• KombatWombat@lemmy.world
    34·
    10 days ago

    PJ does this a lot. The original post article was claiming that SA was being used as a ‘genocidal strategy’, which is an extremely bold claim and would need to show not only evidence of SA happening, but a coordinated and premeditated intent in order to drive Israelis from Israel.

    No, the article stated “Israeli legal and gender experts” are claiming something like that, as reflected in the title. It also mentions “Hamas has denied its forces committed sexual violence against women or mistreated female hostages.” The article is reporting on the claim, the evidence used to support it, and the limited amount the UN has actually been able to verify. It distinctly doesn’t confirm it, because as you pointed out the burden of proof is high and doing so would be very irresponsible when it cannot be substantiated. PJ meanwhile doesn’t claim anything more than the article does, at least in their post. In fact, it looks like the entire post including the title is directly lifted from the article.

    The pull-quotes PJ is pointing to are acknowledging instances of SA - and really only acknowledging what little evidence beyond first-person accounting there is - but explicitly not ‘systemic and coordinated’ SA.

    Agreed, neither article proves the Israeli claim. The UN report does disprove the Hamas claim that none of their forces are committing sexual violence, but it does not prove that it is systemic as the Israeli group asserts. That is an important distinction. I haven’t seen PJ actually claim that it was systemic but they could be implying it by seemingly trying to use that quote as a contradiction to OP saying that it’s an Israeli lie.

    OP was pointing this out, even in his replies with PJ that he linked. PJ was ignoring the distinction and trying to bait a stronger reaction, and ended up banning OP as a result.

    It’s true that PJ didn’t acknowledge the distinction. They may not have realized that was the source of the pushback. But regardless, I still don’t think that’s enough to say the ban was retaliatory. Mass-downvoting a community’s posts is reason enough to ban someone from it. It’s essentially brigading and even one user can be pretty disruptive with small communities. That’s why I wanted to know if OP had been acting in a way that qualifies for a legitimate ban or not.

    PJ has been on a tear the last few days, and was clearly not in a place to be acting as a mod. He’s been starting fights and baiting people all week and deserves some mandatory time off.

    I don’t follow Lemmy politics enough to remember much of PJ’s history other than that they are a big enough contributor to be a familiar name and that they were involved in some drama with 196. If they’re going through something recently that’s making them lash out, then I hope it gets better soon. They didn’t seem particularly irritable from this interaction though.

    • anarchiddy@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
      12·
      10 days ago

      It’s true that PJ didn’t acknowledge the distinction. They may not have realized that was the source of the pushback. But regardless, I still don’t think that’s enough to say the ban was retaliatory.

      PJ listed ‘sexual assault denier’ as the reason for the ban, seems pretty clear that - at the very least - this interaction was top-of-mind when he was issuing it.

      I haven’t seen PJ actually claim that it was systemic but they could be implying it by seemingly trying to use that quote as a contradiction to OP saying that it’s an Israeli lie.

      This is the thing I’m pointing to as a pattern with him:

      • Felix says “anything that follows ‘Israel says’ is usually a lie”
      • PJ jumps on it and quotes the UN finding that SA occurred (leaving out the second part of the original claim by Israel which is addressed later in the UN report that they didn’t find it ‘systemic’)
      • Felix responds with the drop site article that discusses that exact claim (that the SA was systemic)
      • PJ ignores the topic of the article, jumps on the specific part that mentions the Dinah Project, pulls the commonly sighted quote from it that says they found ‘patterns’ of SA (but the next sentence says they could not verify any instances due to Israeli obstruction)
      • Felix then responds with the item in the article he was referring when he linked to it (that the UN does not have evidence of systemic sexual assault). Note that the quote he is pulling is referring to a statement made by a top UN official, not to the link PJ is harping on
      • PJ then incorrectly attributes that statement to the article he is talking about, which is the one felix’s article is criticizing as being used by Zionists as evidence of systemic violence despite that report saying explicitly that they did not have evidence of systemic violence, only “patterns indicative of sexual violence” but of which individual instances could not be verified due to obstruction

      Whether or not PJ went into that interaction knowing felix’s intent is hard to say, but it should have been clear to him by the end that there was no actual disagreement being expressed. In the end, PJ mis-represents the source material and doubles-down on his accusation of SA denial in his ban reasoning in the modlog. An interaction that should have ended in clarity instead ends in him banning the user, if not for the stated reason in the log, at-best for downvoting posts in another comm.

      It’s a pattern with PJ that he dives headlong into an argument making an assumption about a user’s intent, and then when the user clarifies their position against his accusation, he doubles-down by either misrepresenting that user’s statements or by twisting source material to fit the accusation being made. By the end of that argument, all he’s doing is accusing felix of lying by mis-attributing the source material he’s using. He’s being unnecessarily hostile when, in the end, there wasn’t an actual substantive disagreement between them.

      I don’t follow Lemmy politics enough to remember much of PJ’s history other than that they are a big enough contributor to be a familiar name and that they were involved in some drama with 196.

      He’s a prolific poster/commenter and a mod of probably a dozen communities. I don’t care about the history comms he spends a lot of time in, but I do often see him pop up in political gossip/snark communities like ‘tankyjerk’ and ‘meanwhileongrad’. Most of his original content he posts is fine, if not good - but he often gets into it with other users on politics and does exactly this kind of rage baiting, occasionally posting it to the political snark comms if he’s worked up enough about it.