Aizenberg on X - "There's a wave of people today sharing images of Gaza's destruction as prima facie evidence of "genocide," never mind that ~99% of the civilian population was evacuated and survived. Similar images came out of Mosul & Raqqa (see below) where there was also brutal urban combat."
Kristin Reid on X - "This is very simple. Your arguments make no sense. If over 70% of the structures in Gaza are destroyed but 97% of the population is alive, either the IDF can’t hit a target or they’re going above and beyond to avoid civilian casualties."
Seth Frantzman on X - "ISIS was defeated and almost completely disarmed by around 2019 in Iraq and most of Syria. It went from controlling a large area with some 50,000 or more fighters, tens of thousands of them foreign fighters, as well as having taken at least one Iraqi division’s worth of equipment in 2014…it was rolled back and completely defeated; in Mosul, which is a city and area around the size of Gaza with a similar population, ISIS was completely removed by 2017, and completely disarmed because all of its members were killed or removed from the field in that city and its environs. The fact is that Hamas can be disarmed and defeated, using a method as was used with ISIS in Mosul. It’s true that one can’t be rid of all Hamas supporters, but it can be disarmed. The fact is that Hamas is mostly disarmed in the West Bank, a success story of the PA and IDF. There is a way. It’s a question of whether there is the will to do it and to let people in Gaza live free from Hamas. It worked in Mosul and Raqqa; it can work but the local people need rights and freedoms to be free from the extremists like happened in Mosul and Raqqa. Also journalists can travel to Mosul and Raqqa today."
One terrorist supporter cope when the counter-examples of Berlin and Tokyo in 1945 are brought up is that that was a different time and war crimes were committed then too. But ISIS being a victim of "genocide" is a whole new level (then again, a further cope is that Israel was behind ISIS, so)
Meme - Andrew Fox-online: "Was Caen in 1944 a genocide? 5% of the civilian population killed in two months (3% in 3 years Gaza). 75-80% of the city destroyed (50.44% destroyed in Gaza, per UNOSAT). Rubble is not a metric of genocide."
It's "genocide" when the "West" is winning a war and left wingers want to stop them
Meme - Mohamad Safa @mhdksafa: "This is not Hiroshima, this's Gaza. Gaza is nearly 3 times smaller than Hiroshima, and Israel dropped 223,000+ tonnes of explosives, equivalent of ~15 "Little Boy" ATOMIC BOMBS, on Gaza. The world hasn't seen anything like the destruction in Gaza since Second World War."
Yoav Nahmias: "So why have fewer people died in 3 years of war in gaza than on single day at Hiroshima?"
Terrorist supporter logic: destroying buildings is "genocide"
GauleHero on X - "AND Japanese DID NOT accuse the US of a Genocide.... Japanese knew they started the War (much like Hamas did on Oct 7).... But Japanese had the courage to accept the consequences on them (which Palestinians have not be able to) from a war they started... 🤣🤣🤣"
Mr jheri curl on X - "It's a false flag. Hamas blew the buildings up themselves to try and turn the world against Israel"
Saggezza Eterna on X - "The Civilizational Suicide Pact: The Left Launders Terrorism to Destroy the West
The modern left operates as a parasitic organism feeding on the moral decay of Western civilization. Look at the streets of Paris today. It is the third anniversary of the October 7 massacres. While civilized individuals pause to remember the slaughtered, the progressive mob takes to the streets to defend the butchers. This behavior reveals the putrid core of the leftist mind. They possess a sickening obsession with the destruction of successful societies. They despise achievement, order, and strength. They worship victimhood and chaos. Interior Minister Laurent Nuñez and Paris police prefect Patrice Faure attempted to ban Wednesday demonstrations organized by the collective Urgence Palestine. The state authorities correctly identified the dark reality of these gatherings. They cited a heightened terror threat, historically high levels of antisemitic acts, and the glaring risk that a march on this exact date serves as a grotesque celebration of