You say you don't deny atrocities, but you keep making statements that seem to "excuse" Hamas or make it seem like they weren't specifically targeting civilians for slaughter. And I don't understand. It is incredibly well-documented that they did target civilians. Not just by "Israel", mind you - there are thousands of articles showing this. Thousands of reporters who saw a fuller atrocity video and explained just how awful some of those acts were.

It's fine to think Israel is bad to, but how can you possibly deny acts that are so well-documented, or seek to excuse them? I'll show what I mean by some examples:

> If you think numbers are important it's probably 797 [civilians] or so you'd want, but it's unclear how many of those were armed. It's very common in Israel to be carrying a rifle as a civilian.

You write "unclear how many were armed". What's the logic here? If someone in their city is armed, because they are afraid they'll be attacked in their homes, and then someone attacks them, you think the attacker is then able to say "oh well but they were armed, so I'm justified in killing them"? What is the relevance to whether civilians in their own homes are armed for protection, in deciding whether or not it's an act of murder/terrorism to kill them?

And btw, I'm fairly sure the hundreds that were slaughter in a night-time rave were not armed, except for probably some security for the party. (Well there was security with guns there, does that make it a legitimate target?)

> Many of those 1200 or so were soldiers.

Let's be clear. Killing soldiers is not automatically legal or moral either. Invading an army base - fine, legal (though obviously, an act of war!). But shooting unarmed soldiers (as happened) and not allowing soldiers to surrender after you've taken over the base - not moral and not legal.

Also, some of those "soldiers" are counted because they are off-duty soldiers, e.g. ones that were in their homes or in the Nova party. Yes, they are technically soldiers, but again, not legal to kill them either.

> It's also unclear to what extent the IDF killed israelis.

Unclear in the sense that we don't know a precise number, sure. And some were definitely (confirmed) killed by the IDF. But... it's clear that the number is tiny compared to the overall dead. So yes, you can say "unclear" and be accurate, but that's exactly the kind of motte-and-bailey argument that only serves to obscure Hamas's culpability.

And btw, anyone killed by the IDF by accident is still Hamas's fault, because they were the ones who put everyone in this situation! It can also be some IDF commander's fault, and they might have to answer to Israelis about it, but that doesn't mean it's not Hamas's fault for attacking a village!

> We can be quite sure almost no palestinians managed to return to the Gaza strip though.

Do you understand that 250 hostages were captured and taken to Gaza? Do you think they walked there by themselves? Thousands of Palestinians had to drag those hostages in to Gaza, and you can see the triumphant videos of them being dragged around the streets with cheering crowds. So no, "almost no" Palestinians managed to return doesn't pass even a cursory sniff test here.

> And yeah, it's just a few compared to what Israel is doing.

Compared to what Israel is doing now? Yes. Israel is stronger. If it gets invaded and has its citizens slaughtered, it is able to inflict far more damage in return. Such were all wars in history won (e.g. compare casualties in Germany/Japan vs the Allies during WW2).

Maybe it would make sense to condenm Hamas even more strongly, both because they did despicable acts on October 7th, and also because of the horrible situation they've put Gazans in. And let's remember, they built an entire array of tunnels to hide in and keep attacking Israel, while building zero protection for any Palestinian civilians. Kind of the opposite to what Israel has done by spending vast wealth on things like Iron Dome to protect its citizens (and btw, this also protects Gazans in some sense too - because absent Iron Dome, the IDF would've had to stop the rocket attacks with overwhelming military force many times in the past!)

> I don't think the resistance groups in the Gaza strip ought to have killed as many civilians as they did, but I find it somewhat understandable.

Clearly.

> It would have been better if the perpetrators were prosecuted than Hellfire:d together with israelis,

Most weren't hellfire:d, and definitely not together with Israelis.

And yes, I would've loved for them to be arrested too - which many were. But are you really suggesting that priority 1,2 and 3 wasn't to stop them by any means necessary, while they were running around inside of Israel for two days?

