It seems like no matter what you’re take is, if it’s about Israel and Hamas it’s gonna be a hot take.

In one corner, we have Hamas, a piece of shit, religious extremist terrorist organization that targets civilians at concerts and in their homes. It’s been said that some of the details of their atrocities may be propaganda, or may be unintentional misinformation spawned in the fog of war, but at the end of the day I’m not going to debate exactly how atrocious their atrocities were: I’m not going to debate did they behead babies, or just kill the babies as if I could get behind one of those two insane options.

However, even if they were a legitimate liberation force hitting military targets, I’m not sure how much support I could give to a group of religious fundamentalists that’s deeply authoritarian. There hasn’t been an open election since Hamas took control around 18 years ago; civil liberties are restricted, there are violent crack downs on protests, intimidation and persecution against media are not uncommon, blasphemy is a criminal offense, people have been tortured and killed for being gay.

So between the terrorism and oppression you’ll have to forgive me if I don’t accept that this is just what “decolonization looks like” as some donkey-brained “leftists” have proclaimed. Thankfully, the people saying this profoundly stupid shit may be loud, but there’s not very many of them and they hold little to no power or influence. Of course there’s also the anti-Semites who just hate Jews who show up to the pro-Palestinian side of things, or are pro-Hamas, and they should all 100 percent go to Gaza and see how that works out for them. This has of course led to the slandering of anybody with the meekest criticism of Israel, or a call for ceasefire, to be labelled by the Right-Wing ghouls and most Dems as anti-Semitic and terrorist sympathizers while they simultaneously clutch their pearls and call for the leveling of Gaza.

In the other corner we have Israel: a recognized state with a very advanced and well funded military – likely the most advanced and well funded in the region- that in all likelihood has nuclear strike capabilities. While Gaza is officially under the control of Hamas, it is not a recognized state, or recognized as part of any other state and is effectively under Israeli control. By blockading Gaza, they control what, and who, goes in and out including food, water, and electricity. They have created what numerous human rights orgs have condemned as the world’s largest open-air prison and a system of apartheid. When Palestinians protest these conditions they are again met with brutality ranging from tear gas to live ammunition. Similar events occur in the West Bank, but with the addition of settlers just straight up moving into Palestinian homes and illegally seizing their land – acts that have widely been condemned by both human rights orgs and the international community.

Instead of what should have been an intelligence and special forces operation to capture, or kill, terrorists we have Israel’s dick waving response to Hamas which is to commit war crimes, only bigger. Collective punishment is considered a war crime and cutting over 2 million people off from food, water, and electricity sure sounds a lot like collective punishment. Entire bloodlines in Palestine have been snuffed out, over a million people were told to just fucking leave North Gaza, which sounds like mass murder and mass displacement of a specific group of people, it sounds like they’re trying to cleanse the region of a certain ethnicity, maybe there’s a word for that, but I don’t work for Webster’s.

Proponents of Israel will say how the IDF goes out of their way to warn civilians before bombing neighborhoods, schools, and hospitals. If only Russia had simply warned Ukraine, if they just warned the civilians in the civilian infrastructure they targeted it wouldn’t be such a big deal or worthy of war crimes investigations. Unfortunately, we also have Hamas countering by encouraging people to remain, but I have to wonder if that encouragement isn’t at the barrel of a gun. Hamas is also criticized for using human shields, but of course they do: first they’re authoritarian terrorists, and secondly if they had legit military bases they’d be turned into glass and rubble.

Then their are the truly deranged with members amongst Israeli officials, US politicians, and Right-Wing commentators trying to argue that there are no civilians in Gaza because they voted for Hamas. I struggle to comprehend how rock hard a person’s brain must be to make this argument. The last election in Gaza was around 18 years ago, yet over 50 percent of the population of Gaza is 18 or younger. So not only is that argument false, but you can use it to justify killing civilians anywhere: the World Trade Centers were legitimate targets on 9/11 because the people in those towers voted for the people implementing the foreign policies that pissed off Bin Laden; all those war crimes the United States committed after 9/11 would also justify killing innocent US citizens; god damn, Hamas could say the same fucking thing – those Israeli families voted for the Israeli government that’s been brutalizing Gaza.

Both Israel and the US, despite being considered democracies, have also been cracking down on free speech. In the US, several states, even before the Hamas attack, have BDS (Boycott, Divest, Sanction) bans, some even go so far as to have you sign a loyalty pledge to Israel as part of a contract for certain jobs. In Israel, critics of their state’s treatment of Palestinians have been fired and arrested because the people in charge have very smooth-brains and cannot discern between concern for human life and support for Hamas; Al Jazeera may be banned from the country for reporting on war crimes. Journalists have been previously intimidated and 20 have been killed by the IDF since 2001.

If Israel continues down this path it will wound itself far more than Hamas ever could, just like the US wounded itself 9/11 far more after than Al Qaeda ever could: the curtailing of civil liberties, increasing mass surveillance, endless wars costing trillions of dollars, the lives of thousands of US soldiers, the physical and mental well being of thousands more, hundreds of thousands – millions, depending on the source – of foreign civilians killed, and a hard right-ward shift towards fear and xenophobia that only benefited war-profiteers. We could have invested those trillions into healthcare, education, renewable energy and energy independence, infrastructure, the god damn removal of lead pipes which is something we still haven’t done and we could have.

To be clear, Israel should and must root out and destroy Hamas, but it cannot be at the expense of their own civil liberties or the intentional displacement and murder of civilians. It cannot be a focus on “damage over accuracy.”

~David T.K.~