the Hamas atrocities. October 7 was officially set aside for solemn commemoration. The radical left views this sacred grief as an invitation to riot. Naturally, the mob defied the law. They believe their self-righteous delusions grant them immunity from civil order. They flooded the streets with their anti-Israel venom. Consider the repulsive scene in Paris. A man violently breached a barrier to rip an Israeli flag from a woman's hands, screaming, "Nazi, you are committing a genocide." We must analyze the utter psychological sickness required to assault a woman displaying a Jewish star on the exact anniversary of the largest massacre of Jews since the Holocaust. This is textbook psychological projection. The left harbors deep, violent authoritarian impulses. They project their own genocidal fantasies onto their victims to absolve themselves of their inherent guilt. They brand their violent intimidation as "pro-Palestinian solidarity." French authorities and Israeli outlets properly recognize it as a severe threat to public order and a blatant display of hatred. This ideological virus infects every facet of the left's political apparatus. Look at the supposedly separate street protests from October 6. Hundreds of thousands of students marched across dozens of cities, ostensibly complaining about school conditions. The Interior Ministry counted 266,000 nationwide and 56,000 in Paris. What did this grievance march actually look like? It was completely overrun with Palestinian flags and radical chants. The youthful left seamlessly blended their anti-Macron and anti-National Rally slogans with apologism for Islamic terrorism. They even cheered for the radical agitator Jean-Luc Mélenchon. The left has engineered an intersectional alliance of the perpetually aggrieved and the openly violent. There is absolutely zero distinction between a student complaining about a crowded classroom and an activist demanding the eradication of Israel. They share the exact same fundamentally destructive impulse. Now, the Association France Palestine Solidarité is organizing a massive national mobilization for Saturday, October 10 at Place de la République. They demand sanctions and an end to what they falsely label genocide, colonization, apartheid, and occupation. Read their official literature to see the mechanics of their deception. Their written call acknowledges the three-year mark since October 7, only to immediately justify the Hamas slaughter as a mere reaction to a blockade. They accuse Israel of a genocidal war and accelerated settlement expansion in the West Bank and East Jerusalem. These are entirely fabricated claims designed to provide intellectual cover for barbarism. The left launders terrorist propaganda through the sanitized language of human rights. The media conveniently fails to provide a solid breakdown of how many of these marchers are actual French citizens versus foreign nationals. The distinction is completely irrelevant at this point. Palestinian flags permeate the broader student protests because the ideological infection has already taken hold of the native youth. Whether they are imported radicals or domestic students, they are united in their profound hatred for the foundations of our society. The left aligns itself with the architects of mass murder because they share a common civilizational enemy. They celebrate slaughter while claiming the moral high ground. We must look at them with absolute revulsion. We must recognize them for the civilizational poison they truly are and ensure they never again hold the levers of power."
Oliya Scootercaster 🛴 on X - "NOW: "Globalize the Intifada" and Mamdani chant as Pro-Palestine protesters storm the 'Israelis for Peace, Union Square rally', occupying the vigil seats as speaker of the rally addressed the crowd. Video by @yyeeaahhhboiii2 | Licensing @FreedomNTV Desk@freedomnews.tv"
Oliya Scootercaster 🛴 on X - "NOW: "Long Live Hamas!" chants as protesters stormed and confronted the 'Israelis For Peace' vigil held at USQ, organizers say they hold the vigil regularly for the hostages and for Gaza. Video by @yyeeaahhhboiii2 | Licensing @FreedomNTV Desk@freedomnews.tv"
Guy Benson on X - "Perfect juxtaposition. The worst people in our society & they’re taking over a major political party."
