I genuinely do not know who the bad guys are. S lot of my leftist friends are against Israel, but from what I know Israel was attacked and is responding and trying to get their hostages back.
Enlighten me. Am I wrong? Why am I wrong?
And dumb it down for me, because apparently I’m an idiot.
Just count the dead, injured, displaced, starved, and dehydrated on either side. You’ll find pretty quickly the numbers are extremely disproportionate. If that’s a baseline consideration for your judgment then you should think on that.
I generally agree that the response seems lopsided. However, I also find it odd that Hamas simply hasn’t returned the hostages. This to me signifies two possibilities- they are not actually interested in peace, or they don’t believe that returning the hostages will stop Israel’s destruction.
Would that appraisal of the situation seem reasonable?
There is a lot more to this way than just the hostage situation - Israel has been in control of Palestinian territory for a long time (they consider it theirs) and they have been fighting with the Hamas organization for years now. This is the single worst escalation of it.
Hamas doesn’t want peace. The status quo is domination of Palestine under Israel government - erasure of Palestine effectively if they laid down arms and disbanded. They want liberty, and payback for hardships.
There isn’t reason to believe Israel will stop the attacks on return of the hostages, as they have gone overwhelmingly above and beyond the total damage done by Hamas (even comparing women and children victims vs. the concert raid that started it all) and given Netanyahu’s far right government is at the helm, so your second point has merit.