Top UN legal investigators conclude Israel is guilty of genocide in Gaza

Israel systematically abducts, tortures, and imprisons Palestinians old and young with reckless abandon. I hate to defend Hamas, but the goal of the abductions was to use them as a bargaining chip to get their own captives who'd been unjustly imprisoned in hellish conditions, for years on end.

Settlers in the West Bank openly murder Palestinians like animals, as well. The State of Israel is a violent terrorist state.

While I agree that Israel do all these illegal things, abductions, murders, letting settlers do whatever and so on, I think on a deeper level the Hamas attack was an Iranian proxy attack and to them, bargaining chips and hostages are just details. They play a dirty game.

Ignoring the thousands of rockets launched from Gaza in the hours before, Hamas telegraphed the October 7 attacks for years. Specifically, planning the attack since at least the 2010's.

Occam's Razor indicates that it was a legitimate operation by Hamas and Israel underestimated their adversary.

https://ctc.westpoint.edu/the-october-7-attack-an-assessment...

https://www.realinstitutoelcano.org/en/analyses/guard-down-d...

https://www.npr.org/2025/03/05/nx-s1-5318591/israel-shin-bet...

I do agree that Hamas has agency and its own agendas. I just doubt they would be as "successful" without Iranian support.

>I think on a deeper level the Hamas attack was an Iranian proxy attack and to them, bargaining chips and hostages are just details. They play a dirty game.

That is such a shallow understanding of someone for whom the whole region is just a source of entertainment. While Hamas is an "Iranian proxy" in a similar way that Ukraine is an "American proxy" that doesn't mean that Hamas and Ukraine don't have agency - who, despite their reliance on outside help, have a righteous cause and will keep defending their lands with or without that help.

It's also ironic that you would describe it as "on a deeper level" when it's quite the opposite - it's shallow and misguided. Hamas is a Sunni militant group, while Iran is Shia. You clearly have no understanding whatsoever how these groups have historically fought each other - just look at how they have been fiercely fighting each other in Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan.

So why would Iran help Hamas then? For Iran, attaching themselves to a righteous cause such as Palestine has been a very effective tool to whitewash Iran's image and present Iran as "Axis of Resistance" despite having caused much harm to the Sunni-Muslims in the region (e.g. Iran cooperated with America in destroying Iraq, Iran also helped Assad oppress the Syrians for decades). Thus, helping the Palestinian resistance gives the shady Iranian regime legitimacy and positive PR like no other cause in the world. (the average iranian may genuinely support Palestine, because they are mostly unaware of the meta-game being played by their own regime)

Why does Hamas accept help from Iran? This should be much easier to understand. Most of the Arab regimes are ruled by puppets who are subservient to America and have betrayed the resistance. One of the main reasons for October 7 was Saudi's MBS being close to normalizing with Israel and thus sealing Palestine's fate forever. This was a "now or never" moment so the resistance made clear that they mean business and that they won't let any normalization happen without a sovereign Palestinian state. Back to Iran - so when you're in a dire situation, you can't be picky with your allies. Iran helps Hamas because it's a great tool to whitewash the Iranian image and Hamas gets weapons in return. October 7 however was most certainly not in Iran's interest in any way. Despite Iran's harsh language towards America, they very much tried to cozy up and seek "forgiveness" because of the crushing sanctions. Iran may play dirty games like Israel does, but Hamas doesn't - for the resistance it's quite literally about survival and resisting zionist-colonialism.

[Some more examples. In 2012, relations between Iran and Hamas soured after Hamas refused to support Syrian Dictator Bashar al-Assad, a key Iranian ally in the Syrian civil war. This led to Iran taking punitive measures against Hamas.

- As a financial punishment, Iran cut its funding to Hamas. This financial support had been estimated at around $23 million per month and the cut caused a significant financial crisis for Hamas in Gaza.

- Along with financial cuts, Iran also ceased military cooperation, which ended the supply of weapons to Hamas from Tehran.

- They began to rebuild their relationship around three years later, though tensions remained (see links below)

https://www.reuters.com/article/world/hamas-ditches-assad-ba...

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jan/09/hamas-iran-reb...

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/palest... ]

I agree with most of what you said, except that I don’t think there is anything noble about Hamas. They have a cause but their methods are despicable and stupid. Let’s just entertain the idea that they would have strictly targeted only military targets in their attack. Rightly or wrongly, that would have been a huge propaganda win for them.

I also must protest the notion that I would see the whole tragedy as entertainment. I don’t.