We're still told that no one supports Hamas
Terry Glavin: The antisemitic nightmares are not stopping | National Post - "Within hours of the massacres, throughout the English-speaking world and beyond, there were celebrations. From Vancouver to New York, and from Los Angeles to Istanbul, the killers mobilized by Ḥarakat al-Muqawamah al-ʾIslamiyyah, otherwise known as Hamas, were praised as gallant resistance fighters. Heroes. An upwelling of antisemitic depravity burst its banks from the universities, the “social justice” milieu and all the activist networks that so routinely summon protesters into the public squares. The grisly mutation of Judenrein to Judenstaatrein — the denial of a Jewish right to life to the denial of the right to a Jewish state — was all of a sudden out in the open, jubilant and positively gleeful at the news of what had happened. Across Canada, by the morning of Sunday, Oct. 8, banners were already being hung from freeway overpasses, placards were already being hoisted and slogans were already being chanted at rallies exhorting solidarity with the heroic Palestinian “resistance.” And so it went, week after week, month after month. Campuses became sites of semi-permanent “protest” encampments demonizing Israel. A coordinated bomb threat targeted more than 100 Jewish institutions across the country. Synagogues were firebombed and vandalized. Shots were fired at Jewish schools in Montreal. Jews were besieged in their own neighbourhoods in Toronto. Jewish students were afraid to attend classes. Over the past two years, Statistics Canada has counted 1,731 hate crimes targeting Jews that were reported to the police... Israelis didn’t just wake up on October 7 to find themselves under assault from a ground incursion of the Hamas military wing, the Izz al-Din al-Qassam Brigades. The murderers of October 7 also came from Palestinian Islamic Jihad and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine — the PFLP, particularly, is deeply embedded in “anti-Zionist” networks in Europe and Canada. And almost immediately after October 7 Israel came under a steady bombardment of thousands of rockets and guided missiles from the Hezbollah-controlled territories in Lebanon. Within the year, nearly a quarter of a million Israelis had been displaced from the “Gaza envelope” along with more than 40 communities near the Lebanese border. The Houthi militants of Yemen, meanwhile, began a reign of terror targeting shipping in the Red Sea. The Khomeinist Islamic Republic of Iran, the key sponsor of Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthis and about a dozen other terrorist proxies in the Greater Middle East, soon began targeting Israel directly. The “12 Day War” between Iran and Israel last year ended up drawing the Trump administration into a catastrophic and erratic operation that has spread through the Gulf states and dramatically disrupted global oil supplies... In Canada, antisemitic hate crimes appear to be on the decline, although Statistic Canada reports that last year, 71 per cent of anti-religious hate crimes targeted Jews, who represent less than one per cent of Canada’s population. According to a report from the “J7” group (representing Argentina, Australia, Canada, France, Germany, the U.K. and U.S.), more than 23,000 incidents involving Jew-hatred occurred in 2025, including 20 killings. Canada is “one intelligence failure away from a mass casualty event,” the report found. And right on cue: In Belleville, Ontario, the Jew-obsessed 29-year-old Sean Ward who shot up the Sons of Jacob synagogue last month was thwarted in his apparent intent to carry out a mass shooting at Yom Kippur services, only by the bravery of a local police constable, Jeff Smith, who was gravely wounded in the encounter. Ottawa’s unaccountable inattention to the predicament facing Canada’s Jews may be subsiding, at long last. For whatever it might be worth, as of two weeks ago Public Safety Canada has now clearly identified “anti-Zionism” as a form of antisemitism. The finding has triggered “anti-Zionist” complaints, petitions and protests, as you would expect. “Anti-Zionism” remains a disfigurement of much of the NATO capitals’ popular culture and activist set. Israel’s diaspora ministry counts 262 anti-Israel events organized to coincide with the anniversary of the October 7 massacres. Most of them are planned for next weekend, including at least 14 events scheduled across Canada. Worldwide, the diaspora ministry counts 87 of the events as medium or high risk, owing to their proximity to Israeli diplomatic missions."
