It's sensible enough, in general, to point out that Israel's attempts to sweep the Palestinians under the mat and pretend as much as possible that they don't exist are misguided and can't work in the long run. Though I have long noticed that many Western progressives conveniently forget to ask themselves how they would actually feel on that topic if they were in the Israelis' shoes - or do ask it but conveniently delude themselves on the answer. But still, true sustainable peace for Israel can't exist until there's a workable solution for the Palestinians, whether that's a one state or two state solution, so that will inevitably require significant sacrifice on the Israeli side.

And yes, with a power imbalance like that, Palestinian resistance will inevitably entail fighting dirty - back in the days before Israel was created, some of the future leaders of Israel were terrorists too, against both the British occupiers and the Palestinians, because they felt that was what was needed to achieve their goals.

But still, it's crazy how as a supposedly pro-peace progressive activist, you can wake up to news as horrifying as this Hamas attack and go 'oh, fair enough, they had it coming'. How you can fail to realize that both in terms of scale and in terms of moral lines crossed, this is an entirely different matter than earlier Palestinian terrorism (or Jewish, back in the day). If you aren't disgusted by that, or decline to publicly condemn it, you can't seriously claim to be working towards a peaceful, viable resolution of the conflict.

That being said, I do understand that people started thinking very quickly about how innocent Palestinians in Gaza were likely to pay the price for it - and how the Palestinian children dying in Israel's retaliation strikes or through its siege measures would never get the same amount of attention as the ones who died in the Hamas attack. Like every time before, the Palestinian dead are just a number, Israeli dead get a face and a story. Of course, the way to fix that situation is not, as some seem to think, to refuse to acknowledge those stories of the Israeli dead.

For the most part, I think 'moving immediately to try to avert the inevitable retaliation' was more accurate - but yes, doing that without any mourning or acknowledgement of the horror is both callous and manifestly counterproductive.

The second one especially is rather mind-boggling. First, what on earth do reproductive rights have to do with anything here, and secondly, what do you morons think Hamas' views on reproductive rights are anyway?

Ugh. I hate that line. But it's a useful reminder to pro-Palestinian activists in the West that there isn't necessarily all that much enthusiasm for any viable solution on the Palestinian side, either - you might argue that for a political entity such as the PA or Hamas, there is a strategic aspect to that, a good negotiator doesn't give his concessions for free but waits to get something in return (even if the concession is no more than a public acknowledgement of an obvious fact, like here), but if the people delude themselves into thinking the concessions won't ever need to happen, that's very dangerous.

It must be said that plenty of people on the right both in the US and internationally, most notably Netanyahu himself, blatantly abuse the label of antisemitism in their fight against antizionism or even against more balanced activists who strive for a fairer solution for both peoples. Anyone who opposes them is called antisemitic (or, in the event of their being Jewish, 'self-hating Jew' ), while their allies of convenience such as Viktor Orban get a pass even when they actually do use blatantly antisemitic rhetoric. On the other side, yes, there are certainly those who become antisemitic as a result of their views on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. All the more reason to be very careful with lines like 'Israelis and, by extension, Jews in the United States'.