This is where I think you're allowing yourself an easy out.
Yes, sure, this is broadly true. It's true of me. I'm instinctively drawn to an underdog. But not to the extent that I'll blindly accept a narrative or ignore the broader implications of that underdog's actions. You've read my work on race, on misogyny, on trans issues, all underdog issues. Do I strike you as someone who unthinkingly accepts the cause of the underdog?
My thinking has changed. You can go back and read some of my articles from October onwards and see the shifts in my thinking. It's interesting, for the first time in my writing, there are things in those articles that I wouldn't quite stand behind today. Because, as always, I spent a great deal of time talking to people and reading and trying to get to the truth.
So no, I don't find it especially hard to change my thinking. I engage with people so much precisely because I'm interested in changing my thinking. And I suspect my views on this will continue to evolve. But certain facts aren't up for debate. Israel is in violation of international law and has been for some time. This is as trivially true as saying that Hamas' attack was in violation of international law, even though some argue, incorrectly, that it falls under the right to resist.
And certain canards, like the unreliability of Hamas' numbers and the claim that Palestine will never accept a two-state solution and the quibbling about the word "genocide" take so little effort to debunk, and, indeed, have been debunked so many times, that I struggle to believe that an intelligent person (which I consider you to be) can be repeating them in good faith after nearly six months unless they are very far from objective.
One of my first doubts, for example, was how trustworthy Hamas' numbers were. Of course. That's an obvious question mark. In the first month or so, I was very hesitant to use them. But then I looked at previous conflicts and saw the they were accurate, I noticed that Biden and the UN awere using them and believed they were accurate. I asked myself why Israel never actually refuted them, but just said "Hamas figures" with a bit of stank in their voice, so by the time I learned that Israeli intelligence forces were using the numbers internally, I wasn't even surprised.
Finally, yes, you're right. the war of public opinion is a key part of any conflict in 2024. But it's interesting that you seem to be arguing that Hamas has used this weapon skilfully instead of that Israel has shot itself in the face with it.
On October 7th, Hamas committed one of the most barbaric attacks conceivable. They turned every single sane person on earth against them. And drew massive sympathy to Israel. Sympathy that a lot of people, myself included, already held. Then, they basically disappeared. Hamas have made very few public statements since then. This is hardly a PR masterstroke.
But Israel have proceeded to blithely kill tens of thousands of civilians, including ~14,000 children, destroy thousands of homes, shoot unarmed, surrendering civilians, including their own hostages, their soldiers post videos of themselves mocking Palestinian civilian suffering on social media and high-firing each other for shooting old men who posed no threat, they've killed over 400 people in the unrelated West Bank, including over 100 children, they've ramped up settler activity there too, they've killed over 100 journalists and over 200 aid workers, and they've done all of this without a shred of remorse or restraint despite increasingly desperate calls from the international community.
If you think I'm an antisemite or that every media organisation reporting on this conflict hates Israel, fine. But when Joseph Robinette Biden Jr. is calling Israeli bombing "indiscriminate" and saying that Israel is killing too many civilians and is building a port on the coast of Gaza because Israel is preventing aid from getting to the starving people in Gaza, how do you explain that?
Israel is losing the war of public opinion, a war that it was absolutely wining on October 8th, entirely because of its own actions. Nobody expects a war to be fought without casualties. But what's happening in Gaza is monstrous.
So you're right, I am frustrated. But not because you don't agree with me. I hope, over the years, I've proven myself to be more emotionally mature than that. People disagree with me all the time. I'm just so sick of people who I know to be smart, forcefully espousing views that they obviously haven't thought about. So my apologies if I came off harsh with you personally. I've spent days dealing with varying degrees of this lack of thought, and my patience isn't where it otherwise would be.
