Turkey benefits from this - because they have their own laundry list of human rights abuses and accusations as well. as hyped78 says, people are entitled to dislike and distrust Israel. but we can't blindly trust Hamas either. this is the same party that won because people were fed up with Fatah's corruption. it didn't take long for Hamas to start wiping out their political rivals and adversaries. Hamas launched their attacks KNOWING that Israel would respond with disproportionate force. I can't let Hamas off the hook for that. they EXPECTED civilians to die and did it anyways because they knew it would end up as a political victory for them regardless of what response Israel had. if Israel failed to respond. they could prepare for larger follow up attacks. if Israel responded with detective work, police round ups, and assassinations they could spin that into a political victory. if Israel responded with massive military action in a violent and brief campaign... they could play that up as the literal definition of overkill. there is literally nothing Israel could have done (or not done) in response to Hamas that would not have been manipulated by Hamas into a public relations victory.
as a reminder to those who don't remember: Israel did not initiate the Six Day War. several nations attacked Israel and failed. Yom Kippur also started with an Arab coalition of multiple nations launching an invasion of Israel.
Israel's Arab neighbors have tried, on multiple occasions, to wipe Israel off the map. and when people tired of the bloodshed and signed treaties (like Anwar Sadat) they got killed.
the West Bank and the Gaza strip are, from any long term economic or military perspective, non-viable entities. I'm not going to overlook the fact that Palestinian refugees receive only slightly better treatment from all of their Arab neighbors. they continue to live in poverty and are denied access to many of the benefits of regular citizens in those countries. Jordan annexed the West Bank back in 1950... and there's a reason why Israel is so ferociously skeptical and defensive about what happens there. if Jordan, or other nations, used it as a staging ground for a military campaign, they could cut Israel in half and then try to destroy it in detail with follow-up campaigns. Americans tend to have really short memories and be ignorant of history.
again, multiple Arab coalitions have tried several times to liberate Palestine from Israeli rule... and, to put it bluntly, they have failed.
I know a lot of people have been chanting that Israel is this vile colonial oppressor... and that would be true from an Arab and Palestinian view. most of the world condemns Israel (except the US and Great Britain, because they are primarily responsible for Israel existing... in spite of many of the local British administrators in Palestine supporting the Arabs and being blatantly antisemitic in the years leading up to the Arab Israeli War of 1948). Britain is on the hook for Israel existing in its present form... so, it makes sense that they would abstain.
but I think it's preposterous for people to believe that merely by condemning Israel as colonizers that this actually transforms the situation in any meaningful way. even when Palestine was indisputably in the hands of the Ottoman Empire or the Roman Empire it was still a hotbed of conflict. even when Jerusalem was controlled by one Islamic caliphate another would lay siege to the city as a means of spreading their control.
(Jerusalem Besieged: Eric Cline)
the very first recorded battle in the history of the world took place at Megiddo when Pharaoh Thumose III conquered a Canaanite coalition that rebelled against his rule... y'know, the ones that Palestinians like to pretend they are the direct descendants of.
Palestine has been occupied, or a vassal state of other nations, for most of its recorded history. the Hittites, the Egyptians, the Assyrians, the Persians, the Macedonians, the Romans, multiple Caliphates, France, Great Britain...
I don't say this as an argument that Israel should be allowed to do whatever it wants. I say this as a reminder that Palestine is a victim of geography. for whatever reason, it has been considered valuable land worth fighting over for as long as people have been writing history. it is guaranteed to happen again. in 30 years maybe Iraq or Turkey will decide that it's their turn to rule Palestine again.
when I read about college professors and students marching and condemning Israel as a colonizer... in a way it's brilliant on the part of Hamas. the conduct a few limited asymmetrical warfare attacks (ie killing civilians, kidnapping people, raiding convoys, etc) and then launch a relentless media campaign and win through the death of 1000 cuts by using propaganda and "lawfare" to gradually erode support for their most hated enemy. they have already murdered all of their most serious Palestinian political rivals and threats. however, Hamas can not achieve their goal of the reinstatement of the Mandatory of Palestine without utterly conquering Israel by every military and political means necessary. maybe I've lost track... maybe they don't want to destroy Israel and exile all of the Israeli citizens out of Palestine... but, as inhuman as Israel is. Hamas, in theory, wants something that is arguably even more appalling.
when the leader of Turkey said that Israel will make you miss Hitler... that was darkly amusing... given that Turkey refused to break off relations with Nazi Germany until it was indisputably clear that the Nazis would lose. some far-right members of Turkey even speculated about invading the Caucasus in order to gain lost Ottoman Empire territory lost to Russia after WW1. (they probably would have loved to get their hands on the Baku-Tuapse oil pipeline). it wasn't until the Ploesti Raid in 1943 that demonstrated Allied bombers could fly into Romania in broad daylight and inflict catastrophic damage in broad in spite of the German and Romanian air forces that Turkey began to realize how foolish it would be to actively side with the Nazis. if elite German and battle-hardened Romanian aces had trouble stopping Allied carpet bombing... what would Turkey's tiny air force be able to do? Inonu, as dictator, had just spent several years crushing the Dersim Rebellion and wasn't anxious to get involved in more fighting. so, he bought weapons from the Nazis and placated Stalinist Russia. eventually he caved in to international pressure from the Allies he declared war on Germany in August of 1944 after the Soviets had effectively conquered both Bulgaria and Romania.
back to Hamas: I can't get behind an organization that had 160 kids die while they forced them to dig tunnels. I'm not prepared to give those sorts of people any sort of political win. in other words... I believe giving Hamas any concessions at all is allowing them to win. so, I can't really condemn Israel for refusing to bargain with them.
https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/n...terror-tunnels
https://www.theguardian.com/global-d...d-rubble-ruins
this part of the world has been filled with cruelty, violence, and suffering for as long as people have been writing history. we can't expect changes to happen overnight. if Israel continues to feel threatened, they're not going to back down. the Palestinians are still getting treated like trash by pretty much everyone in the Middle East... even by many of the people and nations that CLAIM to be fighting on their behalf. a cursory web search of Palestinian refugees by country name will demonstrate that nobody wants them. that's why they tried to destroy Israel, or the possibility thereof, multiple times.
I don't see this as a matter of "good guys" vs "bad guys". I just see it as a never-ending cycle of violence.