It may surprise some people, but this isn't one of the harder parts of moderating. There are borderline cases, but fewer than you might suppose, and asking people to make their substantive points without slurs (and/or banning the egregious cases) is usually fairly clear-cut and fairly accepted by the community, regardless of who the slur is directed against.
In this case, for example, I can't imagine that fair-minded advocates for Palestinians would have any problem with us moderating an obviously trollish comment referring to "jew tunnels". On the contrary, they'd surely be happy to have that cleared off HN so there is no chance of being associated with it.
p.s. there were no backchannels here. I ran across the comment randomly and it was a straightforward moderation call. I gave the user a path to get unbanned, if they want to, because they weren't a brand new account.
> There are comments denying Palestinians the right to live but they never get dang attention
If such comments exist, I certainly want to see them. Keep in mind that we don't come close to seeing everything that gets posted here. If you see a post that ought to have been moderated but hasn't been, the likeliest explanation is that we didn't see it. You can help by flagging it or emailing us at hn@ycombinator.com (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...).
I know it feels like the mods are against you—everyone with strong feelings feels that way—but it's not true. https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que.... We all seem to be hard-wired to jump to such conclusions, though, when strong feelings are active. For a long series of comments attempting to explain why, see https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que....