First, I'm new to actively using lemmy, so I'm gradually learning the etiquette on here, and how it differs from other forums. Also, I did not know the downvote button is disabled on your instance, so thank you for the context.

It feels a bit too reddit-like to have open trolls commenting in our communities, but constantly being down voted to the bottom of threads

Sure, if they are actual trolls, and we can define that together in this thread or as a community. However, this user was an active commenter in several news/palestine-related communities, and lets just be honest, was not trolling or derailing the discussion. He disagreed with the OP (and to an extent I share a similar view) that Judaism and American Jews have deep sympathies to Israel, and this manifests in material structures in the United States (synagogues, community orgs, PACs, etc)

OKAY PAUSE

if that last statement is ban worthy because its trolling or "anti-semitism" , how the hell are we supposed to actually have this debate? Then this isn't trolling and this is where active discussion and voting should take place in the thread. Keep in mind, the person who flung accusations was the mod of the community when he said " You're not an anti-semite are you?"

Thats why I think this is blatant mod abuse because there seems to be this unnecessary over-moderation and that's exhibited by the guy continuing the convo in this thread which is unrelated to the community. Overall this fractures discussion across the entire website, not just the individual instance.

Last, you're going to have to prove the commenter has a repeated history of posting out-of-topic or bait. Not just a singular instance of a disagreement in perspective, and calling out a mod for a flimsy argument using his own rhetoric.