When you’re engaged in oppressing a whole population for decades, then you should be surprised when people get desperate enough to lash out in brutal ways. That the other side also commits war crimes does not give you any right to commit even more war crimes.

It’s not about Israel having to take it lying down. It’s about Israel not retaliating against civilians who have already been victims of both Israeli and Hamas oppression their entire lives for actions carried out by a tiny proportion who won a minority of the votes so long ago that the vast majority of the current Gaza population were not even of voting age when the last election were held, and that a majority would like to get rid of (see below).

Had Israel engaged with any kind of humanity, instead of with prominent people calling Palestinians animals and instigating brutal additional oppression, and instead aimed to take on just Hamas and showed they were serious even a lot of people who see Israel as the brutal apartheid state it is would be a lot more sympathetic to their legitimate right to fight back against Hamas.

As it stands, Israel is demonstrating that like Hamas, its government are far-right extremist war criminals who thrives on dehumanizing and victimizing civilians, and whereas Israeli civilians are not legitimate targets, and should have our sympathy, nobody should have any sympathy for their Apartheid government.

To preempt the inevitable attempt to conflate Palestinians with Hamas:

(from https://www.washingtoninstitute.org/policy-analysis/polls-show-majority-gazans-were-against-breaking-ceasefire-hamas-and-hezbollah )