Why the lack of Palestine questions lately?

Question

I noticed after I got banned a few times for supporting Palestine, now there aren't many more Palestine questions on the site. Is this because everyone who supports Palestine got banned? Or just a general lack of interest now?

Answer 1

There isn't necessarily a lack of questions about Palestine. In the last three months, there have been about 16 questions tagged with palestine and 9 tagged with gaza that were not also tagged with palestine. There are also about 13 questions tagged with israel or 2023-israel-hamas-war that are not tagged with the other two tags, about 38 altogether. The first category accounts for 7.5% of all the questions about Palestine that have been asked in the last approximately 11 years. All or nearly all of these questions, from all categories, are about the Israel invasion of Gaza, which of course is part of Palestine.

By contrast, for the Russian invasion of Ukraine, there were 10 questions tagged as ukraine in the same period, with around 12 tagged as russian-federation or russo-ukrainian-war without the preceding tag, about 22 altogether. Again, all or nearly all were about the war.

Given that the latter war is about 1.5 years older than the former, and that international interest in wars tends to fall over time, none of these numbers seem particularly surprising. The Israeli invasion of Gaza has had at least 110 questions (not counting the ones with only the gaza tag) since it began, over a period of about 9 months, but about 275 counting all relevant tags (i.e. the Gaza and 2023 Israel-Hamas war tags). The second war, the Russian invasion of Ukraine, actually had perhaps about 270 of those in the first 9 months, and about 110 since then.

So there may indeed be (and have been) somewhat lesser interest in the Israeli invasion of Gaza, but there may not have been, and that said, if anything, the number of questions has fallen off about as quickly—only about 44 of those Russo-Ukrainian War questions were asked in November, October and September of 2022, between six and nine months after the beginning of the war, out of 270 or so over the whole period (14%).

Combining the three Israel-Palestine war tags mentioned previously, around 38 of the 275 questions asked in the 9 months since the beginning of the Israeli invasion of Gaza were asked in the last 3 months (16%). These are pretty similar, probably statistically identical, percentages.

For the sake of completeness, the third major armed conflict of the present day, the civil war in Sudan—which does not have heavy involvement from countries where most of the site's users live, unlike the other two—has been ongoing for a little over a year and has 5 questions.

My conclusion is that independently of whether some moderators may be unfairly biased against certain pro-Palestinian perspectives—and there is probably some truth to that assertion–the premise of the question, that there have recently been few questions about Palestine on the site, is not necessarily correct; furthermore, the total number of questions about the Israeli invasion of the Gaza Strip and the Russian invasion of Ukraine over their first nine months has been similar (and higher than similar conflicts in countries in which SE users' home nations are not as entangled).

Answer 2

Does SE support Israel? As far as I have seen yes, but perhaps only to some extent; to that extent that people are expected to accept Israel to exist. Here Jews are assumed to be oppressed for centuries and people assume it ethical to consider Israel has the right to defend itself (is it self-defense really? asking such questions might be considered crossing the red lines here). People here are assumed ethically normal only if they at most consider the two-state solution. Hamas is considered obvious terrorist, Iran is somewhat hated for not accepting Israel as a country (but only Palestine), and although I've seen people who accept Israel has been established on oppression and blood but yet defend it anyway, with arguments like if anyone wants to ignore the right of self-defense for Israel the same should be true about the American countries, Australia and other countries which have almost all been established in a similar fashion, and since they are not to be blamed after too many years that have been past so is Israel, assuming many Jew inhabitants there to be born in the land. This argument is as strongly believed that talking about it is considered nonsense and people thinking the contrary are assumed trolls. Banning pro-Palestine people might be due to this viewpoint, e.g. if such questions are asked. They do not consider themselves really pro-Israel, or against pro-Palestine, as long as the contributors accept the right for Jews to have their own state (and the state should be the very Israel and nothing more, at least in Political.SE) and defend themselves (obviously I refuse to accept they are self-defending after so many war-crime acts counted and too many uncounted), and at the same time they do not consider Israelis as infallible, only being oppressed and never oppressing the Palestinians. For example, a few months ago there was a Pro-Israel contributor who was frequently blaming many contributors as antisemitic as soon as they criticized Israel, and he is now banned like you were. Therefore I do not agree that everyone who supports Palestine got banned.

However, people here are sometimes critical/sensitive against slogans like from the river to the sea Palestine will be free, due to the same strong belief in Israel anyway (right or false, good or bad) being now an acceptable country, say, in UN, not debatable at all for its rights. So if you go somewhat off the norm here you will be accused, labeled, blamed, and maybe banned, whether you are a Pro-Palestine or Pro-Israel guy. The issue being a place for manifestation of anger and hatred, many people -I suppose- dislike to contribute in such an atmosphere, unless they feel OK to follow the norm here. Therefore maybe I can approve what you mentioned as just a general lack of interest now.

Meanwhile, recall that SE is a Q/A website, not a place to read news, and the correlation between news and atmosphere here is not necessarily so strong, and if questions are rare on an issue (if it is really the case here) that could mean either there is no question in the minds of the contributors (people receive News from their own reliable resources, accept what goes well with their own accepted facts and suspect in what contradict them, the contradiction might make them to simply reject the doubtful News or rather to think more and conduct a research, asking a question here is only one mean for such a research, and this special case is something that people commonly do not feel they will need to research about their already accepted facts, so least fundamental questions, and maybe aggression against the fundamental questions), or people are tired of being labeled this way or that way, and prefer to ask their relevant questions elsewhere, or simply research the resources on their own. This seems to me more reasonable and just, compared to simply saying SE defends Israel and is against Pro-Palestine people.