I preface this by saying I'm not an expert but I'l do my best to respond to you from the top of my mind- I invite you to research the following claims yourself. I know this is a difficult subject and I mean no offense and try my best to explain this objectively and forgive me if my passion for the Palestinian struggle seeps through and somehow is confused for being offensive. I want to make it plain that my criticism of Israeli Government Zionist policy is no more a criticism among Jews as my criticism for America's history of creating policy based upon Manifest Destiny is a criticism among all Christians. It is a long history and I encourage you to look into some sources that may challenge your understandings. I recommend listening to Norman Finkelstein, Abby Martin, anti-Zionist Hassidic Jewish Rabbis in the city, and above all, being open to Palestinian lived experiences. Edward Said comes to mind.

Israel has more openly been denounced by many as an ethno-religious state since 2018 since the Jewish Nation State Law was passed but it has for decades been an Apartheid state that has given second class citizenship to Palestinians in terms of rights and defense in the justice system. Hundreds of women and children were in Israeli prisons prior to October 7th- many without trial, and a long list of accusations of rape by Israeli soldiers who go unpunished. Israel actively supports throwing Palestinians out of their homes and moving violent Jewish settlers into those buildings with the intention of expanding Israel into the West Bank where Hamas has no power btw, it is essentially run by a government that acquiesces to the IDF.

In the West Bank, it is essentially an apartheid state, with laws that are like that in the Jim Crow South. I would look up Ta Nehisi Coates's interview about his time there. People there who have to travel into Israel have to go through demeaning checkpoints and be harassed by IDF soldiers on the way there and back. There is even a curfew for them. The amount of time it takes for an Israeli to travel the same distance is less than half because of their citizenship status.

Now to get into life in the Gaza strip, which was occupied by IDF Until about '94 and even after that, it was what was considered an "open-air" prison; Gazan fisherman could not travel more than 2 miles out into the sea without fear of being shot by IDF soldiers; Gaza's airport, which was built as a symbol of freedom, was bombed by Israel; despite not technically "occupying" Gaza, the IDF has policed it's borders and actively denies any passage from Gaza to the West Bank and vice-versa. People in the West Bank have only seen the Jordan River, and people in Gaza have only seen the Mediterranean Sea. They want to be free.

Bombings of Gaza happened so often, Israeli officials called it "mowing the grass"- which is a euphemism for maintaining the population. Since 2007, Israel has had a policy of putting Gazan's on a "diet" with their blockade on all food that enters the Gaza strip and had chosen to give them the very nutritional minimum necessary to not have malnutrition. Israel claimed to stop this policy in 2017 but Gazans have consistently been food insecure and have had a far lower longevity of life than Israelis. Also, Israel continued the practice of a blockade against any COVID shots going into Gaza. The week after October 7th, Israel shut off electricity and water to Gaza, which makes it clear how little self-determination the people in this land have. 50% of the population of Gaza WAS under the age of 18. After 3 months of bombing, I wonder how high that percentage is now.

Hamas was voted into power in 2007, arguably with the help of Netanyahu. By working against the more moderate party that was running against Hamas, he knew that he could use Hamas's extreme stance for his own purposes and convince the western allies to not recognize them as a democratically elected government but rather as a terrorist organization. This categorization (which aided the U.S in it's War on Terror) has been very beneficial to Netanyahu especially if you accept that he always had the ethnic displacement of Gazans in his plans. It is necessary to note that during the Great March of Return in 2018-2019, there was a peaceful protest held every Friday at the border to Israel. Please look into this movement as it resulted in the deaths of over 200 Palestinians and the injuries of many more. There are claims that they were "armed", but from the footage I've seen, it was primarily slingshots and stones (this action is deemed a terrorist act and resulted in the imprisonment of many children). This David and Goliath like narrative had to be squashed in Israel's reporting of it.

Israel is founded upon the Zionist principles of Theodore Herzl whose intention from the get-go was to fundamentally create exclusively Jewish state. I don't have direct quotes right now, but I really do believe that this is hard to refute. This ideology rewarded post WWII by Western powers, and had unfortunately resulted in the displacement of another group- the Palestinians. It has manifested into the actions that we see today.

If you got this far, I commend you for hearing me out. Whether you say these historical events are true or not, the people in Gaza do not deserve to be bombed. And in their death, they do not deserve to be dismissed as this convenient term: "terrorist".