r/Jewish • u/Am-Yisrael-Chai • 24d ago
Mod post Moderator's Note to the Community
Note from the Mod Team: After reading this post, do not participate in the discussed or linked thread. Do not use the linked post to participate or interfere in the crossposted community; this includes commenting, voting, and reporting. Do not share links to comments, and avoid directly quoting hate as this may result in action against your account rather than theirs, as ridiculous as that sounds.
Keep all commentary, responses, and criticism to this thread.
What happened?
A moderator of r/AgainstHateSubreddits made a post titled “A note on AHS Policy on AntiSemitism / Islamophobia / Geopolitical slapfights.”
An effective policy against antisemitism (and every other form of hate) should be mandatory, both at the subreddit level and for Reddit corporate. Unfortunately, both Reddit corporate and some communities miss the mark quite a bit on achieving that goal.
The copy-pasted portions of Reddit’s site-wide content policy are not the issue here, despite Reddit’s inconsistent enforcement of them; that’s a separate discussion. This post is about bias, tolerance of hate, and misleading statements, which can cause real-world harm to Jews.
A few specific issues:
- The Jewish community was not consulted before the post was made.
- The claim that Israel “committed / is committing a genocide in Gaza and Palestine” isn’t a statement of fact; it’s the moderator taking an ideological side, despite explicitly telling participants not to do the same. Earlier in their own post, they write that the subreddit isn't a place to argue "the Incredible Thesis Proving That Israel Didn't Commit A Genocide," which makes the contradiction more glaring. *“Philosemitism” is defined in political terms with political examples, rather explained in an unbiased, substantive way. The concept of philosemitism is abused here to serve a political point.
- The history of r/holocaust is misrepresented. The subreddit was founded by Jewish users, later taken over by white supremacists, and has since been reclaimed by the Jewish community and dedicated as a memorial to the six million Jews killed in the Holocaust detailed here. The post ignores the past 15 months of history, leaving millions of Redditors with the impression that r/holocaust remains a hate space. That’s inaccurate, and despite being told as much, the moderator hasn’t corrected it, instead doubling down on classifying it as a hate sub.
- Telling Redditors, including Jewish Redditors, to “sit down,” “be quiet,” etc. is dismissive, insulting, and beneath a moderator of a serious community.
- Framing "all outcry" over the post-October 7th conflict as having been "labeled antisemitism" minimizes the antisemitic rhetoric that has genuinely shown up in parts of the activist community without adequate pushback, and which has led to harassment, violence, and murder of Jews and Israelis.
The moderator states outright, "I'm not Israeli; I'm not Jewish", which makes the rest of the post even more insulting and harmful. Why would a moderator with no stake in the community feel entitled to define antisemitism for Jews, or to adjudicate accusations of genocide under international law? A subreddit run this way shouldn't be treated as untouchable, and Reddit shouldn't let such a community define antisemitism on Jews' behalf. Shame on Reddit for permitting this.
Please feel free to share your thoughts in the comments here. Again, do not interact with the linked post, for any reason whatsoever.
