Most pro-Palestinian leftists I know don’t support Hamas, but merely want the immediate end of a war that has brought mass destruction of essential infrastructures and caused, directly and indirectly, famine, disease, starvation and death, including women and children.

The fact that Palestinians do actively support terrorist organizations with stated genocidal intentions does not imply that sympathy and even full support for them should be denied. Before the Israelis drove them away from their original territory coexisted in exemplary peace with their neighbors and internal religious and cultural differences weren’t cause for violence or hateful division.

They have unfortunately turned to these radical extremist organizations not because they’re simply bad, but because they have been radicalized in the face of despair, dispossession and unending oppression.

An analogous case of systematic oppression leading to the brutalization of the oppressed group can be seen in the United States in black communities, where crime rates are on average higher than in most other communities. Instead of conflating blackness or being socialized as an African American with being rapacious and unscrupulous we should look at the material causes of these problems in order to effectively and definitively solve them.

Instead of assigning blame to Hamas or Israel for starting the war we should attack the root of the problem, namely, the subjection of the Palestinian people and their lack of a fixed, emancipated homeland since 1948.

Palestinians are often accused of not keeping their part of the agreements, which they indeed have done. But one should not forget that contracts go both ways, and Israel, the incomparably greater economic and military power, has blatantly ignored important stipulations regulating the relationship between Palestinians and Israelis and the intended political compromises. The far-right political faction in Israel was for a long time unwilling to reach an agreement, etc.

Let’s also not forget why historically oppressed peoples often turn to violence as a means of asserting their autonomy and regaining their freedom. As multiple peaceful attempts at achieving lasting peace in Palestine have shown, Israel is simply unconcerned with giving a dignified living to the millions of Palestinians living in and around Israel. Rightly or not, many have sought in terrorist organizations a voice whereby they will make themselves heard.