No, that isn’t what I said. I said Hamas ignited the current disaster - which is one step in a whole series of disastrous moves by both the State of Israel and Hamas.

Yes, but like I just said that logic can be extended to any action by Hamas that invites Israeli response, which is most of them.

But terrorism isn’t helpful when it leads to the genocide of your people.

Palestinians are the victims of genocide either way at the pre-Oct 7th rate. Israel was waiting for an excuse to do something like this.

If you’re trying to suggest that it’s a means to an end… Well first of all, the ends do not justify the means.

This logic doesn’t apply to the concept of war. The whole idea of war is that there’s some goal that one or both sides decides is worth killing people for. There are some things the world has agreed (while crossing their fingers behind their backs) can’t be done no matter your cause, but war has always been about the ends justifying the means.

Second of all - what end exactly has Hamas helped achieve here?

Israel is rapidly losing international support. This is having effects even now, but it’ll be even more apparent as older generations die off. And they stopped Saudi naturalization.

My point is that choosing violence didn’t work for Palestine, they lose more and more every time they try it, yet polling shows most still want intifada, most don’t want a two-state solution, or a one state solution where Jews have equal rights.

Violence is at least producing results (declining international support for Israel). Peace (the Oslo accords) did nothing except give us the dysfunctional PA and ever-increasing numbers of settlements. Remember the Great March of Return where nothing happened except Palestinians getting shot by laughing IDF snipers? You can’t have peace with an oppressor that rejects your existence.

the methods Palestinians use make even Sinn Fein distance themselves from them.

Yes but no. The IRA also relied a lot on car bombing and other blatant terror actions, because nothing else worked. That’s the case in Palestine, and in settler colonialist societies in general; when you outnumber the natives (or at least have numerical parity with them), there’s no reason to listen to their demands since they have no leverage. That’s how you get violence; it’s a way to produce leverage out of nothing.

The civil rights act was only passed after the riots that came after MLK’s death. There was very much violence involved, though that violence would’ve been impossible without the base MLK built.

Where is the Palestinian MLK or Gandhi?

Those two lived in completely different situations. Also they weren’t peaceful; they were nonviolent. On the subject of MLK, where are the Israeli youth who are going to march with said Palestinian MLK? Where’s the unfair but at least functional justice system they can use to fight against Apartheid? And that’s not to mention how Israel’s left wing basically rolled over and died in the 80s. The base that MLK used in America simply doesn’t exist in Israel. Palestine is under a military occupation; they get tried by military courts and can be shot by Israeli soldiers and civilians with impunity. That’s not a situation where you can peacefully resist; the closest anybody got to that was the first Intifada, and look how that turned out.

In Gandhi’s case, he correctly observed that the British occupation of India was impossible without the cooperation of Indians, so he called on Indians to completely boycott the occupation government and let it collapse. Palestine is different; Israel can (and is in the case of Gaza) maintain their occupation with exactly 0 Palestinian cooperation. Palestine is a cage with people locked inside by Israeli people with guns, and every other day the cage gets just a little smaller. There’s very little you can do in that situation except violent resistance. This is why I prefer the comparison with the Troubles; it gets most accurately the situation Palestine is in across, and why “well they should just negotiate peacefully” doesn’t work.