There’s a big gap between those two things. I know a lot of people who would support the US military, but would never join them or even work in the defense industry. It is a different level of support to actually join in most countries and especially so with Hamas. The people support the idea that Hamas is resistance, but actually joining Hamas’s militant wing means you’ll be targetted by Israel and in all likelihood so will your entire family. Most new recruits are probably joining because they now have been radicalized to the point where they think their lives are worth losing to fight Israel.

I agree that less violent means would be far better. It’s easier to say that from a position of safety than in their position though especially since things have only gotten worse for them. During the first intifada, they had a lot of sympathy do to the growing opposition to South African apartheid that Israel backed. It becomes a lot harder to progress through peaceful means when the outside support doesnt already exist and Israel, like other nations, would suppress or escalate into violence any peaceful attempts to resist. The right path forward is complicated for everyone other than the government of Israel, who has been able to start moving forward at any point for decades.

The whole “protect your homeland” thing is exactly what I’m talking about. It’s advocating for militancy against a native population. It’s just phrased in a way you find acceptable. The admiration for the idf and the idea that every surrounding group just wants genocide is used to make people think all military action is justified. Both Palestinians and Israelis believe their military action is “defending their homeland.” It’s just a whole lot easier to say your end goal is peace when you’re the side that got everything that both sides want. It’s like how people in America do land acknowledgements but never take any real action in land back movements or similar things for native Americans. We’re told in schools and in culture that this is a land for everyone to be free, so every push against that seems like a push against freedom itself. It’s easy to make a statement, but those years of indoctrination come flooding back whenever people realize that meaningful change might inconvenience them. I know that that is a very wordy way of saying something pretty obvious, but I feel like it’s worth pointing out the actual implications of calling something “our homeland” when other people with just as much right to the land or more don’t get to treat it that way. And similarly, you see lots of militancy break out when that land is at risk of being taken. We saw the same with Zionist terror groups in mandatory Palestine. The more people feel that their land is at risk, the more they’ll support just about anything to hold on to it.

Also I’ve said this many times on reddit, but groups like Hamas will always get support as long as they can pose as “resistance” to their constituents. It doesn’t even matter if they’re actually resistance. People are not going to blame the “resistance” group for the actions that the side they’re “resisting” makes. The only way to make long term progress against them is to root out the reason the people want to resist in the first place.