It's hard to look at this question any differently than a question like, "tell me about a time when you considered beating your wife."

You start with the assumption that I'm biased against Israel when I don't believe I am, and then ask me to say something that supports your point of view. I believe I am looking squarely at the situation, though I understand why, from your perspective, that seems not to be the case.

I am absolutely certain of only a few things.:

1. Israel's slaughter of over 50,000 civilians and near-total destruction of Gaza is monstrous and cannot be justified. Not even by Hamas' monstrous attack on October 7th. Everybody expected a harsh military response after October 7th. I wouldn't have said a word if that response had lasted two or three months, say. Or if Israel had ever stated a clear, achievable military goal. But this was just disgusting.

I can't tolerate anybody who would try to justify it. Any more than I can tolerate anybody who would justify October 7th.

2. Israel (and the US) are the only meaningful obstacles to a peace deal that every other member of the international community accepts. All that Israel is required to do is respect its 1967 borders, stop the illegal settlers, and address the rights the people who were evicted from their homes.

But they've refused for decades, over around a dozen votes.

3. None of this would have happened without Zionism. There is plenty of blame to spread around about who did what and who killed whom over the past 76 years. But the incting incident was the establishment of a country on somebody else's land and the forced removal of the people who lived there.

Nobody would accept this. Not you, not I, not anybody. I don't understand why anybody thinks the Palestiians should have ether.

I'm sorry about your friend's son. I would never dream of saying "big deal" in response to this. And again, it's the fact that you can say this that I find so disgusting. Your friend's loss mirrors the loss of several orders of magnitude more Palestinians. The 10,000+ children Israel has killed are just as innocent, their mothers grieve just as much, their lives were just as valuable. I'm sure you could tell me about a laws of murders. The murders I'm weighing them against are too numerous to list.

Your inability or unwillingness to truly see this is horrific. I wasn't comparing the actions of the settlers to the murders in this "war." I was trying, in vain it seems, to show you a fraction of the treatment the Palestinians have been enduring for decades, long, long before October 7th. I thought it went without saying that both sides have suffered horrible losses. Apparently not.