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The difference between us is that I don’t think Israel is trying to "repay blood", but is protecting its citizens and is attempting to rescue hostages and to destroy a militant terrorist organisation that uses civilian infrastructure for its attacks.

"even" the BBC that refuses to call Hamas terrorists?

I will listen to other countries talking when they are faced with rocket fire from civilan objects, while their citizens are held hostage. I’d listen to what Ukraine has to say, for example.

Using language such as "IDF murdered Israeli hostages" is plain antisemitic, like so many similar small things. For what is the definition of "murder" – it’s "the unlawful premeditated killing of one human being by another." So you are saying that in the heat of the battle, while Hamas operatives are constantly using speakers with calls for help in Hebrew recorded (https://www.ynetnews.com/article/rj0qiptia) and are attacking without wearing uniform (breaking the law of war with just that already), the soliders "murdered" Israeli hostages. That is the perfect example of the antisemitic approach to discussing this conflict.

> "even" the BBC that refuses to call Hamas terrorists?

This isn't specific to Israel/Hamas, the BBC avoid a lot of emotive and loaded language.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-67083432

I think that my family has a right to not be evacuated from their home, not run to bomb shelters daily, not have to leave home and go protect their country at the risk of death for unknown amount of time.

If you think that criticising Israel is making you look good because it is now fashionable to have an opinion on things you don’t have personal involvement with, then you are wrong, and your demonising comments are making the world a worse, less-safe space.

Have you considered that you're not special and it's possible to do wrong while also being a victim? You talk about people being "evacuated from their home" and running to bomb shelters. I'm talking about dozens more being killed by bombs and shot dead by soldiers. If you get punched, I will stand by you and feel sorry for you and try to help you and keep you safe. But if your response is to pull out a knive and stab the attacker to death, I will call you a murderer.

It's horrible that Israelis live under constant threat and the 1200 victims of the Hamas attacks on October 7th should be mourned. But it's hard to feel mournful for Israelis when Israel has killed an order of magnitude more in the months since (and even more over the years prior). Even the Americans gave the world more time to sympathize with the victims of 9/11 before engaging in retaliation against the countries it deemed responsible (in lieu of Saudi Arabia).

I'm German. Criticising Israel doesn't make me "look good". It's not something to do in polite conversation in my country and even the political left frequently eschews the topic and insists on passivity because of our country's history. I don't celebrate Hamas as I don't condone the murder of civilians and believe that calling all Israelis "colonizers" or saying that makes them complicit and thus valid military targets is morally bankrupt. But that is the same reason I object to the IDF's disregard for human life and its dishonest claim to be the "most humane military". I don't stand with the pro-Hamas Islamists that celebrated the October 7 attack in the streets of Berlin, I stand with the Jewish Bundists and anti-Zionists that don't want to be used as shields by Israel to justify its military's thirst for blood.

We can simplify this. You really only have two options: you can claim that the pictures of levelled city blocks in Gaza are fake, that the death toll is a complete fabrication (i.e. wrong by multiple orders of magnitude) and that the UN organisations, the international aid organisations, all non-Israeli journalists and Jewish anti-Zionists and Bundists are lying and helping to spread misinformation to make Israel look bad. Or you can claim that the pictures and the numbers are real and the death of all of these humans is justified because you either consider all Palestinians a threat to Jews or think the life of one Jew is worth the death of tens of Palestinians. The first one makes me think you're delusional, the second one makes me think you're a monster. I don't see a third option but maybe you can elaborate.

Israel has no “military thirst for blood” and is protecting its citizens from literal massacres, thousands of rocket launches and hostage capturing, and infiltrations by terrorists, and inciting jihadism across “still civilian” population.

It is in fact not at all hard to feel mournful for Israelis killed on October 7th.

Hamas is still launching rockets at Israeli population centers as of this morning. Israel has every right to do everything within its power to stop them. This is a war, Israel is not responsible for the Palestinian population beyond following the rules of war, which they are.

Yes it has the right to defend its people. But it must act civilised, not ignoring Geneva Conventions blocking water, food, medicines for 2.3 mil civilians and flattening Gaza.

Where are the demands for aid from Egypt and Jordan? For some reason, people criticize Israel for these things, but not other neighboring countries that Palestinians are not actively attacking.

There are trucks full of food, on the Egyptian side, but Israel won’t let the trucks into Gaza. Either by bombing the route or by plainly not letting them in. Google and you’ll find plenty evidence.

Israel is outright starving the population of Gaza, as a means of war tactics, which is illegal according to Geneva Conventions. That’s what the defence minister Gallant said after his speech in October: „these are human animals. We will cut water, food, electricity, fuel“.

