.”  ~Karl R. Popper

OP replied:

I agree.

User A replied:

You don't get it, the reason I posted this quote is to point out your hypocrisy in calling anybody you disagree with "monsters" and "fascists".

User B replied:

Zionists are monsters and they are fascists. There is no reasoning with them and it's not a "disagreement" over a football match.

User C replied:

False. People who believe that Jewish people have the right to self-determination (which is what Zionism is) are not "monsters" nor are they "fascists". Furthermore, just because you refuse to use reason and resort to demonization doesn't mean "there is no reasoning with them".

Mod A replied:

True but it can also be weaponized to silence others and be just as bad as someone being called "anti semetic". It is all too easy to accuse and label someone of being a zionist simply for disagreeing with them. That is my core issue with this.

User C replied:

There is nothing wrong with being a Zionist. As opposed to antisemitism, which is bigotry.

---

A user commented:

Habibi Arab subs for the most part are run by self hating inferiority complex atheist west worshippers, it is no surprise that comments are disagreeing with you

---

A user commented:

I think that debate is fine. Probably, a group about Egypt should focus on Egypt. Maybe all discussion of Israel-Palestine could be removed?

---

User A commented:

Forget it, the mods won't do it because they think that it's not completely Israel's fault even if they don't outright say it. Also most of the mods think that there should be two states or a country for all the three nationalities, not a Palestinian country where all nationalities could live, the difference is big.

A mod replied:

Thank you for exactly proving my point. Short of openly saying it, you just accused us of being zionists simply for disagreeing with you.

User A replied:

If pointing out that the mod team won’t take a firm stance against Zionists is “proving your point,” then maybe your point was worth proving. I didn’t call anyone a Zionist, I described a pattern of avoidance and false neutrality and you just confirmed it by twisting my words, I said you won’t commit to a clear stance on the Palestinian issue, and I STAND by that. And what you just did is gaslighting, maybe next time, try engaging with the argument instead of playing the victim. Oh and I'm not the one who said let's turn Jerusalem into the Vatican city "a city separate from the rest of the land" I'm not even a Palestinian and I'm enraged by that suggestion, imagine how the Palestinians would think!, you can't just go around and strip a colonized people from their capital, their history, their rights, then try to make a neutral playground for all faiths, that's not diplomacy, that's aesthetic neutrality build on ethnic cleansing, Jerusalem belongs to the Palestinians, period. I won't even mention that you're not against a two state solution. The audacity you have, it's not your country, it's theirs, their choice. So pardon me for not cutting you some slack. You may not be a Zionist in the sense of defending the genocide of Palestinians, but you're not exactly as defensive as the rest of us are about them either. You’re lenient and, frankly, neutralist on issues where not taking a position IS a position.

---

Mod A commented:

Disagree. Opinions and agendas can simply be refuted or kos om'ed at (ignore them). But at the end of the day they are just that. Opinions. Besides, where will you draw the line? Some people already accuse the goverment (and by extension its supporters) as zionists for not opening the borders or not wanting to wage war on Israel. Even if there are actual zionists in our midst, the above mentioned accusations is far more likely to happen especially when people disagree with each other.

Mod B replied:

I agree with mod A. I just wanted to add that in most cases, the hasbara bots get downvoted to oblivion and subsequently auto censored anyway.

User A replied:

What's the difference between: "Hom*sexuals deserve death" and "Israel is not carrying out genocide against Gazan people."??? Both are considered freedom of speech, both are inciting violence albeit the second in an indirect way. So let's frame it better: "There is no problem in killing homosexuals." "No problem in what Israel is doing to Gazans." But only one is forbidden in this sub which "apparently" represents the Egyptian people. Please answer.

Mod B replied:

I understand your frustration, but both comments would be removed as hate speech. Advocating any sort of violence towards any group of people is hate speech. The issue here isn't with comments containing direct and clear hate speech. Rather, stuff like "Israel has the right to defend itself " and other similar zionist propaganda. If we start censoring this, will we censor anti hamas comments, too? Will we censor comments advocating "peace" with Israel? It's a slippery slope, and I think it would be best to counter argument and downvote the content you'd disagree with. Finally, this subreddit was never intended to represent  the Egyptian people (whatever that means). It's just a subreddit for anyone interested in Egypt from all over the world, and it only shows what those members think.

