This is why the cycle of violence never ends.
You have to be willing to see that Palestinians, including children, have born the brunt of the violence and killing. 1:23 ratio in the last 15 years. Look at the violence of the settlers, the forced displacements, the annexation of their lands, the denial of human rights, the water apartheid, the occupation and blockade, the near-starvation diet, the harassment at checkpoints and on and on.
You would rise up too against all that. You can only keep a people under your boot for so long before they retaliate.
What Hamas did was horrific and immoral. No excuse, no justification. While I hope they are eliminated, I fear that their ideology will live on. You have to defeat the ideology and that is only through justice and statehood for Palestinians.
It's easy to condemn Hamas, who doesn't? But to accept your own wrongs, or that of your own side, takes a bigger person. There is a sizable group of Israeli Jews and diaspora Jews who can see the bigger picture too and are raising their voices, against the war too.
These are peole who can see that:
A child is a child.
An innocent is an innocent.
Their lives are to be safeguarded and protected. Yes, EVEN IN WAR!
War does not give carte blanche to kill them needlessly or indiscriminately.
The safeguards against that are in the Geneva Conventions and other humanitarian laws.
If a nation at war doesn't follow those laws, they will soon become a pariah nation and lose all support.
If for nothing else but self-interest, Israel needs to reconsider what it is doing. Both in how they wage this war and their policies and practices regarding Palestinian lives, lands and statehood.
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