1. Israel has shown some clear signs of wanting peace for example when it withdrew from Gaza in 2005. A decision that was vehemently opposed by many of its citizens

2. If the Jews hadn’t beaten back the Arabs in 1948 they could have been wiped out. This is not an excuse for any massacres committed by Jews against Arabs, but it would be weird to blame them for winning a war that could decide if they were to survive or not

3. Hamas has zero qualms about losing lots of its own civilians to Israeli bombs and uses those deaths as currency to win international sympathy

4. I still have doubts about this, but very probably a non-violent reaction by Israel to October 7th would have invited Hezbollah to unleash all hell on Israel’s northern border and who knows what Iran might have done at any sign of weakness? When I condemn the very bloody and very destructive reaction of Israel – which to me seems like a gift to Hamas, cause that’s exactly what Hamas wanted – I may be disregarding the bigger picture and Israel’s calculating of what its other enemies might be plotting. This is not so unusual. Am convinced that the western allies chose to bomb Dresden, a target of little military value a mere three months away from a total victory, as a way of showing to the Soviet-Union what its massive air force could do. The enemy you are attacking directly may not be your most important target in the psychological domain. This point is hard to accept for me, because I don’t want to be making any excuses for the extreme loss of life Israel has caused.

5. The term Apartheid doesn’t apply to the situation as it exists between Jewish Israelis and Arab Israelis within the borders of the state of Israel