Ok, on this page ( http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=609482&page=3 ) you issue a warning to Sevastopol for the shitty reason that he cant use absurd reasoning pushed to its extremes. It’s quite a stupid reason considering that, at the very same moment, CitizenPained threadshits and spams on every Israel thread without ever getting a warning for it (I think she got one with Dio, hasnt stopped her spamming).
WTF, even if, by your own criteria he was previously trolling, he didnt add anything that suddenly justified a banning out of nowhere.
P.S: I absolutely dont share the views of Sevastopol on the question but inane reasoning shouldnt have to have extra ironclad armour when in favor of the Palestinians and free passes when it is dipped in uber-zionism.
The guy claimed that Israelis - all of them - had “innate and incurable moral deficiencies.” This is hate speech, a violation of the rules. Whatever CitizenPained may have done, she has not said anything so blatantly bigoted.
But AT, I’m pretty sure what **Sevastopol **said was that considering that Israel shouldnt be called on on its actions would be considering that Israelis arent to be held to the same standards through which we would judge any other nation.
Basically, his stance seems to me to have been, you shouldnt make special rules for Israelis. Doing so means you dont consider them on par with humanity.
English isnt my first language so maybe I misread it, but I have the feeling you, like tomndebb and Marley skipread his posts and just focused on the outrageous stuff. Wherehas the outrageous stuff was precisely the point he was trying to make.
I definitely got exasperated, but I didn’t violate any rules ( I don’t think? ) as I didn’t feel it was fair to cry oh for shame on an Israeli for making legitimate points about history…considering Elvis’s continuing posts on how Israelis absolutely don’t want peace (and apparently, I don’t either?) I was fed up. How many times has Allesan been asked (and not sincerely) for a solution? wtf?
I honestly don’t think I violated a rule, and if I had, Tom would have called me out on it. He’s pretty good at that.
I also thought threadshitting is when you derail a topic, but that thread is full of, “Israelis steal land/commit genocide/commit war crimes/are imperialist racists/etc.”, soooo…I’m pretty sure my response was weak.
When people are hellbent on blaming Israel for everything, I do wonder what that’s all about.
Zombie has to make a deal about something I do every other day. I guess if there’s a whole ATMB thread about my response in the thread, I did something right.
Perhaps English isn’t his first language. He made inflammatory statements. Maybe he didn’t mean them the way they came out, but the way they came out seemed like blanket derision of all Jewish Israelis. He was told not to do that, but argued the point and repeated the same derisive statements even after being warned. Twice before.
If the point was “We should hold Israelis/Israel/Jews accountable for their war crimes,” he should have found a better way to say it. Like
“Why are we giving Israelies a free pass for war crimes/immoral acts? Why do Americans and the West seem to want to ignore their moral failings?”
Or something like that. I don’t really know what his point is. I’m not advocating that position, either.
When people blame a country for everything - no matter what the history, no matter what the evidence, no matter what the situation - I do wonder what that’s all about. You don’t?
It goes against all logic. So either someone is being a jerk on purpose or they’re just a few crayons short of a full set. If you found my statement inflammatory in light of being told that I belong to a family of genocidal criminals, damn. I don’t know what to tell you.
Why is this even an issue? He denigrated an entire race/nation* of people in an absolutely textbook example of how to break the “hate speech” rule and he got suspended and hopefully banned. And this isn’t the first time he’s done this: IIRC he once stated publically that he wanted Tel Aviv (?) nuked. I think he was suspended for that.
I’d think you anti-Zionists would be happy to see an actual anti-Semite banned.
Except that he hasnt here. IF he had been going on boilerplate rants about the pleasure he"d have in slaughtering Israelis, there wouldnt be anything to add but good riddance.
He didnt say that Israelis were animals nor did he say that Israelis dont have any morals in them. He said cutting some slack to Israel was akin to that.
I’d like someone to be banned for good reasons, especially in an Israel thread, and especially in a thread where taking a daily shitting on the non-entity that are Palestinians happen on a daily routine without any mod intervention.
I think that his analogy wasn’t ban-worthy. He wasnt calling Israelis animals, but rather drawing an absurdist conclusion from his strawman an opponents. However, his failure to follow instructions and change his tone or find another way to make his point after even being offered an example by the mod would definitely justify action, I think.
When a moderator suspends someone, the message board software automatically changes that person’s title to “banned” (the software considers a suspension to be a ban with a time limit). An administrator must then manually change the title from “banned” to “suspended.” If you happen to view the thread between the time the moderator does the suspension and the time the administrator changes the title, suspensions look like bans.
That’s pretty much how I saw it. I understand that Sevastopolpurported to be making an analogy - “your argument treats Israelis as if they were morally deficient” - but he has a track record with comments like this. And on top of that, he kept making those comments after tomndebb and I told him to stop and instructed him on what was allowed and what isn’t. That’s how he wound up with four warnings in about a day, and that’s why his posting privileges are under review.
After the animal comparison, Sevastopol was told to back off. Instead, he went on to claim that Israelis are innately immoral. When he was told to stop that, he came back and repeated it in direct flouting of the instructions to him.
Had he limited himself to claims that Israel or Israelis get special treatment or special consideration, I would not have batted an eye. The whole topic raises passions to the point of near insanity among a lot of people. However, making a claim that an entire people are incapable, from birth, of morality is nothing more than trolling. It is an incitement to get one’s opponents to lash back and totally disrupt the (already acrimonious) thread.
His Warnings were for trolling and for refusing to comply with Moderator instructions. They stand.
I can understand mods acting on previous warnings, not one poster’s messages being completely (or willingly) misunderstood by some mods, and then acting on it.
I’m not about to be beating a dead horse till the End Times though. I’m done on the subject.
