How otherwise admirable nuance and sensitivity to charged language runs the risk of obscuring truth

*EDIT* Mods just realized this topic does not meet the forum guidelines (being based on a news item). Any possibility it can be moved to a more suitable forum?

In a recent thread in General Discussion : Presidential there a section of the thread was deleted by the moderator for reasons that are only vaguely apparent and I think are mistaken in their logic, and in fact point to a larger problem of both moderation and self-censorship in left dialog that crosses the line from being admirably nuanced and sensitive, to actually muddying the water and silencing reasonable views.

A precis of the sub-thread is that someone responded to a report in which Israeli settlers spoke of "all of Eretz Yisrael" being "given to them by God" and having a God-given right to drive out the Palestinians and claim all of the West Bank as their own. The poster's response was to call them the "Jewish Taliban". Another poster immediately protested that the previous poster should make a distinction between "Israelis" and "Jews", in my estimation a senseless distinction in light of the topic under discussion. The sub-thread was deleted by the moderator.

There are a lot of situations where such a distinction is ignored, to the detriment of clear understanding of the topic, but this was not one of them. In fact it represented a double standard in how different beliefs and ethnic groups are dealt with. I have never seen a post deleted because the poster referred to the "Christian Taliban" rather than the "American" or "Texas" Taliban. Or for referring to "Muslim Extremists" rather than "Egyptian Extremists".

At issue here is that the settlers being interviewed were ethnic/religious extremists, who's interpretation of their faith dictates that they have the right to trample the fundamental human rights of others. There is no rational reason why nationality should be substituted in for ethnicity/religion in this case. The poster who was deleted did not make a sweeping statement about Jews, but clearly identified a subculture of extremism motivated by their religion and ethnicity. Furthermore, that subculture is an international category and not restricted to Israel's borders.

This is quite reasonably considered an acceptable mode of discussion where Christian, Muslim or Hindu extremists are concerned, as evidenced by countless posts on this board, but not where Jewish extremists are concerned (at least where some moderators and in fact many of my left associates are concerned). Which in and of itself is a racist/bigoted position.

There is clearly a distinction between these kinds of statements that is not being properly parsed by some:

Indefensible and bigoted: "The Jewish lobby controls American foreign policy"

Defensible and worthy of consideration: "Right wing Zionists have disproportionate influence over the US' relationship with Israel"

Indefensible and bigoted: "The Jews are racists"

Defensible and worthy of consideration: "Some proportion of Israeli Jews are racist towards Arabs"

Defensible and worthy of consideration: "Many Jewish extremists operate from the indefensible position that they have a God-given mandate to drive out the Palestinians"

Defensible and worthy of consideration (referring explicitly to a referenced subculture of extremists by way of metaphor): "The Jewish Taliban"

Situations such as the above frustrate me because the confusion over what is reasonable and accurate use of categories and what constitutes unfairly slandering people due to over-broad categories, is actually exploited by right-wingers and extremists to shame or intimidate many leftists such as myself into silence. Even worse, some who actually share my world-view are co-opted into censoring reasonable speech which is categorically identical to other, similar, dialog about other ethnicities that is not censored.

In previous discussions of this with left friends the issue of hegemony has come up and how it changes what constitutes discriminatory speech and what doesn't ("White Christian Male" is the implicit normative measure, so different consideration apply), but this is irrelevant when an uneven standard isn't being applied to a hegemonic and subordinate ethnicity/religion, but to two subordinate ethnicity/religions

Just had to get that off my chest.