Top UN legal investigators conclude Israel is guilty of genocide in Gaza

Wonder why this made the frontpage when other political articles die.

Has the rules around political non technical articles changed? Can we get an Epstein thread for the frontpage sometime this week?

No, the rules haven't changed—they've been the same for many years. Let me try to dig up some past explanations.

Edit: here's one from a few months ago, which covers the principles: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43738815.

Re how we approach political topics on HN in general: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so...

Re how we deal with Major Ongoing Topics, i.e. topics where there are a ton of articles and submissions over time: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...

Re how we approach turning off flags: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...

Re the perception that "HN has been getting more political lately" (spoiler: it hasn't - though it does fluctuate): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17014869.

If you or anyone will check out some of those links and still have a question that isn't answered there, I'd be happy to take a crack at it.

Looking at the official HN guidelines, it states that "Most stories about politics" is off-topic, and "If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic".

Is the Isreal/Gaza debate not political, and not mainstream news? How does a story like this not directly violate those guidelines?

Furthermore, the guidelines state that stories should be what "good hackers" find "intellectually satisfying". A political debate thread about Isreal is what "good hackers" would find intellectually satisfying?

I just can not understand how a story such as this in any way remotely meets the established, official guidelines for what belongs here.

Considering these threads also, universally, just devolve in political flamewars / hate spreading. There's nothing constructive here. There's no debate. There's no opposing ideas/opinions allowed.

Israel and Israeli businesses are an intractable part of the modern American tech scene. Mellanox, for example, is the cited reason Nvidia ships any datacenter-scale interconnect at all today. America's highest-tech defense contractors work in direct concert with Rafael et. al, and companies like Cellebrite are suppliers of US law enforcement.

When the equation changes vis-a-vis Israel's credibility, this entire Jenga structure has to be reevaluated. It's not satisfying to think about, but it is intellectually prudent and remains important regardless of how civil the response ends up being.