Toronto poet praises Oct. 7 in government-funded journal | National Post - "An internal review is underway after the latest issue of a journal funded by the Canada Council for the Arts appeared to support terrorism as a form of resistance and featured a poem by a Toronto writer who praises the events of October 7. The poem, called Flood, was written by Bahar Orang and is featured in The Ex-Puritan. In the piece, Orang describes the events of an October morning, a reference to October 7 — the deadliest day for the Jewish community since the Holocaust, when 1,200 Israelis were murdered by Hamas terrorists in 2023. “Praise the paragliders, their gentle ascension, their unbroken morning, and of course their triumphant descension…,” she writes... Orang also writes “praise the fighters,” and acknowledges their courage, cunning and patience. She describes “the tanks on fire, the enemy fleeing.” “Praise the missiles, the recognitions written in blood on each one, the names carved already into your own flesh,” she continues... Orang was a guest editor for the edition and wrote an editorial note explaining why the issue turns “deliberately toward armed resistance.” “Among our obligations as Westerners, one is straightforward: to honour that creation of possibility, even when — or especially when — it takes the systematically disavowed form of armed resistance,” she explains. “Taking resistance seriously in all its forms alters what we, as cultural workers, are able to perceive: the violence already structuring ordinary life, and those who fight it as political agents.” Orang’s biography on the website of Book*hug Press, which published her first book in 2020, describes her as an award-winning author who lives and works as a psychiatrist in Toronto. Her work is expected to be featured in Best Canadian Poetry 2027."
Weird. I thought no one supports Hamas
Meme - "FREE GAZA? GAZA WAS FREE. ISRAEL LEFT GAZA IN 2005 FOR PEACE. WHAT HAPPENED NEXT? HAMAS TOOK OVER, RULED FOR 20 YEARS, STOLE $26B IN AID, AND SPENT IT ALL ON TERROR TUNNELS, ROCKETS, AND WEAPONS THEN ATTACKED ISRAEL AND BUTCHERED CIVILIANS"
Meme - echo5savage: "Hamas starts a war calls it Jihad, Hamas loses the war they call it genocide."
timothy.brown.73307634: "When I visited Israel in 2011, I noticed something that wasn't widely known. Muslims are free to roam in the Jewish districts. They own businesses and participate in commerce there. But, non Muslims are forbidden from entering the Palestinian territories. It seemed pretty apparent which side was hostile and who was occupying who."
Meme - Tamer Masudin @TMasudin: "Muhammad: "Gaza has no missiles and no army. Stop calling it a war."
Also Muhammad: "Hamas just launched rockets at the Jews!! Allahu Akbar!!! Glory to the resistance!!!""
Muhammad Mazen @mhmd_s09 (Translated from Arabic): "At 9 o'clock, the sound of the rockets launching from Gaza lifts the head, oh Lord, grant victory to the resistance and guide their aim"
Muhammad Mazen @mhmd_s09: "Gaza has no army, no air force, no navy, no tanks, no artillery, and no missiles. Stop calling this a war. It's a genocide."
Terrorist supporters know at some level that they're lying
Meme - Governor Kathy Hochul @Go...: "On a day of profound pain for so many New Yorkers, disrupting a vigil for the victims of October 7 while waving the flags of terrorist organizations is absolutely despicable. Jewish New Yorkers deserve to mourn in peace, free from hatred and intimidation. There is no excuse for this. None."
Extremely Careless @Shanghaibeast: ""Well. Well. Well. If it isn't the consequences of my own actions."" *Hochul in mosque and with Zohran Mamdani*
Meme - "When Egypt occupied Gaza, Palestinian terrorists attacked Israel. When Israel occupied Gaza, Palestinian terrorists attacked Israel. When Gaza was unoccupied, Palestinian terrorists attacked Israel. It was never about occupation. IT WAS ALWAYS ABOUT JEWS."
