Two Things Can Be True

Speaking of being late to the party, following is my entry into the "Two Things Can Be True About the Israel-Palestine Crisis" body of work.

1. Hamas is a terrorist organization that brutally murdered hundreds of non-combatants and violently kidnapped hundreds more - including women, children, and the elderly.
2. The IDF and the Israeli government are worse than Hamas. By A LOT. It is not even remotely close.

Facts have to matter. Results have to matter. What Israel has done to Gaza since October 7th is at least an order of magnitude worse than everything that Hamas has ever managed in its entire existence combined.

The only argument I've seen that might bring the comparison close is where you start speculating about motives. "Hamas is worse because their intent is worse" - as if the people making this argument had magical mind reading powers. And even here - any fair accounting that doesn't make bullshit excuses for clear statements of genocidal intent from Israeli leaders would get you to about a draw. I mean, it's a qualitative comparison - you can't put a number on "how anti-social are these motives" - it's just "they aren't", "they are", and "holy shit - are they ever!" And both sides are firmly in category 3. So even when you discard actual results and the actual outcomes of actions from either side - at best, the Israeli government is about as bad as a terrorist organization. Hell, even if you give the genocide deniers their special pleading of "but the Prime Minister, President, Defense Minister, and senior military officers don't speak for Israel" nonsense - the fact that Israel is continuing their murderous campaign despite the civilian casualties and destruction - this demonstrates that their intentions are fucking horrible.

But let's not deal with "intent" that you can only demonstrate at this point with indirect observations and speculation. On every quantifiable measure, by any reasonable standard, the government and military of Israel is worse than Hamas - and usually by a huge amount. Let's just consider a few metrics:

• Number of civilians killed
• Number of children killed
• Ratio of non-combatants to combatants killed
• Number of people injured
• Number of non-combatants injured
• Number of hostages taken
• Duration that hostages have been held
• Number of hostages or prisoners injured
• Number of people who have claimed to have been tortured by each group
• Number of children taken hostage
• Damage to property and civilian infrastructure

And this isn't even considering the current starvation crisis. Which gets us to the even more damning part - the damage that Hamas has inflicted is basically done - and has been done for months. There have been two attacks by Hamas gunmen outside of Gaza since the original mass killing terrorist strike. resulting in I believe five Israelis killed (one of whom was killed by the IDF). OTOH, Israel's campaign of genocide continues vigorously and with new flavours of war crimes being introduced nearly constantly.

Here's a big part of why Gaza is still a big fucking deal to so many people - the scale and scope of what has happened in Gaza is just unbelievable. It's so much horror and suffering that the murderous attack of October 7 is dwarfed to the point of being round-off error. AND - the destruction of Gaza is still ongoing - it's literally still happening right now.

So yes, Hamas is a terrorist organization that committed mass crimes against humanity - in cold blood with ample premeditation. But as bad as Hamas is, the IDF and the government of Israel is objectively worse - and worse by a huge margin.