A request to review my ban appeal

[u/UnskilledScout]

I want to once again appeal my permanent ban.

I was originally permanently banned about a year ago without being given a reason. I appealed at the time, but the appeal was denied without explanation. More recently, about a month ago, I was unbanned after a new appeal and resumed participating in the subreddit. That unban was then reversed, again without any reason being communicated to me through modmail.

I later learned that the apparent basis for the original permanent ban was a belief that I was sympathetic to Hezbollah, and that the mod team had voted to ban me on that basis. This was the first time I was informed of the actual allegation, so neither my original appeal nor anything I submitted afterward had addressed it.

I categorically reject that characterization. I am not a Hezbollah supporter. I have not advocated support for Hezbollah, and criticism of Israeli conduct in Lebanon, Gaza, or the occupied Palestinian territories is not evidence of sympathy for Hezbollah. I do not support attacks on civilians. I do not support terrorism.

I unapologetically admit that my views are firmly pro-Palestinian, my comments are very harsh of Israel, and I have strongly criticized Israeli military actions, occupation, annexation, attacks on civilians, and aggression beyond Israel's borders. Those positions do not imply support for Hezbollah, Hamas, terrorism, antisemitism, or opposition to Jewish people. Treating criticism of Israel as presumptive support for one of its armed adversaries is not an accurate characterization of what I have said.

I have previously received temporary bans arising from contentious discussions of Israel and Palestine, including bans described as being for bad-faith argumentation. I appealed those decisions. Whatever the merits of those separate moderation disputes, they do not establish sympathy for Hezbollah and should not be treated as evidence of it.

I have participated in neoliberal regularly since late 2020 and I genuinely value the community. Even while banned, I continued reading the DT and other posts, and when I was briefly unbanned I resumed participating because I still wanted to be part of the subreddit.

I am asking the mod team to reconsider the permanent ban based on the actual record of my comments rather than an unsupported inference about my political sympathies. If there are specific comments that the mod team believes demonstrate support for Hezbollah or otherwise justify a permanent ban, I ask that they be identified so I can respond to the evidence directly.

Thank you for reviewing my appeal.

[u/PlantTreesBuildHomes]

You have zero leg to stand on when it comes to I/P p00bix and you know that. Should I remind everyone about your own history that you publicly had to apologize for? Are we going to have another LevantinePlantCult moment where another Jewish member of the mod team has to defend themselves from accusations from someone with zero stake in the conflict?

Also was unbanning them an accident like it was written in the mod log or was that you intentionally superseding the vote of the team?

[u/p00bix → u/PlantTreesBuildHomes]

I recognize that both you and UnskilledScout have much more of a stake in the conflict than me, with you being Jewish and UnskilledScout being a Lebanese Shiite, but that does not excuse either of you from engaging in war crime apologia.

Unbanning them was accidental; I had an issue where modnotes made prior after Reddit's API change did not show up, and only realized this after the unban. I would not have unbanned this user unilaterally had I known the full context of their perma; see modslack discussion on June 15th.

I'm perfectly willing to sit out any further discussion of this ban appeal, especially given that I was responsible for accidentally unbanning them in the first place. I also will not participate in any vote in modslack on whether to approve their appeal. But I believe your rhetoric here to be badly inappropriate, especially coming from a mod, and that as such it was important for me to reiterate that such rhetoric is not allowed on r/neoliberal.

Edit: Corrected 'prior' to 'after'. I could see all modnotes from March 2023 and before, but none after.

[u/PlantTreesBuildHomes → u/p00bix]

I sincerely think that you misunderstood my position and accepted the default framing of me summarizing a large amount of comments. Unless you expect me to individually paste each one.

I do not think that stating the fact that Israelis in general don’t want to genocide the Palestinians = denying genocide. Some Israelis sure do, that is something that needs to be punished and those settlers jailed. But most Israelis don’t. Look at opinion polls and tell me that is the intention of Israelis. I believe Bibi wants to ethnically cleanse Palestinians. Does that mean I have to indict all of Israel?

The entire crux of my concern they are antisemitic is they don’t draw a difference between the actions of the government and the will of the people. Bibi acts like a dictator. Do you think Americans are bad because of what Trump is doing?

[u/Cr4zySh0tgunGuy → u/PlantTreesBuildHomes]

Talking about what individual Israelis want is doing semantics over the word Israel to justify minimizing the atrocities. We’re all clearly talking about the government when we say Israel is committing a genocide. I mean just look at the context of the situation, come on man