Thread by @StarrJpost on Thread Reader App – Thread Reader App - "The two youngest Palestinian child soldiers so far to have died in the October 7 War appear to be this 13-year-old and this 14-year-old. They join 29 other deceased Gazan child soldiers that have been confirmed so far. 🧵
Thirteen year old Hossam Muhammad Morsi was announced by Palestinian Islamic Jihad on Friday to be an operative of its Northern Brigade's Central Mobilization Unit. Facial match software and only one similar name in casualty databases indicate the correct identity. Morsi appears to have been killed in a September 9 incident alongside his 18-year-old brother Munir Muhammad Morsi, who was also in the Al-Quds Brigades Northern Brigade, but in the Martyr Husam Abu Habl Battalion. His Facebook page contains photographs of armed men with PIJ insignias. Another man who appears to be a relative, Abdullah Muhammad Morsi, was killed in a later incident. PIJ announced that he was also a member of the Northern Brigade's Central Mobilization Unit. Fourteen-year-old Khalil Mahdi Al-Bahtiti was announced on Friday to be a PIJ operative in the Gaza Brigade's Al-Tuffah and Al-Daraj Battalion. Malik Raafat Marzouq appears to have died at age 16. His name is unique in casualty databases, and while most photos on social media are of poor quality or when he was younger, they do pass muster of facial matching platforms. According to PIJ, Marzouq was an Al-Quds Brigades member, in the Gaza Brigade's Al-Tuffah and Al-Daraj Battalion"
Damn Israel killing defenceless children!
Scholars, legal experts among 6,000 rejecting Gaza genocide charge in letter - "Prominent academics, legal experts, and historians are among more than 6,000 signatories of an open letter released earlier this month rejecting as a “blood libel” the accusation that Israel committed genocide in Gaza... Taking the Gaza Health Ministry’s current death toll, which does not distinguish between civilians and combatants, alongside INSS’s May estimate of more than 23,000 terrorists killed, the implied civilian-to-combatant ratio would be roughly 2:1. The letter also cites “the absence of mass starvation despite repeated claims of imminent catastrophe” and “the warnings given to civilians before attack,” and asserts that “All these factors were erased in the eagerness to indict Israel for genocide.” Meanwhile, the letter argues that Israel went to war after October 7 to break what it calls an “Iranian-led siege of terror enclaves” on its borders, while noting that anti-Zionists were already leveling accusations of genocide against Israel the following day. “The bitter irony is that Israel, home to half the world’s Jews, is the only country to face a sustained war of attempted genocide – from its inception in 1948 until today,” the letter states. Prominent scholars who signed the letter include Harvard professor and public intellectual Steven Pinker. Other Harvard-affiliated signatories include Harvard Law professor Jesse Fried and visiting scholar Anat Alon-Beck, a professor of law at Case Western Reserve University. Other notable scholars who signed on include historian Niall Ferguson, Israeli historian Benny Morris, Holocaust historian and former US Special Envoy to Monitor and Combat Antisemitism Deborah Lipstadt, Tel Aviv University professor emerita and former Yad Vashem chief historian Dina Porat, historian and author Simon Sebag Montefiore, UCLA professor Judea Pearl, and Brandeis University professor emeritus Jonathan Sarna. The signatories also include John Spencer, chair of Urban Warfare Studies at the Modern War Institute at West Point. Prominent legal figures include former Canadian justice minister and attorney general Irwin Cotler, Cornell Law professor Robert Hockett, Jeffrey Mausner, a former prosecutor with the US Justice Department’s Nazi War Crimes Unit, and Eugene Kontorovich, a professor of law at George Mason University’s Scalia Law School and director of its Center for the Middle East and International Law. “The genocide libel is a case study in the longstanding – and intensified post-October 7th – historical, moral, legal and normative inversions of fact, law and history,” Cotler said in a statement cited by CCFP. Political signatories include former UK prime minister Boris Johnson, Iraqi-born former UK cabinet minister Nadhim Zahawi, and former US secretary of veterans affairs Robert Wilkie, among others."
Weird. I thought all the experts agreed that Israel was committing genocide. Of course, the anti-Semites were claiming they were all Jews
Nicole Lampert on X - "There are several main thrusts to the genocide libel.
- One is Amnesty calling it a genocide even though they admit they have changed the definition of genocide to accuse Israel of it.