The Rafah border crossing is controlled by Egypt, not Israel.

Hamas is a terrorist group. Israel is a state. State militaries generally have rules of engagement. They define how soldiers are allowed to behave, when they are allowed to shoot or forced to retreat, what is a valid target and so on.

The US was widely criticized for its military's civilian death toll during the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq as well as the occupations thereafter. Rightfully so, in my opinion. But the US military - like most state militaries - had explicit limits and for every target the US military command defined the acceptable number of casualties. You wouldn't bomb a busy market with families and children to kill one Taliban soldier for example.

Israel also has rules of engagement and limits on civilian casualties. The difference is that if the US had used the same numbers during its occupations, Iraq and Afghanistan would be depopulated. And any US soldiers doing what is permissible in the IDF would be court martialed.

> This is a war, Israel is not responsible for the Palestinian population beyond following the rules of war, which they are.

The rules don't apply to Israel (nor the United States for that matter - nor Russia): https://asp.icc-cpi.int/states-parties

Also

> Israel has every right to do everything within its power to stop them.

This contradicts the idea that they have to "follow the rules of war", whatever that is supposed to refer to. You can either claim they're adhering to whatever international laws, treaties or conventions you think they're adhering to or that they're allowed to do whatever is in their power. These two claims are mutually incompatible.

Also

> This is a war

What is? When did the war start? October 7? Was it not a war when Hamas was launching rockets before October 7 and the IDF were bombing civilian buildings they declared to be "used by Hamas"? Who are the sides of this war? Israel and Hamas? Then WTF do you call what's happening in the Westbank? Also you do realize that "Hamas" is both a terrorist group and the official administration of Gaza (and that it was "elected" two decades ago and there haven't been elections since and most people in Gaza were either not born or not old enough to vote at the time)? And you're aware that there are other Islamist terrorist groups operating within Gaza such as the Muslim Brotherhood and that Hamas has no control over them (i.e. is unable to negotiate ceasefires on their behalf)? Heck, what is the goal of the war?

According to Netanyahu, Israel wants to end Hamas and any threat to Israelis once and for all. This not only mirrors the rhetoric he used against Hezbollah (before withdrawing from the war in Lebanon) but is also completely open ended and undefined. At least when the US invaded Afghanistan they had an explicit end state (ousting the Taliban) - as insufficient as that goal turned out to be when they exited (and the Taliban returned). Heck, even Russia had a clearly defined goal when invading Ukraine (several, actually, some contradictory but most of them very much well-defined and not open ended).

Israeli state media and Israeli politicians have at numerous times framed this "war" as an ethnic cleansing (i.e. removing Palestinians from Gaza and expelling them from the territory of Israel). I guess at least that's a well-defined goal with a clear end state compared to Netanyahu's rhetoric.

That's not how blood works. It isn't "repaid".

Indeed. Then what is the blood being spilled for and how much more will need to be spilled to accomplish that goal - and do you think that is an acceptable amount?

Does the idea of the cure being worse than the disease mean anything to you? If you value the lives of Palestinians and Israelis equally, the IDF killing 16 times as many Palestinians as Hamas killed Israelis should concern you. And that for years the IDF has each year killed an order of magnitude more Palestinians than the Hamas killed Israelis should also concern you. The corpses don't care if they were murdered by terrorists or legally killed as collateral damage by an organized military.

The IDF has a stated goal of eradicating Hamas, and, failing that, of disabling them militarily. Hamas has a stated goal of maximizing Gazan fatalities, because they believe they're playing a long game that will, in the course of decades or centuries, end with a new caliphate in the Levant; they are a theocratic e/acc movement that places zero value on human life and that has embedded itself deeply into a densely populated area that affords civilians minimal freedom of motion.

It may well be the case that Netanyahu's fascist-fringe coalition has a subtextual goal of vindicating October 7th with a disproportionate retaliatory civilian casualties. But a subtext is all that is. Any Israeli leader pursuing the IDF's current stated military goal, even in a hypothetical Labor coalition, would be incurring the same "disproportionate" casualties, simply because of how the conflict is structured.

You can't simply add casualties up, death for death. If you did that, every one of the retaliatory casualties would be immoral as well. The question isn't what the comparative numbers are, but rather whether legitimate military objectives outweighed the civilian toll in each strike. That's how international war crimes law sees it, and it's I think the only sane way to look at the situation.

(None of this is to say that the IDF's campaign in Gaza is wholly defensible; I have no idea if it is, and it sure looks to me like it isn't).