>I agree with most of what you said, except that I don’t think there is anything noble about Hamas. They have a cause but their methods are despicable and stupid. Let’s just entertain the idea that they would have strictly targeted only military targets in their attack. Rightly or wrongly, that would have been a huge propaganda win for them.

It's clear that you have a very surface level understanding of the entire history and I highly recommend that you first study the whole history extensively[0] before you cast judgement. While you're at it, make sure to study other revolts and its gory details https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nat_Turner's_Rebellion

There are several aspects of this which are rather fascinating:

1) The response of Oct 7 to almost 100 years of brutal colonization, ethnic-cleansing and mass-murder of Palestinians since the Nakba and the Tantura-massascre [1] was only a tiny fraction of the pain the colonizer suffered compared to the crimes committed against Palestinians. Regardless, it has been treated as pretty much the worst thing ever, while it factually was only a tiny fraction of the the pain compared to the crimes committed against Palestinians for almost a century! "Nothing justifies October 7, but October 7 somehow justifies everything" - The resistance has proven the ungodly amount of bias through which the world judged them and they forced the world to re-calibrate their unjust scales.

2) You're talking about their methods, but you haven't even studied their history comprehensively, all that they have tried, what misery Israel has inflicted upon them and their families for decades. An enemy that's unparalleled in its deviousness - invites you to peace talks, but is only interested in trying to murder your diplomats. [https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/sep/12/israels-strike...]. How would you deal with such ruthless colonizers? You judge the resistance by the 1 thing that finally forced the world to properly pay attention. Say what you want, but it was Oct 7 which forced the world to properly study the history of Palestine. For almost a century the Palestinians only received fake sympathy while much of the world uncritically accepted and even regurgitated Zionist lies knowingly or unknowingly. The outrage that was shown on Oct 7 was never ever shown when Palestinians were the victims, so this was a key moment when such biased individuals were confronted with massive evidence that woke them up to their selective outrage and their unjust judgement.

3) It was the severity of Oct 7 that humiliated the colonizer who had always seen themselves as superior to the "kushim" of Palestine ("The British told us that there are some hundred thousand negroes [kushim in Hebrew] and for those there is no value." - Weizmann, quoted by Arthur Ruppin in: Yosef Heller, Bama'avak Lamedinah , Jerusalem, 1984, p.140.). It was that humiliation that the colonizer felt - they couldn't even bear to suffer a fraction of a fraction of the pain they inflicted upon the Palestinians for almost a century, such that they whipped themselves into a genocidal-frenzy and dropped their diplomatic hasbara mask. The resistance unmasked the colonizer, made them drop their masks - made the world understand who the Zionists really are and who they have always been. ["Leibowitz said that the State of Israel and Zionism had become more sacred than Jewish humanist values and described Israeli conduct in the occupied Palestinian territories as "Judeo-Nazi" in nature while warning of the dehumanizing effect of the occupation on the victims and the oppressors." - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yeshayahu_Leibowitz ]. And even after all that, much of the world still stubbornly refused to believe their own eyes while observing the evil that Zionists livestreamed so proudly. Only after Zionists consistently and persistently insisted on being so openly and proudly evil for almost 2 years straight is when people started to believe what they were witnessing:

https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2024/12/amnesty-inter...

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/sep/01/israel-committ...

4) Go through Palestine's history, enlighten the people how your methods would have been so much less "despicable and stupid" in resisting colonizers who have been absolutely unscrupulous and devious at every step: https://web.archive.org/web/20231029055310/ojp.gov/ncjrs/vir... . Colonizers who have murdered your ancestors and established an apartheid ethno-state [2][3] on the mass-graves of your women and children, while raving on your stolen land - within your field of vision from the open-air prison in which they have locked you up.

[0] "The Masterplan for the Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine" - https://youtu.be/C3cnRcfp_us?si=hsKzuI6T1wljAAW0

[1] YT: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HNtrUjUNkJw or on Amazon: https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/video/detail/B0B8KSBXJX

[2][3] https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/campaigns/2022/02/israels-... https://www.hrw.org/report/2021/04/27/threshold-crossed/isra...

Pretty inspiring stuff and you are very knowledgeable and clever. Have you thought about writing articles or a book?

I appreciate it, but I'm merely a student of the wonderful work produced by other scholars and educators. All the praise belongs to them, it's their knowledge and work that I've tried to present as I've learned it.

Incredible and well written answer. It is telling that none of the Zionists here even attempt to answer you.