- One is an ‘independent UN report’ by three UN workers with a history of anti Israel activism which hasn’t been adopted by the UN.
- One is the ‘genocide scholars’ even though anyone (you don’t even have to be a scholar) can join the genocide scholars organisation and only 28 per cent of the 500 members voted in what was seen as a political hijacking.
- And finally you have South Africa and others bringing a genocide case at the ICJ. Nations behind this such as Ireland have pushed for the definition of genocide to be changed. The court has said it will allow the case to be heard even though Palestine isn’t a country and it’s being brought by a third party leading to confusion that this is a ‘plausible case’ for genocide rather than the more complicated idea that South Africa can plausibly bring this case.
In plain terms: Palestinians have a plausible legal right, under the Convention, to be protected from genocide, and South Africa has a plausible right to bring the case. That is all the word “plausible” referred to.
The Court did not find that it was plausible Israel was committing genocide.
In contrast you have facts. If Israel intended to commit genocide of the Palestinian people (and intent is the key word in the genocide definition) it would not have fed them, given them polio vaccinations, moved them to humanitarian zones when it tried to fight Hamas etc and there would be many, many, many more dead.
That’s why you have these 6000 experts and genocide scholars saying it not a genocide. The genocide libel against Israel was started in the 1960s by the Soviets to attack America and Israel. It was pushed though the USSR via the UN and now trips off the tongue of antisemites everywhere who don’t understand that genocide is different to war. Antisemites and ignorants who basically want to call a people who were victims of an actual genocide, genociders to appease their guilt, steal Jewish victimhood, dismantle the case for Israel and label Jews the new Nazis."
Ofra Haza Stan Account on X - "Holocaust Inversion actually precedes the Holocaust, when Jewish Nazi appeaser Max Neumann called Zionists worse than Nazis. It was being used during the Holocaust when it was said “Jews are more Hitleran than Hitler.” It was used in the 1950s immediately following the Holocaust. Didn't just appear in the 1960s"
Meme - "A group of psychopaths say "We will butcher you and your children." So you put up a fence. People cry: "You've put these poor things in a cage!" Then they break down the fence and butcher us and our children. And people cry: "What, did you expect?! You put them in a cage!"" - Dr Sheila. Nazarian lranian-American Surgeon & TV Personality
Hamas plan to plant explosives near Gaza displaced persons camps revealed by IDF - "The IDF revealed on Sunday a Hamas document detailing plans to plant explosives in and around camps for displaced civilians in the Gaza Strip, which would then be used as cover in case their leadership needed to evacuate the sites. The document, written in April 2024, detailed a plan that explicitly exploited the civilian population for the benefit of the terror organization's leadership and showed intent to cause direct harm to Palestinian civilians for the sake of minor tactical advantages, like "creating smoke screens, distracting the enemy, and divert[ing] their focus and efforts away from the primary objective." Plans involved detonating improvised explosive devices around civilian camps as IDF troops approached in order to create panic, which terrorists would take advantage of in order to flee."
Leslie Kajomovitz on X = "I think UNRWA is running its own version of "pay-for-slay" The sharia law compliant "aid," which is exclusive for Muslims, is mostly distributed in cash. It prioritizes a unique definition "orphans," which Palestinians re-defined as, "a child without a FATHER" You do the math."
Leslie Kajomovitz on X - "An UNRWA teacher goes public on the indoctrination of children by UNRWA in Gaza. She said she believes the indoctrination has grown worse since October 7th and that if not addressed, another October 7th is inevitable. “If the upcoming generations in Gaza have the capabilities to make another attack, they will make it,” she warned. She says sixth graders are taught to blame Jews for Palestinian suffering, young girls are encouraged to continue Hamas’s war against Jews, and when she objected, a school administrator threatened to cut out her tongue with scissors. She called for an overhaul of Gaza’s schools, including changes to the curriculum and independent oversight of teachers. “It’s more important than disarming Hamas or changing who will govern Gaza,” she said. “Because this can change the future.”"
