Moderators said that their stance on this topic was formed by talking with lots of Israelis in real life, and a couple Palestinians online who are no longer active (maybe dead).
This can also happen automatically from the high rate of flags this topic gets from anti-politics and pro-Israel folks
What you're seeing is users flagging the articles. We've turned the flags off on stories related to Israel/Gaza several times. The people you disagree with are just as upset about it as you are, btw, and just as convinced that the site is biased against them.
This is an impossible situation, but I'm still willing to turn off flags on the story in the future—but the article is going to have to be something more substantial than an opinion piece about a meme. Obviously the users who flagged this particular submission were correct to do so.
I assume you've already seen the many explanations I've posted about how we approach this and similar topics, but in case not—or for anyone who wants to know—here are a few:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39237176
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38947003 (Jan 2024)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38749162 (Dec 2023)
This is all standard HN moderation practice that has been in place for many years. We haven't changed it. You're welcome to disagree about particular calls (i.e. about particular threads)—I don't claim we've called everything perfectly, in fact I know we haven't. But it's cheap and wrong for you to defame us for not allowing HN to burn to the ground on this topic, just as it's cheap and wrong for others to do so because we won't suppress the topic altogether.
If the HN audience universally thinks something is reprehensible, it's an acceptable topic. If there's a core group that supports the reprehensible thing, it's now controversial and disallowed here.
Paul Graham I think is now retired from YC. The current YC CEO is pro-Israel, pro-Zionism.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_and_the_Holocaust
If any lessons were learned from IBM role in WWII, it seems they were mostly forgotten in the past 70 years.
ICJ orders Israel to prevent genocide in Gaza, stops short of ordering ceasefire - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39143043 - Jan 2024 (1401 comments)
Israeli group claims it’s using back channels to censor “inflammatory” content - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38941719 - Jan 2024 (348 comments)
Meta censors pro-Palestinian views on a global scale, report claims - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38745673 - Dec 2023 (751 comments)
'Like we were lesser humans': Gaza boys, men recall Israeli arrest, torture - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38616550 - Dec 2023 (1308 comments)
The pro-Israel information war - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38572675 - Dec 2023 (1675 comments)
The topic isn't banned. The issue is how often to have a thread about it (which often involves turning off user flags) and by what principles to decide this. HN has had clear moderation principles about this kind of thing for many years. If you, or anyone, wants to understand what they are, take a look at the links in https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39435024 and you'll find further links to plenty of past explanations. If, after reading those, you or anyone else has a question that I haven't already answered, I'd be happy to hear what it is.
