> How many Palestinians, mostly civilians, were held hostage in Israeli prisons on October 6th? (Hint: over 5,000).

How many were there after trial?

> Are you referencing long debunked fabricated accounts [0]? Or do you have any actual evidence of rape?

Your own source indicates that there are UN investigators who found evidence of rape being carried out by Hamas terrorists.

> Again - over 5,000 Palestinians were being held hostage by Israel on October 6th, including 170 children [1]. That's a huge proportion of the population.
That's what October 7th was about. That's why they did it - to free kidnapped Palestinians. So, if you were to apply your own logic equally, you would then have to justify what Hamas did on October 7th.
You can compare any statistic you like - kidnappings, murders, torture, rape. Per capita, or absolute, Israel comes out worse every time.

Tell that to Jordan and Egypt. When the Israelis are offered a chance to sit down and hammer out a good-faith deal, they do so, and generally stick to its terms. It's almost as if they're going tit-for-tat with a group that is both willing to use shocking levels of violence to achieve their aims while also being far less able to counter any response using their own tactics.

> Most countries attack military targets. Not tens of thousands of children, or every hospital, or record numbers of journalists, and refugee camps. Because the numbers (real people) are unprecedented. Unprecedented.

Israeli war crimes should be punished. That being said, Hamas is the aggressor that decided to launch a military operation from one of the most densely populated territories on Earth. They also didn't seem to mind attacking civilian targets like a music festival or kibbutzim. If they had launched attacks on IDF bases, that's one thing. They didn't.

> Hamas offered to return the hostages on October 9/10 in exchange for Israeli troops not entering Gaza [2].

Think about that offer for a second. "We know we just killed over a thousand of your citizens - and fundamentally disagree with your state's very existence - but you can have the ones we kidnapped back, so long as you make no real attempt to find those responsible or prevent further attacks on your territory." Which brings me to my next point...

> Netanyahu has scuppered many deals since.

Of course he has. He doesn't have to take the deals Hamas (and by extension, Iran) wants. He's a bastard and is leaning too far towards authoritarianism to make me happy, but there was absolutely, positively no way that the attacks of October 7th were going to lead to anything but what you see going on now. Hamas is a militia. One backed by Iran, but still a militia. They lack the logistical, geographic and economic means to make any sort of sustained war against Israel, and they likely knew that before attacking.

When you're the leader of a country made up of a historically persecuted people and have been dealing with decades of attacks from an opponent, you're going to take advantage of their miscalculations to protect your people. Hamas made a massive miscalculation with October 7th. Netanyahu has been able to stick to power despite the violence of his response, and likely will until next year. Americans voting in the 2024 election, on the whole, didn't care if their government kept backing the Israelis. Iran's attempts to deliver reprisals generally failed to have any effect on Israel's ability to make war. The IDF operates in and around Gaza at will, able to destroy Hamas' token pockets of resistance. And since it's such a densely populated area, Palestinian civilians pay the price.

Furthermore, everyone who's anyone of consequence in the Middle East, save Iran, hates Hamas. There's a reason Egypt has stopped refugees at the border: they don't want a massively destabilizing force potentially entering their country. They're an existential threat to Egyptian society; Israel has shown it is not.

The only way to immediately prevent further civilian deaths in Gaza at this point is for Hamas to surrender, repatriate any hostages/remains, and disarm. Otherwise the Israelis will continue to push their advantage. You can't do what Hamas did on October 7th and run back behind the skirt of international law to stop your opponents; it simply doesn't work. You can screw up so much that it puts the survival of the entire population under your control at risk, and screw up is exactly what Hamas did by exercising the military option.