While it’s clear there were civilians killed by Hamas on the 7th, even Israeli sources have shown evidence that a large number of civilians were mistakenly killed by IDF attacks, it is unclear how many people were killed by IDF. Also, many sources will claim any male between the ages of 16-40 (military-aged male) killed was a fighter without any further verification, so it’s difficult at this stage to say with much reliability the number of civilians versus militants killed especially in a place like Palestine with an active guerilla movement.
Hamas seems to be more of an organizing force than a specific ideology that all of Palestine supports, many people see the struggle against Israel as a fight for their people’s survival and have turned to more extremist measures because of the failures of all other methods over several decades.
I know why Palestinians support Hamas and certainly Israel’s right-wing government also shares a lot of the blame for the current war. However, when the duly-elected and popularly-supported Hamas government chose war, they acceded to civilian casualties. They killed (and raped) Israeli civilians on purpose because they knew that the IDF would respond with overwhelming force, which would further their goal of discrediting Israel and undermining the normalization of relations with Arab neighbors. And they are supported in all of this with overwhelming public support in Gaza, not to mention Iran and Qatar.
While it’s clear there were civilians killed by Hamas on the 7th, even Israeli sources have shown evidence that a large number of civilians were mistakenly killed by IDF attacks, it is unclear how many people were killed by IDF. Also, many sources will claim any male between the ages of 16-40 (military-aged male) killed was a fighter without any further verification, so it’s difficult at this stage to say with much reliability the number of civilians versus militants killed especially in a place like Palestine with an active guerilla movement.
Hamas seems to be more of an organizing force than a specific ideology that all of Palestine supports, many people see the struggle against Israel as a fight for their people’s survival and have turned to more extremist measures because of the failures of all other methods over several decades.
I know why Palestinians support Hamas and certainly Israel’s right-wing government also shares a lot of the blame for the current war. However, when the duly-elected and popularly-supported Hamas government chose war, they acceded to civilian casualties. They killed (and raped) Israeli civilians on purpose because they knew that the IDF would respond with overwhelming force, which would further their goal of discrediting Israel and undermining the normalization of relations with Arab neighbors. And they are supported in all of this with overwhelming public support in Gaza, not to mention Iran and Qatar.