Here are the facts:
1) The people of Gaza, more than half of whom weren't old enough to vote when Hamas was elected in 2008, are NOT collectively responsible for everything Hamas does.
2) The people of Gaza could not have stopped Hamas doing what it did on October 7th.
3) Netanyahu has spent much of this century "bolstering Hamas"(his words), in order to sideline the PLO and "thwarting a two-state solution(also his words), even though he knew Israel had no right to ask Palestinians to stop fighting if they don't get a state- that peace cannot happen without Palestinians getting SOMETHING.
4) Netanyahu disregarded all the warnings the IDF gave him that Hamas was planning something big, and did not order the Nova Festival cancelled, even though he knew holding the festival on the Gaza border put Israeli citizens in risk of being brutally attacked as they were on October 7.
5) As mentioned above, Netanyahu has repeatedly made preventing the creation of a Palestinian state the primary objective of his political career.
6) Even the "moderate" opposition parties, Blue and White and Yesh Atid, don't currently oppose his objective of stopping a Palestinian state, which means they also don't want peace.
7) Most Israeli military analysts do not believe it is actually possible to "Crush Hamas".
8) There is no chance that "Crushing Hamas", even if it was possible, could cause anything but the replacement of that organization with a far more extreme, far more violent organization- so, really, what's the point?
Those are the facts.
I've never supported or defended Hamas, but it's pointless to make crushing it the primary objective here.
The real primary objective should be winning ordinary Palestinians away from Hamas by actually offering them something in the here and now that would be worth the risk of doing so.
It doesn't work to keep acting as if the whole conflict is about nothing but Hamas, that all Palestinians are to blame for or supportive of Hamas, or that until Hamas vanishes, no ordinary Palestinian can be treated like a human being.
There is no fact that makes Netanyahu's unwinnable war the only or even the best option, or worth continuing in any way at all.
And remember, when Netanyahu allied himself with Orban in Hungary and the now-defeated far-right/antisemitic government in Poland, he made it clear he doesn't actually CARE about Jews.