Jaimee Michell on X - "This is absolutely sickening. Coffeyeh, a coffee shop in Cedar Park, Texas, just outside Austin, is giving free lattes on October 7th to anyone who comes in wearing a keffiyeh and can tell them "what day it is." October 7th is the day Hamas and other Palestinian armed groups stormed southern Israel, killed ~1,200 people, and dragged 251 hostages into Gaza. It was the deadliest day for Jews since the Holocaust. Turning the anniversary of a massacre into a coffee promo is sick. The Islamification of Texas continues."
WikiBias on X - "Wikipedia editor JDiala admitted today that since 7 October 2023, sockpuppets and Discord coordination have kept Wikipedia pro-Palestine. What drove the admission was a sense of having nothing to lose. On 4 October, he asked Wikipedia to lift his topic ban and wrote: "I regret my previous conduct." Editors rejected it, cited his Jew-tagging and antisemitic comments, and called for a site ban. Today he dropped the apology: "You can go ahead and site ban me." He said he had already won, that he would return under a different account, and admitted the coordination. The bias against Israel is an orchestrated campaign. Wikimedia is still treating it as a series of isolated editors."
Meme - "SELECTIVE OUTRAGE IS THE TELL
500k Christians killed in Nigeria
500k Christians killed in Syria
500k Christians killed in Sudan
400k killed in Yemen
300k killed in Iraq
250k killed in Afghanistan
Ongoing. Documented. Almost no global marches.
75k killed in Gaza: In a WAR, Of whom 50k were Hamas fighters... "Genocide!""
Dr. Eli David on X - ".@billmaher on Gaza: “It is not a genocide, it is a counterattack in a war… You can't just change the definition of genocide to mean counterattack in a war where people including civilians die, that's every war.”"
Even the Israeli Left can see the West is deluded about a two-state solution - "Ed Miliband may have proudly insisted that his politically convenient sanctions on Israel were to ensure that the two-state solution could not be destroyed by Israeli settlements. But, among the voters I spoke to ahead of the election, even the most optimistic peace-loving Israelis struggled to envisage a Palestinian state happening in this generation. The disconnect between the rhetoric about this conflict that our Parliament has spent so much time blustering over – time on a subject we have absolutely no influence over – and the reality on the ground, where Hamas has been regrouping in Gaza and gaining popularity in the West Bank, is staggering. They could be two completely different conflicts. Hila showed me a photo of a poster Hamas had put up in broken Hebrew on an observation post facing her moshav. “Netiv HaAsara, out of the Sinai and out of Palestine soon. Your destruction is near.” The intention was clear. Before October 7, most of Israel believed the consensus or “conceptzia” idea of containment: to allow Hamas the freedom to rule Gaza, the shared view that however bad their rhetoric about wanting to destroy Israel, however many rockets they periodically sent over, they didn’t really want to start a war. Until they did. And now for most Israelis, whatever their political persuasion, the blinkers have come off. And as much as we see the conflict through a particular lens – through the suffering of the Palestinians – that is just a small part of the picture. Zoom out and you see Hamas growing in power in the West Bank without having disarmed, a radicalised population, and Iran – hurt but not broken – still intent on destroying the country. Many Israelis feel that we in the West have on the same blinkers that blinded them to the enemies who harboured so much hatred. And that by being blind to the threat around us, we are encouraging it against them and ourselves. “As long as I hear voices coming Europe and America saying that Hamas is a legitimate organisation and they are only freedom fighters who want to liberate their people, I know there is no way for both me and the people in Gaza to have a better future,” says Hila. “We will be tangled in that story and all that is happening is Hamas is gaining its money and power.”... Israelis see that Hamas is still a danger which won’t disappear by itself, however many times Western governments pretend a few stern words will do the trick. “We want peace, of course we do,” says Hila. “We don’t want our children and grandchildren to grow up under the shadow of bombs and rockets. But how do you have peace when there is no partner for it?”"
