Haviv Rettig Gur
If you ignore the words “conspiracy theory” that this idiot keeps insisting on throwing out there, and if you take seriously what he admits Hamas knew would happen, then the difference between his position and mine seems to be that I think Hamas wanted this result whereas he
History Speaks
Without the tunnels Hamas would be destroyed in a couple weeks by the IDF; with no tunnels and no embedding (say they fought in uniforms, in a traditional fashion) they'd be destroyed in a literal day. Israel has F-35s, Hamas has no air force and viable anti-aircraft weapons. The embedding among civilians and tunnelling are obviously methods to facilitate guerrilla warfare, not a conspiracy to kill their own civilians. Yes, Hamas's conduct - especially the 7 October massacre, given what they must have known the likely response would be - exhibits reckless disregard for Palestinian civilian life. That is a core reason why they are being protested by Palestinian Gazans. I'm quite happy and eager to join the people of Gaza in blaming Hamas for its vile conduct. What I'm not willing to do is endorse a ridiculous conspiracy theory that their guerrilla methods are an attempt to kill as many of their civilians as possible to make Israel look bad. The effect of this is to strip away any responsibility Israel has for its highly autonomous, extraordinarily criminal targeting decisions, like the "where's daddy?" program of systematically bombing homes full of families to kill a single jr alleged Hamasnik, or its use of free-free zones where unarmed women and children can be shot at sight (neither of which have anything to do with the militarization of civilian infrastructure, which of course endangers civilians but does not appear to have anything to do with the large majority of civilian fatalities in Gaza).