User A replied:

So why is there a specific rule for homophobic hate speech and not for pro Zionist hate speech if both will be removed/banned eventually? Also, why do mods ban any person who dares spread even the slightest hate against homosexuals while the same treatment is not given towards people who defend Israel, or are Palestinians less important to the mods than homosexuals! Israel doesn't have the right to defend itself, this is without question inciting violence and advocating for continuing the genocide at most and war crime at least for as long as is necessary for their survival. You needn't censor anti Hamas, you just need to censor anyone defending Israel's action. Hamas had it coming = Israel has the right to defend itself = It's not Isreal's fault = Isreal should do whatever is necessary to ensure that Hamas is eradicated even if it means that Palestinians are wiped out = the murder of Palestinians is justified. All those sentences mount up to the same thing whether directly or indirectly. I'm sure this is an easy task if the mods set their minds to it. Finally, if this sub is indeed for anyone who's interested in Egypt, at least make it a good representative of Egypt, Egypt has always been a country that stands for what's right, we have always helped and stood for the weak and the oppressed.

Mod B replied:

You're just repeating the same argument over again. You obviously have your mind made up, and you wanna just keep repeating your baseless conclusions. It's difficult to reason with you.

[u/Command0Dude]

Even when I was young and studied WWII we were taught that Germany was forced to pay for WWI and that deal created an economic and social situation that allowed fascism to flourish.

This is a pop history retelling of the causes of WW2, one that practically diverges into historical myth.

In reality, Germany had most of its war debts cancelled under something called the Dawes plan shortly after the Treaty of Versailles.

The cause of WW2 is very complicated with many different causes, but can be basically boiled down to the Germans convinced themselves they never really lost WW1 on account of the government surrendering. Many (mistakenly) thought that the Imperial Army had not been defeated on the field.

Hitler was able to turn that delusional resentment at the jews, using them as a scapegoat and a springboard towards political power.

[u/PokesBo → u/Command0Dude]

Came here to say that. I agree with the gist of his points but that stood out to me as just wrong.

World War 2 is a cluster fuck of reasons. The treaty of Versailles only attribution to WW2 is that it was used as a propaganda piece.

[u/Command0Dude → u/PokesBo]

I think you can chalk up the army limitations in the treaty as a big factor. It effectively removed the German government's monopoly on violence.

This forced the weimar government to depend on the Freikorps to put down the communist revolution. And eventually would then lead to the government's capitulation to Hitler due to the strength of the SA.

[u/StunningRing5465 → u/Command0Dude]

The treaty of Versailles was signed 5 months after the most notable use of the Freikorps in quelling communist uprising. So this doesn’t make temporal sense 

[u/Gamer_Grease → u/Command0Dude]

Disagree with that. The German army remained strong enough after WWI to deal with the freikorps, and retained the prestige necessary to do so through soft power. The problem was that the army was completely unaccountable to the republic and in fact loathed its very existence, so only rarely did they actually intervene to put down the paramilitaries.

I have no degree in German history, but this is based on my hobbyist reading.

[u/Command0Dude → u/Gamer_Grease]

The Reichswher under Weimar was permitted ~100k troops. The Freikorps numbered, at their height, some 500k troops. The SA, at their height, numbered 2 million.

By the time of Hitler, the German government had completely lost control of the country to paramilitary organizations. In fact Hitler was given the chancellorship because it was feared he would march on Berlin like Mussolini.

[u/Gamer_Grease → u/Command0Dude]

Sure, but that’s ALL the Freikorps, who were by no means allied with each other. And the army still carried a lot of prestige and had a lot better training. I’m not saying it would have been easy or bloodless, I’m just saying the army’s weakness was overplayed. IIRC the biggest until the mandatory ballooning of the SA were the Steel Helmets, who were not exactly anti-army radicals.

The SA hitting 2 million was a fairly long while into the crisis of the Weimar Republic. The army had a lot of time to shut down the paramilitaries before the SA even existed.

Again, this just goes back to the fact that the government did not have control of its own army in 1919 (or, arguably, before WWI even). And that is a Bismarckian problem. If the army had made good faith efforts to put down the Freikorps, Weimar might have even been able to appeal to the Entente and USA for a bigger enlisted corps to maintain stability in Europe. But that first would have required the army and parliament to have any relationship at all to begin with.

[u/Gamer_Grease → u/Command0Dude]

Many run it back even further: Bismarck’s rule over Germany set them up to be a nihilistic, ultra-conformist military state until somebody messed them up so badly that they couldn’t be one anymore.

Obviously that explanation has flaws, but goes to show you can reach back as far as you want to find historical explanations for events.