I'm against anybody dying, ever. But in such a situation, if an arrest can't be made, then obviously killing them before they kill more civilians is better than not.

> I'm not denying any atrocities, but I'm very sceptical until I've seen very strong evidence due to the large amount of lies and half-truths that have been circulated by Zaka, IDF and israeli politicians.

Great. Don't listen to Israeli politicians or the IDF or Zaka. (Which is a convenient way to discount most of the people with the relevant facts, sure.)

So just listen to the thousands of reporters, to the governments of the US, UK, Germany, etc, who've independently verified much, or just listen to the Israeli public. Israel is a democracy - its government doesn't usually get away with lying, but even more importantly, there's freedom of speech. It's not exactly hard to confirm the hundreds killed, there are literally interviews with thousands of witnesses to the murders that occurred on that day.

> Much of the reporting about sexual abuse has turned out to be hearsay or straight up lying.

There are many cases where witnesses saw acts of sexual violence performed on women that were then killed. There's an NYT article about it, there's a UN report about it, that all say the same things.

There are a few hostages who've described what is happening to the hostages in Gaza. And yes, they're being somewhat vague on the specific acts that occurred, because they don't want to upset the families of hostages or their own families even further. But claiming there's no evidence because a witness says "I was sexually assaulted" but doesn't describe the specific acts done on them is... disingenuous, to say the least.

> And so on.

Great. So your strategy is to take the many wild stories that came out, most of which circulated not by official Israeli sources, but some that were and were later retracted. Take those stories, disprove them, and then say "well that proves there's no way to believe anything".

And then discount the thousands of witnesses, articles, examinations etc that have been consistent and proven since day one.

You say things like that, or like this:

> to the extent that it took weeks before genetic testing lowered the death toll by a couple of hundred because the corpses had at first been counted as israeli and blamed on "Hamas".

With the often-implied idea that things being retracted or later proven false is proof that you can't trust these sources.

Except it's exactly the opposite! The fact that wrong stories are shown to be wrong, that the death count is lowered when more info is available, is exactly proof that Israel is a democracy that's working correctly and that the truth is uncovered!

Under autocracies, you never have retrospectives and leaders saying they made mistakes. It's just deny, deny, deny. And you look at that, and praise them for their consistency, thinking that that makes them more honest.

> I think the reaction to the violence of October 7th should have been 'OK, maybe we should adhere to international law and seek peace'.

Great. Let's forget about the immediate aftermath of October 7th, which demanded a resposne while Israel was literally being invaded and attacked.

What is step 1 of your plan to "adhere to international law and seek peace"? Is it perhaps removing all soldiers from the WB, dismantling all settlements there, pulling back to the original borders? How is that different from what happened in Gaza in 2005? Which led to rocket attacks and eventually to October 7th?

You seem to think if Israel would just unilaterally give Palestinians all of some unspecified things they want, suddenly they would be peaceful. All of the history of this conflict has shown the oposite to be true - when Israel seeks peace, more terrorism happens. When Israel pulled out of Gaza, it led to this mess.

I'm very pro-peace, I think Israel has acted immorally for 15 years at least in not pursuing peace, and that Netanyahu carries a lot of moral culpability in the situation we're now in. Second only to Hamas.

But being pro-peace doesn't mean you get to throw out all logic or pragmatism. Quite the opposite - you have to be extrmeely pragmatic to get peace, since it's so hard and so important. If your step one of a peace plan would immediately be followed by Israel being invaded and quite likely attacked catastrophically, then it's a stupid peace plan which will only result in the death of far more Israelis immediately, and Palestinians in the counter-attack.

So without vague platitudes like "adhere to international law", what specifically would you have Israel do right now, given the current situation, given that Hamas is in charge of Gaza and that they have promised to carry out attacks again and again, etc. What is your step 1 that doesn't get followed by "and then a massive war breaks out in which hundreds of thousands die"?