Sometimes bad people are poor. Sometimes poor people are bad. I was regularly and severely beaten as a child. I would never beat my own children. Sometimes terrorists commit terrorist acts because they have endured unspeakable oppression. Sometimes they do it because they think their imaginary friend in the sky wants them to slaughter Jews.

Your apparent belief that people never do bad things because they’re bad is where we seen to be getting hung up. It’s also provably wrong. Again, consider the Nazis, consider the KKK, consider the Hutu.

And please, I'm begging you, stop telling me about the terrible things Israel is doing or has done. I know about them already. I agree with you completely that they're bad/evil/whichever adjective you prefer. I'm not a Zionist or an apologist for Israel's war crimes.

I think we either mostly or completely agree about the atrocities Israel has committed. I've never, not even once, suggested that Hamas exists in a vacuum or that nothing Israel did has had any bearing on the situation. This is the kind of strawman argumentation I'm taking issue with.

My point, for the umpteenth time, is that these crimes don't, in any way, justify the slaughter of innocent civilians who had nothing to do with them. Hamas didn't kill those civilians because of the blockade. There is no straight line between killing people at a rave and ending the blockade. Surely you understand this.

They killed those civilians because they want to eradicate Jews and eventually Israel. This is their aim. Again, given the very recent slaughter of 1400 people, given the very clear words of Hamas' senior leadership, I'm still waiting to hear why you, Jack, believe Hamas has "softened." Are you ever going to answer this question? Or is the answer simply, "I unquestioningly believe the words of a terrorist organisation despite the evidence to the contrary"?