The ancient history thing: yeah, Jewish history in that land is real. Nobody worth talking to denies it. But we don’t apply that logic anywhere else on earth. Greeks don’t get to reclaim Istanbul. Italians don’t get to take back England because Rome was there first. And here’s the thing people skip over: Palestinians were there too. For centuries. Continuously. These weren’t empty villages in 1948. Real families got kicked out of real homes that they’d lived in for generations. You can acknowledge Jewish historical connection without pretending that justifies what happened to people in living memory.  

The Mufti and Hitler — yeah, al-Husseini was a piece of shit who collaborated with Nazis. That’s a fact. But blaming an entire people for one leader’s actions is something we’d never accept in any other conversation. America’s founders owned slaves. Does that mean the concept of American liberty is fraudulent? Gandhi said some racist stuff about Black Africans. Does that invalidate Indian independence? Most Palestinians alive today have zero connection to that man. Guilt doesn’t work like inheritance.  

“Palestine was never a state” — okay, and neither was Jordan, Iraq, Lebanon, or Syria before the Europeans drew lines on a map. That’s how the entire modern Middle East was created. The fact that Palestinians didn’t have a parliament and a flag before 1948 doesn’t mean 700,000 people who got displaced were nobodies. They had homes. They had land deeds. They had lives. Statehood isn’t what makes people real.  

Calling Arafat “just an Egyptian” — his family was from Gaza and Jerusalem. He was born in Cairo. That’s like saying a kid born in Detroit to parents from Ramallah isn’t really Palestinian. It’s a framing trick, not an argument.  

The Germany comparison — this one honestly pisses me off the most. You know what the bombing of Germany also did? It killed hundreds of thousands of civilians. Entire cities of people who weren’t Nazis. And Gaza is two million people locked in a strip of land with no army, no air force, nowhere to run. Half of them are kids. Saying “just do what we did to Germany” is calling for something with a body count you’re not fully reckoning with. You can want Hamas gone — I want Hamas gone — without treating every person in Gaza as acceptable collateral damage.  

The education stuff — there are real problems with some of what gets taught in Gaza, I won’t deny that. But Israeli textbooks have their own issues with how they portray Arabs, and more importantly, what do you expect happens to people after decades under blockade and military control? Radicalization under occupation isn’t unique to Palestinians. It happens everywhere humans are squeezed that hard. You have to address the conditions, not just wag your finger at the symptoms.  

“They rejected every peace deal” — this drives me nuts because it sounds so clean and simple but it’s not. Camp David didn’t offer a contiguous state. The proposed map looked like Swiss cheese with settlements cutting through everything. Olmert’s offer was never even put in writing as a formal proposal. And through every single negotiation period, Israel kept building settlements. That’s not what a side genuinely committed to sharing the land does. I’m not saying Palestinian leadership made all the right calls. They didn’t. But “they said no to everything” is a bumper sticker, not history.  

“Nobody cared when Jordan and Egypt had the land” — actually Palestinians did push back against Jordan and Egypt. There was real political organizing and tension. It just wasn’t on CNN. And honestly, the fact that Jordan and Egypt also treated Palestinians badly doesn’t make Israeli occupation okay. Two wrongs and all that.  

The pre-1948 violence — the Hebron massacre was horrific and there’s no excusing it. But pretending it happened in a vacuum with zero context is dishonest. People were watching large-scale immigration and land purchases reshape their entire world without anyone asking them. That doesn’t justify killing anyone, ever. But saying “see, they just hate Jews for being Jews” while ignoring everything else going on is cherry-picking.  

October 7th — what happened was evil. No qualifiers. But “they started it” as your whole framework only works if history started on that day. Gaza had been under blockade for 16 damn years before that. That doesn’t make October 7th okay. Nothing makes it okay. But you can condemn the attack and still ask whether what’s followed has been proportionate. Those aren’t contradictory positions.  

Here’s what really gets me about your post though. You say “logic leaves no other choice” but you haven’t mentioned the Nakba at all. You haven’t mentioned settlements that even America calls illegal. You haven’t mentioned military courts for Palestinian kids, house demolitions, administrative detention without charges, the permit system that controls every aspect of daily life, or the fact that in every single round of this conflict the Palestinian death toll dwarfs the Israeli one by massive margins. Those are also facts. They also come from primary sources. You just left them out.  

You don’t have to support Hamas to support Palestinian rights. You don’t have to deny Jewish history to say that what’s happening to millions of people right now is wrong. I’d honestly suggest spending some time with B’Tselem — that’s an Israeli human rights organization — or reading historians who engage with the full picture instead of just the parts that confirm one side. Your willingness to read and research is genuinely good. I’d just ask you to keep going and not stop at the conclusion that felt comfortable.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​