May I ask why did you move comments here and changed URL to that other entry, instead of just moving comments from this thread to the other? ISTM you already had a submission with correct URL, so naively it sounds simpler to do one operation than two...
I'd already forgotten! but I think I've reconstructed it. I changed the URL of the current post (see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40587079) because the haaretz.com article seemed better than the forbes.com one. Normally we would do it the other way, as you mentioned - we'd move the comments to the submission with the better article. But in this case I didn't want to reward that submitter because their pattern of submissions was clearly breaking HN's guidelines: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40587097. So I did it the other way.
(I know nothing about moderation tools)