First of all, thank you sooo much for reading and for this thoughtful comment! Please forgive me as it's going to be a long reply lmao
A few things-- first, generally speaking, most Israelis are opposed to Netanyahu (hundreds of thousands had been literally constantly protesting for his removal for months before 10/7, and even now, all polls show if there were elections and his coalition fell through, he would easily lose).
This is important for two reasons: 1) because there is a collective punishment and ostracizing of ALL Israelis (and unfortunately of all Jews, even those who have never set foot in Israel) for the actions of Israel's government, happening in protests and activist spheres worldwide, despite vast Israeli opposition to many facets of the right-wing government, ranging from the settlements to the war approach.
2) Regardless of protests and opposition among Israelis, there seems to be a deep hatred in the leftist/activist/"humanitarian"-concerned world pertaining to this war, where allegedly "criticizing a government" is immediately conflated with demanding the downfall of an entire country and celebrating the death and suffering of all its people. Ironically, it only bolsters the necessity of Israel's strong defense.
To put that in perspective with another example, China has been genociding Uyghurs for many years now, and you don't see anyone calling for the eradication of the Chinese state (let alone even calling for boycotts, unlike BDS). That's an imperfect example anyway, because Israel is not and has not been genociding Palestinian people (even the ICJ which was stacked against Israel couldn't rule in favor of calling it a genocide, and instead urged Israel to minimize civilian casualties and called for the immediate release of the hostages); the Palestinian population has grown 480% from 1950-2024-- compare that with the Jewish population being cut by more than half during the Holocaust, to the point that there are still less Jews alive today than before the Holocaust (or compare with the Rwandan Genocide, which saw a 75% population loss, or the Armenian Genocide, which saw a 67% population loss). The average lifespan of a Palestinian person is literally ten years longer than a South African person (at a pretty healthy 75 years).
There are much deadlier conflicts happening around the globe that are being ignored right now -- almost 400,000 casualties in Yemen and a million dead of famine; 600,000 killed in Syria; 6 million killed in the Democratic Republic of Congo;100,000 killed in Ukraine. Just to name a few!
There were pervasive calls for a ceasefire on October 8th, which is really astounding and puts into context what most people mean when they call for a ceasefire -- it's not a concern for Palestinian civilians, it's a desire for more dead Jews.
Hamas leaders have literally gone on television multiple times to say "October 7 was just a rehearsal" (November 30) and that they vowed to do it "again and again" (November 1), and there would be a "second, a third, a fourth" October 7th (October 24). They are very clear about their intentions of the eradication of the Jewish state and all Israel, as was in their charter until they "softened" the language to say "Zionists" (note that half the global Jewish population lives in Israel) in 2017 after several decades and a concerted effort to improve their PR among gullible Jew-hating masses.
What happened on October 7th was an act of genocide against 1,200 civilians. Hamas is an Islamist organization (which is different than Islamic), and they are terrorists. Much like Osama bin Laden who committed 9/11, Islamists are very willing to commit any number of atrocities and violence in order to work towards the establishment of sharia law worldwide.
The sheer brutality and unprecedented horrors of 10/7 (including mass rape and abductions, beheadings, horrific torture including cutting off people's breasts and genitals in front of their families, etc.) cannot happen again. Israeli people have long been living in terror, hence the border fence following the Intifada (which included mass random stabbings and bombings of civilians in places like buses and pizza parlors targeting children. Incidentally, the horrible terrorism in Gaza is also why Egypt has a very tight border wall with Gaza, and none of the surrounding Arab nations are willing to take in Palestinian refugees, despite the fact that the original land claim of Palestinians spanned into what is now called Egypt and Jordan. But nobody in "social justice" likes to think about that) -- yes, the same Intifada that privileged college students are yelling in the streets to globalize now. Rockets are routinely fired at Israel, not just on and after 10/7. That is why the Iron Dome is so important, and why Hamas must be eliminated. Even right now in Israel, there are almost daily rockets fired, and random stabbings, car rammings and other horrific terror attacks from Hamas and PIJ-affilitiated terrorists. It's unsustainable.
Then again, the problem with having an enemy whose main priority is not human life, but a fixation on the afterlife (rife with virgins etc.) is that they devalue even their own people's lives to the extent that they use their people as human shields. To be very clear, there is no "genocide" where millions of leaflets have been distributed urging civilians to evacuate, spending hours on the phone with them convincing them to leave, using mass robocalls and hacking into Palestinian television networks to urge them to seek refuge in safe zones in Arabic, and giving them several days to do so (and protecting them along civilian routes against their own terrorist leaders). Hamas, however, has routinely done things like execute or tie up their own people who attempt to leave (as they did an elderly woman just a few days ago, who was rescued by the IDF), because they know that higher death toll of civilians makes people hate Israel more, and that in turn makes international calls for ceasefire more politically compelling among Israel's limited allies.
Most people in Israel have bomb shelters, because the Iron Dome isn't enough to protect their lives, and being bombed is a routine part of life for Israelis. Can you imagine rockets raining down on you every couple of days or more throughout your entire life? However, despite literally building out awe-inspiring infrastructure of terror tunnels around 400 MILES long under Gaza (hemorrhaging billions of dollars of funds that were sent to Gaza for "aid," though Hamas leaders have literally referred to redirecting all aid money as "financial Jihad"), no infrastructure was built to protect their own civilians from warfare.
