It's important to note that a big part of Israeli society opposes the JahuNatan government, the illegal settlers and war crimes in Gaza. Even after the Hamas attack on Kibbutzim near Gaza in '23.
Quite important not to become part of the problem when you discuss this case. And the problem is that such a heated subject is prone to make people ideologically possessed and tribal. To a point where they become emotionally blinded and are unable to listen to people that don't share/fully support their beliefs.
Given Israeli education, support for settlers, the immigration policy which allows anyone with Jewish heritage to claim land there (regardless of any connection to the area, and of any outstanding arrest warrants) and Israelis using their kids to stop aid trucks and so on, there's a lot needed to show the majority what is actually humane and acceptable.
It's interesting to contrast comments like this in this thread, with the amount of hatred and abuse heaped upon Russians on the day of Russia's invasion - not just the Russian state, but a big chunk of comments that made it clear that they held all Russians responsible for it and would like to see their lives destroyed. And had relatively little pushback against them.
I agree with the sentiment of your second paragraph, but I wish that thought applied in general, and not just to some special case countries. Especially considering the widely differing levels of democratic power people have in these different countries.
The Russian war on Ukraine is a WILDLY different case. There was no border dispute of any kind between these countries, no terror, no threats, just the Russian desire to own Ukraine.
> There was no border dispute of any kind between these countries
That is such a perfect representation of the level of public discourse around this, that I can only thank you for providing a sample. It's not even hard to learn about the Donetsk region's conflicts and the destruction there long before the invasion, but flooding the media and Internet with convenient narratives like "just the Russian desire to own Ukraine" has worked and continues to work very effectively on the general public (likely even more than the censorship does).
And all of this is quite orthogonal to the main fact here, which is that it makes very little sense to blame the population living under an authoritarian government and want them destroyed for that government's actions, and then turn around and give people in a democratic country a pass on their government's actions.
> It's not even hard to learn about the Donetsk region's conflicts and the destruction there long before the invasion, but flooding the media and Internet with convenient narratives like "just the Russian desire to own Ukraine" has worked and continues to work very effectively on the general public (likely even more than the censorship does).
There was none. The conflict in Donetsk was entirely manufactured during the initial stages of the 2014 invasion. When the European Court of Human Rights reviewed a case concerning the downed Malaysian airliner, the Russian side argued that Russia was not involved, claiming that it was the work of "Donetsk rebels". The court found that there was no genuine separatist movement and no rebels of any kind, only unmarked troops operating under direct Russian control from the start.
If anything, the media has been flooded with misrepresentations that promote a "generic ethnic conflict" narrative to mask a straightforward and unprovoked invasion of one country by another country. And the reasons indeed do boil down to one single person, his unchecked power, and unhealthy obsessions - as has been the case with many dictators throughout the history.
Netanyahu is the longest serving Israeli prime minister in history serving a combined 17 years. And he is tipped to win again next election. He very much embodies the will of the Israeli public.
If you listen to their “liberal opposition” leaders like the likes of Yair Lapid and Benny Gantz they sound just as unhinged as Netanyahu himself [1]
Every poll conducted on Israeli public opinion on the conflict would make have made Nazi officials blush. Majority of Israelis support ethnically cleansing Palestinians from Gaza [2].
Seeing the facts as they are is not being “emotionally blinded”. When genocidal psychopaths scream at the top of their lungs they want to commit genocide and actively work towards that goal, with the results right in front of our eyes, we compelled to believe them.
"What percentage of the people being bombed out and starved want to destroy the specific group of people doing and supporting the bombing and starvation" is not the gotcha you think it is. I'd imagine if you asked Armenians about their opinions of Azeris in the NK region, you'd get answers that would give you chills.
Given the numbers who voted for Hamas I guess its a pretty high proportion.
I think (from the perspective of having lived in a country undergoing a civil war for many years) one of the problems the West has in dealing with issues like this is that people imagine that there is a bad side to oppose, and a good side you want to win. Very often the impacts on societies of lengthy conflicts means that there are no clear good guys to back.
If a significant proportion of one side wants to drive out or wipe out the other, that will encourage the other wide to believe that their best option is to be the ones doing the wiping out. It is very likely that a conflict like this will only end when one side wins to that extent.
You mean of course, 20 years ago in 2006 when the last election was held in Gaza. In which they didn't even manage to break 50% I might add and with the Israeli government's blessing as Netanyahu was fond of boasting before Oct 7th --- a far lower number than the number of Israelis that still support the IDF's current military actions.
Less than 50% has dropped to around 40%. Still a very large chunk of the population, and still makes them by far the largest party.
It is very common for parties to win elections without an outright majority, in many countries. The current British government had only 33% of the of the vote at the last election.
>Do you think it likely Hamas support has declined since 2006?
Ah yes, why have any elections in any country for the next century when you can just have a couple of randos like you and I on the internet call those elections for the next 20 years for those hapless pesky fuckers based on our horseshit hunches and save everyone the trouble. What an elegant solution.
You'd think that autocratic Hamas government on the ground in Gaza would be as confident as you and have an election just for show if they thought they could break the 50% threshold they couldn't even manage to break in 2006. Who would give up free PR like that? Well I guess someone who couldn't guarentee that'd do better the next time, no?
64% of the current Gaza population wasn't even born at all or at most under the age of 5 in the last election (ages 0-24 now) . Of the remaining 36% of the current Gaza population at least half were under the age of 18 in 2006 (ie between the ages of 24-38). So less than 20% of the current population was eligible to vote in 2006. Of that 20%, only 44%% voted for Hamas, so like 10 percent of the current population of Gaza actually voted for Hamas in an election bygones ago. But hey, I guess you're saying it's obvious that any child who was subjected to two decades of occupation in an apartheid state would naturally vote for terrorists to free themselves from subjugation. So let's go with your gut cause fuck it, those people only live once.
PCPSR regularly polls Palestinians about various subjects: https://pcpsr.org/en From memory, around 15% supported one state for historical Palestine from which Jewish settlers would have to leave. Maybe polls about "killing all Jews" are conducted in your country, in other parts of the world they generally aren't...
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/jul/29/letter-sanctio...