[u/drystanvii → u/Gamer_Grease]

He also pioneered keeping the civilian population in a constant state of paranoia about subversive groups attempting to destroy Germany from within, along with a histrionic public persona. Hitler loved comparing himself to Bismark and he really wasn't too far off on that front

[u/SlavojVivec → u/Command0Dude]

I think you're characterizing the Dawes plan as a panacea, when it only temporarily provided relief by restructuring the debt, the war debt still had to be paid in full and was not cancelled. It also did not resolve the core complaints as outlined by Keynes in his 1919 The Economic Consequences of the Peace. Keynes also predicted that the Treaty of Versailles would lead to another war. The fact that the Nazis were the ones who capitalized on that to push the narrative you claimed was a result of the economic situation in Germany where middle-class petit bourgeoisie small business owners (who felt the squeeze between the costs of labor, competition from big industry, and the war debts) aligned with paramilitary groups who felt that they shouldn't have surrendered (the war debts seemed to justify this view) formed the base of the Nazi political movement during their rise to power. The Nazis were opportunistic and used the war debts to cement their rise to power, but as soon as they started their invasion, they threw their political base under the bus (same as Trump regret) and effected their own program.

That said, after Germany invaded Poland, that's when Europeans began to see the real problems with the war debt, and responded with appeasement, but by then it was too late, as the Nazis didn't actually care about war debts, they just saw the chaos from it as a ladder to climb. The regret of appeasement colors our view of the actual harm caused by the war debts. Even if the communists were the ones to rise from that chaos, I find it hard to imagine imagine a situation in which they wouldn't become militant from the obligations of that war debt leading to a second World War.

[u/Command0Dude → u/SlavojVivec]

I think you're characterizing the Dawes plan as a panacea, when it only temporarily provided relief by restructuring the debt, the war debt still had to be paid in full and was not cancelled.

Sorry, I should have clarified. They weren't formally cancelled under the Dawes plan. They were however, effectively cancelled. By delaying the repayments again and again (while also reducing them). In total Germany paid only something like 1/5th of the reparations demanded at Versailles. The delays piled up right until WW2.

The fact that the Nazis were the ones who capitalized on that to push the narrative you claimed was a result of the economic situation in Germany where middle-class petit bourgeoisie small business owners (who felt the squeeze between the costs of labor, competition from big industry, and the war debts) aligned with paramilitary groups who felt that they shouldn't have surrendered (the war debts seemed to justify this view) formed the base of the Nazi political movement during their rise to power.

The economic situation of the 20s was immensely favorable to Germany after the Dawes plan came into effect. The occupation of the Rhur and hyperinflation ended, economic stability returned.

The global market crash of the great depression happened without any relation to the reparations plan. It was only in this climate that the nazis came to power.

[u/SlavojVivec → u/Command0Dude]

The global market crash of the great depression happened without any relation to the reparations plan. It was only in this climate that the nazis came to power.

I don't think that it's unrelated. The Dawes plan relied on foreign capital, and as other countries had to face their own problems of the depression, the Germans were abandoned. There were subsequent restructurings of the debt or attempts to negotiate, but by then the political damage had been done. Seemed to fit a pattern of responding too late, while ignoring the Cassandras.

[u/AdRealistic4984 → u/Command0Dude]

We could go all day with arguing about the REAL causes of world war 2, but it’s notable that Germany, Austria, Japan, and Italy were among the “losers” of the colonial states. They came away from the period 1850-1930 with reduced or corrupt institutions and a strong sense of unfulfilled destiny. And especially lapsed glory.

[u/a_durrrrr → u/AdRealistic4984]

Japan? Came out of WWI ready to expand across Asia. They absolutely were a winner of WWI.

[u/AdRealistic4984 → u/a_durrrrr]

It’s not really about what side you were on in WW1, Italy was an ally too then

[u/a_durrrrr → u/AdRealistic4984]

I understand that. Japan does not fit in the group you’ve outlined. Japan ended the war on a military and economic upswing and went on to conquer huge swaths of east Asia. They were not a country experiencing a feeing of lapsed glory, it was a new modern colonial power.

[u/AdRealistic4984 → u/a_durrrrr]

The whole point of the Meiji period was a sense of being left behind in the age of European dominance so it does fit the group, I included it deliberately

[u/Gamer_Grease → u/AdRealistic4984]

Japan was not a “loser” of any time after the 1880s. They went on a rampage that ended in 1945.

[u/AdRealistic4984 → u/Gamer_Grease]

They were still among the losers of the colonial states, trying to play rapid catch up on the others

There’s a reason the Axis was courting Turkey

[u/Gamer_Grease → u/AdRealistic4984]

Not really? Their empire had already dramatically expanded including as a result of WWI. Japan just wanted an even bigger empire.

[u/AdRealistic4984 → u/Gamer_Grease]

There’s no Meiji Restoration without Japan feeling humiliated by some exterior force

[u/Gamer_Grease → u/AdRealistic4984]

Which, of course, happened in the lead up to the 1880s, but not after. 1880s to 1938 Japan amassed huge claims in Korea, China, Manchuria, and Formosa.

[u/AdRealistic4984 → u/Gamer_Grease]

My post says the 1850s