a war they started.
There are chances the outcome would be different if hamas released hostages, or didn’t attack Israel on October 7th. Those things were not smart. It didn’t serve any good purpose. A smarter thing would have been to prepare for such an attack from Israel by building defenses to protect civilians at the very least.
No there are not, this has been ongoing for decades and decades. Things would not have magically improved, it would have continued to be a slow death sentence whilst the world ignored it.
What Hamas did, no matter how tragic, has done more to bring light and international support to the plight of the Palestinian peoples and exposed Israel as the monster it is than anything else ever has.
What Hamas did had a totally unsurprising result, as distressing as that is, that inevitably resulted in, and continues to result in, unacceptable civilian suffering. Moreover, even though Israel has slow walked towards a regressive ethnofascist state since at least the Rabin’s assassination, the October attack straight up merced whatever dwindling progressive peace activist movements on the Israeli side that were still continuing the struggle.
One can be anti-Zionist and pro-basic human decency without romanticizing a violent religious fundamentalist organization that has at this point done almost nothing but harm to the interests and well-being of the people whom it purports to be protecting.
That didn’t worth it in my opinion. The level of international support is nowhere enough. And again, they could build defenses to decrease the number of victims.
Also the premise of “Israel is a monster” sentiment is hugely weakened by the monstrosity of the October attack itself.
Gaza is an open air prison. The ICJ concluded that it still was occupied since Israel retreated from it militarily as Israel still controlled all Land and Sea borders and destroyed the airport. Israel limited all sorts of goods going into Gaza well before October 7. They blocked construction material, telecommunications, limited medical and food supplies… The goal always was to slowly deteriorate the living conditions in Gaza so more people would leave, allowing Israel to occupy and annex again.
Hamas had and has very limited resources, which is why they fight in this way. And the world was quite happy to look away at Israel illegally occupying, annexing, killing civillians when it feels like in the Westbank and at demonstrations, running torture camps and taking tens of thousands of Palestinians hostage through “administrative detention” without any charge, without any due process, without even access to lawyers.
No it’s not. More than one side can be monstrous in a conflict. “Yeah well but they did X so it’s okay that we did Y” is bible level reasoning aka no reasoning and pretty much what is causing the whole thing anyway.