In fact, civilians not affiliated with Hamas will be executed if they attempt to hide in the terror tunnels. Those are for Hamas only. And for the record, the top three cowardly Hamas leaders alone, who hide in luxury in Qatar, are each worth $3-5 BILLION. There is money to build infrastructure to support civilians, but they deliberately eschew any efforts to invest in that.
I want to be really clear that I am in total agreement that ANY loss of civilian life is devastating. No one in Israel wants this war, and that is why it's so painful to hear the international community blaming Israel for defending itself when this war could be over tomorrow with the unconditional surrender of Hamas and the release of the hostages. No one wants to hold Hamas accountable, because Westerners are used to infantilizing Middle Eastern people, and don't see them as adults with agency, but instead as victims of Western imperialism (which is insane, because Arab imperialism dates back to the 7th century, very much pre-dating the breadth and depth of contemporary Western capitalism and globalization).
Lastly, let it be known that Israel had the military power to annihilate Gaza immediately on October 8th. They have sacrificed many of their own lives in order to minimize civilian casualties in Gaza over the last few months. The vast majority of Israeli bombs (per Hamas's own death toll) have not killed a single individual; at the point when Israel had dropped 45,000 bombs on Gaza, Hamas claimed a death toll of 23,357 killed, which means that on average, each bomb killed 0.5 people.
At that point, Israel claimed that 9000 Hamas members were among the reported death toll (remember that Hamas are cowards and also hide in civilian clothing, unlike the IDF). With an estimated 24k-40k Hamas members, they are all valid military targets, per international law.
The other problem with reporting from Hamas’ “Health Ministry” (lol), aside from the fact that they never report combatant death toll (and regrettably, there is very much participation of women and people under the age of 18 in Hamas; in some ways it echoes other conflicts around the world where terrorist militant groups use child soldiers), Hamas’ own rocket misfires are highly likely to contribute to a large number of their own civilian casualties.
Hamas rockets are capable of killing 12+ upon impact; by October 22nd, 550 out of 7,400 of the rockets they fired at Israel had misfired and landed in the Gaza Strip. That’s a 7.4% rate of misfires (which is a low estimate) — it was a misfired Palestinian Islamic Jihad missile that notoriously landed at the Al Ahli Hospital parking lot and killed 50–300 people (which of course was instantaneously blamed on Israel, despite thorough investigations that showed otherwise).
For reference, in urban battlegrounds, generally around 90% of casualties are civilians (according to the Center for Civilians in Conflict). The fault for this remains entirely with Hamas.
Still they fire rockets from designated humanitarian safe zones and conduct operations under hospitals and schools (and fyi, per Rule 97 in International Humanitarian Law, civilian infrastructure loses its protected status if used for military purposes). Despite Israel sending even more food trucks to Gaza than before the war, there is extensive video evidence (even accidentally shown on Al Jazeera, the Qatari state media outlet that leftists love) of Hamas stealing aid, leaving many Gazans starving -- even killing their own civilians, like Ahmed Bracha for approaching aid trucks that they had taken over.
All of this to say, there is no coexisting with a terrorist government whose sole purpose is your annihilation. There are understandable grievances among Palestinian people, and I firmly believe they deserve sovereignty, but mass murdering and torturing and raping and abducting Jewish people is unacceptable.
It is also unacceptable for the international community to demand that Jews, AGAIN, merely allow ourselves to be persecuted and killed. It's just not going to happen.
And for the record, the UN's Palestinian refugee wing, the UNRWA (the only wing of the UN that is designated for one specific group of refugees, and disproportionately staffed and funded as such, despite there being only one group to handle the monumentally larger amount of other refugees worldwide), which is now being defunded for having at least a dozen employees that participated in 10/7, has reflected an almost conspiratorial self-victimization on the international stage for Palestinians to remain "refugees," even generations after they left their land (for any reason). This means that the billionaire Hadid's are still considered "refugees" and are entitled to benefits as such. It also means there is literally permanent housing that you can stay in on AirBnb in the "refugee camps" in Gaza, that (before 10/7) looked absolutely nothing like a true refugee camp elsewhere.
UNRWA schools have taught children hatred, encouraged jihad at all costs, and centered on the singular goal of killing Jews. This is an unsustainable society. This is an unacceptable paradigm for peace. Then again, as leftists will parrot in their neo-Nazi echo chambers, they don't want peace or coexistence; they want all Jews in Israel to "leave" and/or die.
Woof, that was a lot! Please let me know if you have any questions or want any sources on any of the above. I can't tell you how much I appreciate the curiosity and dialogue. I also want you to know that I sincerely appreciate and see your genuine concern for human life - war is ugly and devastating, and as events like WW2 or the Civil War will show us, freedom has its costs. It's a terrible function of the human condition that I hope we can someday be above, but for now, favoring simplistic platitudes against war at the cost of half the world's Jewry is simply not an acceptable or viable path for said Jews.
