Reddit permanently banned my six-year-old account for hate speech last week. 

My offense, as best as I can tell, was explaining that Jews are an ethnoreligious people.  

I appreciate that this sounds improbable. Had someone told me this story a few years ago, I’d have assumed they were leaving something out. Surely there had been threats, slurs or some spectacular lapse in judgment buried deeper in the thread.

The ban itself, however, isn’t the interesting part. Social media platforms make moderation mistakes every day, and anonymous accounts disappear with little fanfare. What has stayed with me is the conversation that came before it. Somewhere between debating Zionism and debating my DNA, the discussion stopped being about the history of a conflict or an ongoing war. It became a referendum on whether Jews constitute a people.

For nearly six years, Reddit occupied one of the least political corners of my life. I wasn’t there to defend governments or debate borders. Most of my time was spent in writers’ communities, where strangers workshopped opening chapters, dissected dialogue and argued quite passionately over punctuation. The rest belonged to the kinds of forums people only discover when life becomes unexpectedly difficult: depression, epilepsy, grief and, eventually, motherhood. They were communities built around vulnerability rather than ideology, places where anonymity made honesty easier.

Over time, my account became an accidental archive of my life. It watched me grieve my mother’s sudden death, recover from a debilitating depressive episode, survive a pandemic, move to Israel, grow as a writer and eventually become a mother.

Then, one afternoon, it disappeared.

By the time I appealed, the experience had become harder to dismiss with an everyday roll of the eyes. Reddit had already deleted the very comment it claimed violated its site guidelines. The automated suspension notice included a link to the offending comment, but clicking it led only to “[deleted].” It’s difficult to meaningfully challenge an accusation when you’re no longer able to review the evidence against you.

I hadn’t logged in looking for a political argument. Years of reporting on Israel have taught me that internet debates rarely resemble conversations. Most people aren’t trying to understand the other side. They’re performing certainty for an audience that already agrees with them.

Unfortunately, I happened to be sick in bed with far too much idle time when I stumbled across a post in r/sixwordstories. The premise of the subreddit is charmingly simple: every story must be told in exactly six words.

This particular title read:

“Zionism Makes Me Sick As F*ck.”

Curious more than combative, I replied with what I assumed was a pretty unremarkable question.

“Out of curiosity, what’s your reasoning for that belief?”

That was apparently an unforgivable offense.

Not because I defended every action of Israel’s government or denied Palestinian suffering. I did neither. Throughout the discussion, I repeatedly explained that I oppose Bibi’s government, oppose Ben Gvir and Smotrich, and support Palestinian self-determination alongside Israel’s continued existence. None of those positions altered the trajectory of the conversation. The moment I identified myself as Israeli, my actual politics became largely irrelevant.

I’ve begun noticing this progression online with unsettling frequency since October 7. Conversations rarely remain about Zionism for long. They begin there, then migrate to Israel, then Israelis, then Jews, then Jewish history, Jewish ancestry and, eventually, Jewish DNA. By the end, nobody is arguing about an ideology or government anymore. They’re arguing about whether Jews constitute a people at all.

The screenshots from that thread read almost like satire.

One commenter informed me........

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