Yes.
If they are racially motivated, and shows hatred towards a whole ethinicity and people, yes, the posts should be removed and the users banned after repeat violations.
If they are racially motivated, and shows hatred towards a whole ethinicity and people, yes, the posts should be removed and the users banned after repeat violations.
But what about "Turn Iraq into a glass parking lot"? Someone could argue that they aren't targeting a "whole ethnicity" because Iraq is simply one of many Arab/Muslim-majority nations - and not even in the top 3 most populous Arab countries. After all, the person didn't say "Kill every Muslim" nor did they say "Bomb all Muslim countries" -- they just stated one of MANY countries that happens to be majority Muslim.
If somebody says Turn Iraq into a glass parking lot, they should be banned after repeat violations, and their post should be removed.
Israel is running a slow-motion ethnic cleansing campaign against Palestinians, practices apartheid, and violates international law by building settlements on occupied territories... but you say that the reason Palestinians hate Israelis is because of their race? Yeah, sure.
You are uninformed in this matter.
You can find rampant anti-Jewish sentiment in Quran and Hadith, and they are widely circulated in social media.
You maybe living in the West where such posts are not circulated, but they exist outside of your sphere.
There are two narratives. One in English- where they are the victims, and they need saving. Another one in Arabic, where they call for genocide of the Jewish people regularly.
And these were brought into my attention by my friends speaking Arabic.
Just because this narrative exists outside your focus and periphery, does not mean it does not exist.
This is an entirely irrelevant, even ridiculous, argument, given the present situation. Which is that there is a very concrete and justified reason for Palestinians to hate Israel, and that's because Israel is oppressing them in a way that no people would ever tolerate and that would be classified and prosecuted as a crime if the perpetrators were any others than the West's darlings.
By the way, a friend of mine is a Palestinian from the West Bank who was subject to Israeli persecution, and had in the end to flee elsewhere. She is Christian, as has been her family since time immemorial. I can assure you she heartily hates Israel nonetheless. (10% of Palestinians were Christians, that's something Israel prefers to gloss over, since any empathy from the Christian west is dangerous).
You want to talk about the atavic, religious hatred that Palestinians harbour for Jews? Cool, then remove all the actual, justifiable reasons for that hatred and after that, if there's any left, we can talk about it.
I'd also point out that from the perspective of a secular westerner, even if one group is calling for the genocide of the other regularly; is the other group, which is actually committing genocide regularly, able to be held up as morally superior in any way? Is that group (Israeli Zionists) actually worth defending at all?
You have to remember that for the vast majority of the world, neither religious viewpoint holds much weight; only the globally agreed common ethics.
If it were just the one thread, I'd let you off with a warning, but this is egregious (and it seems you've done this with other accounts in the past, too). Therefore I've banned this account.
If you don't want to be banned, you're welcome to email hn@ycombinator.com and give us reason to believe that you'll follow the rules in the future. They're here: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.
Edit: just in case anyone is worried about it: when we ban accounts in politically contentious threads, it's not because we secretly disagree with the politics of the banned account. Our goal is simply to enforce the site guidelines and prevent HN from turning into a flamewar hell, the end state of which would be scorched earth (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...). The history of moderation comments here—not that anyone would want to slog through it—contains plenty of examples of HN users getting banned from every possible political angle.