Hamas wants to make a deal if they can get what they want out of it. That's the whole reason they took hostages. Terrorists who take hostages shouldn't get what they want.
That's not what the principle of proportionality means. It has nothing to do with the death toll on each side. It's a principle that's applied to each individual strike and requires armed forces to ensure that any civilian deaths are proportional to the military objectives of the strike. Hamas and Hebollah are terrorist organizations that don't respect the laws of war, so that's a pretty big point in favor of Israel.
Second, many military experts have agreed that, given the conditions in which Israel is fighting this war, the civilian-to-combatant ratio in Gaza is among the lowest in the history of urban warfare. You've seen what Israel is capable of over the past year - it's patently obvious that the death toll could have been much, much higher.
Third, the moral judgment of rightness or wrongness in a conflict isn't determined by the death toll on each side. The winners of a war will typically suffer fewer casualties than the losers because that's a big part of how winners in war are determined. The fact that very few US civilians died in WWII compared to German civilians doesn't make the US the bad guys in that war.
There is one side in this conflict that is openly genocidal: the Iranian regime. They have literally admitted their goal is to destroy Israel. They have a doomsday clock in Tehran counting down to the death of Israel in the year 2040. And they are willing to sacrifice every single Palestinian life to make that happen.
I don't give a crap what has been "discussed" - the facts clearly show that they aren't committing genocide. The world knows what an actual genocide looks like.
LOL, every time someone provides contrary evidence to your accusation it gets labeled "whataboutism." I know all the anti-Zionist propaganda tricks.
Russia invaded a sovereign nation to take over their land. Israel is fighting back against a genocidal regime that has sponsored terrorist violence against it for decades, and has promised to destroy it. Big difference.
LOL, wow. I don't even know where to begin with this crap.
Yes, I am an Israel supporter. That makes me biased towards Israel. Just like your hatred for Israel makes you biased against Israel. See how that works?
And you're right, it didn't start on Oct 7, 2023. It didn't even start in 1948. It started decades before that, when Arabs began violently resisting Jewish immigration spurred on by the violently antisemitic and Nazi-sympathizer Amin Al-Husseini. But I suspect that you actually know every little about the history, like most Israel haters.
What did you do to generate that ridiculous list of links, Google "Bad things Israel has done"?
I like your list of "massacres" too. Notice how the vast majority of them occurred in 1947 and 1948, during war started by the Arabs. Most of them are just battles in which civilians died, but the Palestinian propaganda machine attaches the word "massacre" to every single one for dramatic effect. I can play that game with actual massacres, going back centuries before your list.
"We were viciously attacked by the terror proxy of a genocidal regime that wants to destroy us, but we shouldn't respond because it's bad for the environment."
Comments by extremists in the immediate aftermath of a traumatic terror attack don't establish genocidal intent. The actions over the past year clearly aren't in line with those comments.
Let's not forget the current war in Israel started when Hamas terrorists (and Gazan civilians) actually murdered 1200 Israeli civilians. In the most barbaric way possible. And then took 250 more people hostage.
Last time I checked, Ukrainian terrorists did not invade Russia and butcher civilians and take more prisoner.
Israel and Russia are not analogous in the slightest.
I went back over my comments and can't figure out what I said that you find so problematic. What could I have possibly said that is pushing you towards the anti-Zionist camp?
I am representative of centrist Zionists, which make up the vast majority. The problem is that people have been taught by extremist anti-Zionists that the right wing nutjobs in Israel are representative of Zionism, when they simply aren't. It's no different than me saying that Islam is a religion of terrorism. That would be blatant Islamophobia, wouldn't it? But when it comes to Zionism, people think it's okay to make sweeping generalizations and treat us all as racist fascist scum.
Every society has its extremists. Every single one. The difference with Israel is that Western progressives judge the entire country by its extremists.
Says international law. https://casebook.icrc.org/a_to_z/glossary/proportionality#:~:text=The%20principle%20of%20proportionality%20prohibits,and%20direct%20military%20advantage%20anticipated%E2%80%9D.
Hamas wants to make a deal if they can get what they want out of it. That's the whole reason they took hostages. Terrorists who take hostages shouldn't get what they want.