Hey all. I’d like to open an official discussion regarding the upturning of the prior Hexbear party line on an :israel-cool: emote proper with the unambiguous Zionist flag.
I want to preface this by saying this is not in a ‘ceding the issue’ way. Over the past year I’ve been trying to engage in self-crit w/rt the chauvinism I’ve internalized growing up in a Liberal Zionist household, and my personal viewpoint on it did a 180 some months back, so I want to reopen this discussion proper in my personal capacities as Self-Appointed Emote Czar.
The reason it’s taken long enough beyond that is prior to July, I was essentially half-engaged with the site in order to finish out my degree. After that, it’s been mostly inertia of confirming with the admins and other /c/Judaism mods, as well as having to be rigorous about my job search personally giving me little free time to coordinate this.
I do not want to center myself in this conversation more than I inadvertently already have, so I will leave my own opinion on the issue as a comment rather than explaining further here.
The consensus we’ve roughly come to is to open up the discussion in an official manner for a day or so. After that, I’ll weigh the discussion in an entirely vibes-based manner (sorry Dean Norris enjoyers) and we’ll alter Hexbear party line on it accordingly.
This seems reasonable to me and I’m glad you’re willing to reflect on and change your views. Congratulations on finishing your degree, too — I assume you did finish it, right?
I think somebody once sent me the podcast Proles of the Minyan, whose first episode advocates for ending usage of the Star of David as a symbol of Jewishness altogether — and I found this a very striking idea which was of course a bit depressing in context, that at least some Jews feel the need to go a step beyond just changing the color or stroke thickness or what-have-you of the Star of David, in favor of using an entirely different symbol.
Incidentally, my own style generally refers to the Nazi symbol as a Hakenkreuz, as a way to further distinguish it from the Dharmic swastika — my impression is that this is a fairly common practice in India and not so much elsewhere.
As for the burning flag emoji itself, I don’t really have particularly strong feelings one way or the other. I guess if I were to say anything, it’s that the emoji as it stands really conveys extra symbolism to me by altering the design: the use of the Stern Gang’s Schwurhand to me highlights how the Zionist Entity was founded on settler violence and sustains itself through settler violence, and, at that, the Schwurhand emblem itself is as far as I understand culturally rooted in Central European heraldry. However, insofar as other people do not interpret the alteration of the flag in the same way as I do, and rather take the alteration of the flag as representing a form of Jewish exceptionalism by refusing to see the star burned — then I would not oppose changing the flag to its “proper” design.
I did finish my degree
Congrats!!!