We can go back into history on who started the conflict, but even then I come back to the persecutions of Jews that fought for their independence and won. The result of that is the state of Israel. A democracy. Flawed, but in another league than comparable nations in that region.

A victory some are not ready to accept but they ultimately have to. Perhaps after they manage this first step there will be hope for a Palestinian state.

And yes, Israel did leave Gaza in 2005. That there were blockades was due to security concerns, which proved to be justified not only after the October attacks.

> Israel is a sick, apartheid regime that must be stopped.

This is a quote by you in another comment. Together with your excused for Hamas your arguments seem obsessive and misdirected.

You've offered no evidence to support this repeated claim, and haven't refuted the evidence to the contrary.

> your arguments seem obsessive and misdirected

Not obsessive, just consistent; I could just as well call you obsessive for your repeated excuses of Israel's destruction of Gaza and their murder, starvation, torture and rape of Palestinians.

You have a very Israeli view on history, and it's obvious neither of us are going to change our standpoint, so I bid you adieu.

I don't think I want to indulge in proving Hamas to be an extremist organization any further.

"Hamas affirms that its conflict is with the Zionist project not with the Jews because of their religion. Hamas does not wage a struggle against the Jews because they are Jewish but wages a struggle against the Zionists who occupy Palestine. Yet, it is the Zionists who constantly identify Judaism and the Jews with their own colonial project and illegal entity."[0]

[0] https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/hamas-2017-document-full

I don't think I want to indulge in proving Israel to be an murderous, colonial, terrorist, apartheid regime any further.

Not the 2008 charter. The most anyone can point to is the passage that supposedly calls for the "annihilation" of Israel, but that's very clearly a mistranslation. (The actual phrasing predicts Israel will be "invalidated" by Islam, a lot more like Khrushchev's "We will leave you in the dust").

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

While Palestinians in both Gaza and West Bank live intolerably. And surrounding countries that promissed not to regularize relations with Israel until the situation were resolved were abandoning Palestinians and regularizing relations anyway (for, among other things, access to Israeli weapons and technology they could use to repress their own and other populations).

This is what motivated the attack, an attempt to find _some_ way to do what other things had not, get Israel to see this as a situation that was not in fact sustainable, that they coudln't just go on like this forever no problem.

I think it is a violation of international law and a war crime to intentionally target or kidnap civilians, which I think happened that day. But it was not "unprovoked", and it does not require resorting to the explanation of "they just like violence" to explain motivation.

In fact, I specifically said I thought it was a violation of international law and a war crime to intentionally attack or kidnap civilians. So I'm not sure what you are saying "no" to in response to me?

Talking about motivation is different than talking about if we approve of the choices.

Bad immoral choices that are war crimes and violations of international law do not somehow prove that the motivation is "fundamentalism", right? If the question is what was the motivation for the attack, saying the motivation is something other than "fundamentalism" is not to say attacking or kidnapping civilians is ok. You asked, if not fundamentalism, what is the motivation? We told you. Bad immoral choices that are war crimes on Oct 7th also don't erase the prior decades of history, involving many many violations of international law and war crimes. Which are as we described above.