Ask HN: Why can't we discuss Israel on HN?

10 pointsposted a day ago
by cramsession

Item id: 46218920

18 Comments

dang

15 hours ago

I turned off flags on that story when I saw it, many hours before I saw this post just now. You should have done as the site guidelines ask (https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html) and emailed hn@ycombinator.com about this rather than starting an off-topic meta thread. If you had, we could have fixed the problem sooner.

If you want a more general answer about how we moderate this topic, try https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46227485 (from a few minutes ago). For older explanations, here's a sample:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44403947 (June 2025)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39920732 (April 2024)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39618973 (March 2024)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39435324 (Feb 2024)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39435024 (Feb 2024)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39237176 (Feb 2024)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38947003 (Jan 2024)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38749162 (Dec 2023)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38657527 (Dec 2023)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27252765 (May 2021)

p.s. Your submission history https://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=cramsession is obviously against the site guidelines because you've been using HN primarily for political battle. Normally we'd ban such an account or take submission privileges away from it. We haven't done that in your case and I'm not going to do it right now (it feels unsporting to bust people in an extraneous context, even if they've been breaking the rules badly). But you should understand that using HN only to prosecute a political cause, even a just one, is a violation of this site.

appreciatorBus

16 hours ago

If it's been flagged to death this is not a sign that it's clearly relevant, it's a sign people are deeply annoyed that "everything is palestine" submitters keep trying to drown the front page in it.

The irony is that if there was less effort to turn HN into settler-colonial studies, the odd story would be better received. Instead there are a handful of accounts that post nothing but Israel leading to other readers, flagging them on-sight, knowing that nothing good will come of the "debate" that will feature in the comments. Just the same ppl rehashing the same arguments & positions until everyone exhausts themselves.

8 of your last 10 posts are about the middle east - why? The site name is hacker news not israel news and not palestine news.

dnemmers

a day ago

I think you’d find other sites a better recipient of your submissions. A cursory glance at your post history indicates the ‘Israel’ portion of the article far exceeds any ‘Tech’ interest.

cramsession

a day ago

Palantir is a tech company.

ukblewis

12 hours ago

This doesn’t change the fact that you are hyper focused on Israel

BjoernKW

a day ago

Because that particular article is biased in framing the pager attacks as a "terrorist attack" while, actually, those attacks were precisely targeted at Hezbollah personnel.

Those weren't devices for personal - or civilian - use, after all.

vga42

a day ago

I'm just guessing here: Because the "discussion" is either direct propaganda, or people affected by the propaganda spreading the propaganda.

cramsession

a day ago

This is news, not propaganda. Palantir was involved in the pager attack.

duxup

a day ago

Certain topics and keywords seem to get nuked VERY fast in new.

RickJWagner

a day ago

It’s fair. We don’t discuss the October 7th massacre either, and that must be discussed before we discuss anything Israel has done since.

cramsession

a day ago

Whatever you think of Oct 7th, it doesn’t have anything to do with tech. Posts like these do.

ukblewis

12 hours ago

Got it. You can blame Israel as much as you like because you can find a tech company to help you do so, but since the terrorists are barbarians, stories about them aren’t… Just wait till you find out that they had to build more tunnels than the London Underground and that believe it or not, this takes tech…

myth_drannon

a day ago

Because everyone can see through your propaganda compaign. HN is overrun by Qatari/Iranian/Pakistani sock puppets and it is very obvious. Just looking at the OP posts...

cramsession

a day ago

I’m in the US, which also happens to be the target of Palantir spying.

ukblewis

12 hours ago

And if I were the NSA, I would pay companies to spy on you too… I would imagine a non-zero probability that you are planning/would plan/carry out a terror attack on American (Zionist) Jews

sjreese

a day ago

UN RES 1701 is being violated - in Lebanon -- the public news suppression is total from - HN point of view there is two questions - HOW and WHY -- The IDF has created a new adware insertion tools - that has the ability to drop malware by clicking on an ad -- infecting cell phones in 150 countries -- the test of the tool was to shutdown 28% of the internet in the last 30 days ( Cloudflare spin team reports 1 man gave a bad updated ) -- This was done Three times. Second this new tool can create false ad impressions - generating real profit from ads no human every saw - and because of the placement of malware the SLPP ( London based ) lawfare team can sue for millions if you don't pay. for google, meta and XAl the loss with be in the 100's millions on 4.5 Billion in total revenue. The real target is REAL news UN/1701 and YOU.