From a moderation point of view, it's a question of the effect that these bits have on other people in the community, and therefore the quality of the discussion. It's obviously near-impossible to have a thoughtful conversation about a topic like this across the vast differences (ideological, national, emotional) that separate people. In such a context, even provocations that feel small and justified can set the neighborhood on fire.
If the discussion devolves into just another internet screaming match where people hurl pre-existing talking points and just get even more riled up in rage, then the HN thread is a failure. Maybe it's too much to hope for anything better on this topic, which is probably the most divisive and emotional one we've ever seen, but I think we have to try. That's we allow the topic to appear on the HN front page from time to time. Not to allow it would be easier, at least in the short term, but inconsistent with the intended spirit of the site.
The bulk of your post wasn't doing anything like flamewar at all, so the swipey bits were particularly unfortunate.
p.s. I don't mean to pile on, but "please stop pretending" is also a swipe. You can't know whether someone else is pretending, and there's no reason to suppose that people aren't sincere in their convictions about a highly-charged topic (separately from whether their beliefs are true or false). If you lead by denying that, the rest of what you have to say will have little chance of being heard.
I don't agree that it isn't relevant to HN. The central value of this site is intellectual curiosity, construed broadly (see https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...). If you try to define that in a way that detaches from larger human concerns, you make it smaller. Curiosity doesn't benefit from that.
There are many reasons to be unhappy with these threads and how the topic lands on HN generally. I am by no means happy—I just don't think that the alternative is better. Curiosity ultimately has to do with relating to what's real and true. You can't impose a narrow view of on- and off-topcicness on that.
Trying to keep HN true to those values is subject to a thousand constraints, some obvious, many not. That means the problem can never be solved—not to everyone's satisfaction, nor even to anyone's satisfaction. Therefore we all have a certain amount of dissatisfaction to tolerate.
Sorry but I think you made the wrong call here.
The comments are actually better than expected given the sensitivity of the topic at hand.
That is far from the case, as you can see for yourself if you look more closely.
People (I don't mean you personally, but all of us—it seems to be basic human bias) are far too quick to jump to "always". I call this the notice-dislike bias (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...), which is a terrible name I'm hoping someone can improve on.
It seems to be very similar to Baader-Meinhoff. I guess it’s called “frequency illusion” now, which is much more descriptive.
Thanks for the reply though—I hope someday someone will come up with a good name for it; or better, still, point out that it's a known bias in the standard repertoire and tell me what it's called.