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Too bad Israel isn't attacking just Hamas, or even doing a respectable job of pretending to try. As far as I'm concerned there's little to no moral difference between Hamas and Israel's government.

I am going to respond as though you're being sincere, but it's hard to tell these days.

Some of the things you're referencing were debunked. Be careful about what you accept as fact, especially when the people spreading that "fact" have a history of making up similar things to justify war. The US made up similar things about Cubans, Afghanis, Iraqis, and so on to make it easier to justify a population for war or to desensitize the population to illegal actions like water boarding.

I want to be clear that my intention and internal tone as I write this is not judgement at all. I'm just trying to zoom out a bit and ask, "Why, when they've done it before, would they not do it now?"

Remember that Israel and Palestine are not the only "powers" who care about this issue or its outcome. And as such, Israel and Palestine are not going to be the only ones taking action -- just the ones people pay attention to while other state actors are obfuscated by the smokescreen. There is A LOT of propaganda on this issue in every direction. Every state is looking at the populations of its enemies and figuring out how it can exploit this event for its own security interests.

**With all that said, imagine being Palestinian: **

• You've watched representatives advocate in front of the UN for decades. Your people still don't have the right to vote in it, but Israel does. So the state killing your people has to right to vote to ignore your pleas on the international level. The bully state has teamed up with all many other bully states. When I say bully, I mean they use diplomacy to back smaller countries into corners and act against their own interests. Voting against them may mean your people starve for the next 5 years due to IMF loans, aide programs, etc.

• You conclude on the international level there is no salvation coming. No one with power is helping you and actively refuses to acknowledge your people are dying, let alone who's killing them.

• Your grandfather died in the Nakbah (sp?), when the west forcibly eradicated 750,000 Palestinians from their homes to make room for Europeans -- Jewish or otherwise. Israel made it illegal to talk about what happened to your family. It's illegal to deny the Holocaust in many places, but it's illegal to recognize the Nakbah in Israel. Despite it being undeniable reality.

• Then, the state that has been systematically killing your people -- the state whose own internal documents suggest they want it to be drawn out death to make it more socially acceptable and less obviously murderous -- is now run by someone who enthusiastically wants to swiftly kill your people off and is trying to reach levels of power that make that possible.

• You see the Israeli people incapable of stopping him. The ones who care about the idea of your right to life that is. The other Israelis you can see sitting on hillsides watching illegal air strikes and cheering it on like Americans and fireworks. This was something people regularly engaged in before the Hamas attack.

• This leader ramps up operations where the IDF forcibly evicts your neighbors and family members from their homes. The checkpoints increase, walking around your own town is logistically more similar to prisoner in a US prison at this point. When the IDF says your commute to work stops, it stops. It stops multiple times a day every day. You watch people be beaten during the stops. If they fight back, they're murdered in front of you.

• The IDF soldiers are taking more people than they used to suddenly with their new leader. They're taking more children and civilians. They're intentionally bombing hospitals. You watch as leaders cry out to the international community, but for 50 years the international community has said your people are liars and deserve to die. Maybe not with its words, they haven't said that per se, but with the actions and lack of action.

• You live in the most dangerous part of the occupied territories (afaik), Gaza. There is no way to escape. Israel has bombed all routes out before Hamas attacked. Israel's violence continues to escalate as the IDF protects settlers who engage in vigilante, racist violence, stealing your friends' homes.

Every second of every day is a question of when will the Israelis hurt me next?

Again, there is NO way out. Israel is taking more space and engaging in more and more violence as they do so.

So why would they? Because Israel intentionally, as part of their ethnic cleansing strategy, gave them no way out and continued to harass them.

There is no mammal on Earth that won't get violent at that point (except maybe manatees, lol).