Speaking for myself, I was of course horrified by the event of October 7, and expressed complete sympathy and condemnation of Hama. I thought that at least one good thing came of it. In blood, Israel had regained the moral high ground. By keeping a response proportionate and focusing on a hostage swap with Palestinian prisoners, they could have defeated Hamas and kept international public opinion on their side and opened the door to new peace talks that genuinely broke the cycle of vengeance.
And now, a month into a response that is so ferocious and undifferentiated that it genuinely seems Israel seems intent on a 10-1 ratio of Jewish - Palestinian deaths, you seem to be stuck on this point that American leftists have not spent enough time and energy condemning Hamas and have not felt enough empathy and sympathy over Israeli pain. Let me point out two things. There is nothing I can do to prevent October 7 - that was the job of Israeli security - which was too busy protecting settlers on the West Bank and too arrogant to think they were leaving the Negev unprotected. But there is something I might be able to do NOW to prevent more deaths, by being part of the voices that say STOP the bombing, and now the targeting of a hospital in the decades-long assertion that it is the "Command and Control" center of Hamas. They still have not brought fuel in to restart the generators. One might almost think they are blind to the disaster and pain they pass in the beds in the hallways, because it is Palestinian pain, and they can only feel Israeli pain right now. The other point is that my tax dollars did not finance October 7. So of course as each day goes by and the vengeance invasion causes more killing of innocents, my ire rises at the sense that I am help paying for this. But my rage seems to be interpreted on line as an anti-semitic uncaring about Israeli lives and pain. Quite the opposite. 44 soldiers are dead and many more will be killed, and 220 hostage lives are still in the balance. The current approach puts them a far more risk than a prisoner swap would. But the Netanyahu regime seems intent on provoking self-nakba in Gaza, far more than retrieving the hostages. If it becomes hopeless for Hamas, does anyone really think they will spare them? I care far more about Israeli life than he does.
Israeli civilians deserve all of our sympathy and Hamas all of our condemnation -- for October 7. And it is sad that some of the younger radicals seem almost blind to Israeli pain - I condemn that too . But it will change nothing that happened on October 7. You mustn't take our rage on military actions that constitute an ongoing atrocity indifference to your pain for that day. We just need to stop deaths we might be able to still stop.
And it is of course very frustrating that the vast majority of Israelis don't seem to understand how brutal the occupation is, how routinely torture is used in prison, how grinding the daily poverty in Gaza is. That the attacks of October 7 were pre-venged over the past 50 years, where the death toll of Palestinians far surpasses that of Israelis. Hundreds of Palestinians on the West Bank have been murdered by settlers and dispossessed of their land - Israelis don't rise up and denounce even the murder of children - the IDF sends in soldiers to protect them. Those of us who expressed sadness and horror at Oct 7 have not dwelled on it, as you seem us to wish to, because we see no acknowledgment that the conditions that gave rise to Hamas can be laid at the feet of 75 years of Palestinian dispossession and occupation. I don't think you are one of those Israelis, but this is what we see.
