Hamas attacked Israel on October 7, 2023. Commandos on land vehicles and paragliders  killed 1,137 Israelis, injured about 5,400 and seized about 250 hostages. A few hours later, Israel launched its genocide of the Gazan people. The IDF has since killed at least 200,000 Palestinians, injured countless more and seized thousands of hostages, and left almost every building flattened.

Whether Israel responded in self-defense or took October 7^th as an excuse to fulfill its longstanding goal of ethnically cleansing and annexing Gaza into a Greater Israel is subject to debate. What is objectively true is that Israel’s atrocities so outweigh and outnumber Hamas’ atrocities that most of the world—the U.N., international courts, most nations—are focused on the Israeli side of the bloodshed equation.

That’s fair. Yet I wonder. Might the monstrosity and thoroughness of Israel’s one-sided assault wash away our chance to carefully consider the morality and ethics of the October 7^th incursion?

For supporters of Israel, October 7^th is a rhetorical last stand and an ace in the hole. Hamas terrorists murdered civilians in their homes. They raped women. They killed children (though the beheaded-babies story refuses to die, it’s a lie). Only a lunatic, and one with no understanding of international law, would argue that a nation-state doesn’t have the right, or even the duty, to defend itself militarily against its attackers and make sure that nothing like it ever happens again. Zionists rely on a fallacy: if you provoke me, anything I do in response is justified. The conflict didn’t begin in 2023. But October 7^th was a huge provocation, so “they started it” carries weight after all this time and all this—not war, since hardly anyone is shooting back at the IDF—genocide.

As the polls and recent Congressional votes make clear, critics of Israel’s over-the-top military campaign are winning the political argument for the first time in decades. October 7^th is a rock in their shoe. So most progressives have settled on some variant of the “yeah, but” argument: We don’t like Hamas, October 7^th was horrific and shouldn’t have happened, but, given all that, nothing justifies what Israel has wrought.

It’s a safe position. It’s also philosophically consistent. Killing is always wrong.

But. Was October 7^th itself wrong?

As a basic concept, I think not. Gaza’s status quo ante bellum was untenable. Israel had enclosed 2.3 million people into what was described by human rights as the “world’s largest outdoor prison.” It was cut off from land and sea by a blockade for 15 years.

Conditions were miserable.

If there can be such a thing, Israel was hardly a benevolent occupying force. No one could leave. Israel allowed supplies, food and water in at a miserly level far below the bare minimum required for basic sustenance, the Gazan economy was a disaster, unemployment and underemployment were sky high, people died from medical conditions that were easily treated anywhere else. Israel dropped bombs willy-nilly and, every few years, invaded with tanks that slaughtered the locals in vast numbers and decimated infrastructure in 15 operations that ruthless Israeli officials coldbloodedly characterized as “mowing the grass.” As Benjamin Netanyahu, the longest-serving prime minister, repeatedly told the Gazans, they had no hope for a brighter future. Israel would never allow Palestinians to travel freely or become masters of their own destiny or bear passports issued by their own sovereign state.

The situation in Gaza was unacceptable. Yet Israel expected the Gazans to accept them.

Forever.

Israel’s cruelty made them think that keeping the Palestinians bottled up in Gaza was OK. Israel’s stupidity made them believe it kept them safe.

With Hamas’ many faults (it was Islamist, it was corrupt, it stopped holding elections in 2006, it was originally installed and funded by Israel to undermine Fatah and divide the Palestinians), it was the official government of Gaza. Hamas workers ran schools, issued licenses, collected taxes, directed traffic, picked up trash.

Like any government, the political leaders of Hamas had a responsibility to try to improve the lives of its people. And Israel’s “smart” wall encircling Gaza (the same way the Germans’ security wall surrounded the Warsaw Ghetto) was making the Gazan people miserable.

What to do? The international community had written off the Palestinians. Israel had annexed East Jerusalem and the U.S. had moved its embassy to Jerusalem. The U.S. president was a self-proclaimed Zionist. The U.N. was impotent. Even the Saudis, home of militant Wahhabi Sunni Islam, were preparing to recognize Israel.

Gazans needed a game-changer.

Considering that Hamas’ goal was to upend the board, force an uncaring world to remove its blinders and draw attention to the ignored Palestinian cause, Israeli leaders may regret their decision to let the October 7^th attack happen a full year after they learned it was coming.

October 7^th has been a stunning victory. Gaza has been obliterated, Hamas personnel are hunkering in their tunnels and 200,000-plus Gazans have been killed, and that’s far from nothing, but Hamas’ leaders prioritized a long-term goal of sovereignty and self-determination over short-term scrounging for food and water when and if Israel is in the mood to supply them. Gaza is now much closer to becoming part of a free Republic of Palestine than at any time since 1948.

As I predicted, Israel has become a pariah state.

Ignoring Israel’s role in the murder and destruction—Israel was the murderer and the destroyer—Zionists argue that Hamas was willing to sacrifice its own people because it didn’t care about them. There is no way to know whether that’s true. What is true, however, is that Israel killed its own citizens on October 7^th under its “Hannibal directive” for a goal that outweighed the value of their lives, preventing them from being taken hostage.

Given the hopeless and desperate situation inside Gaza, Hamas would have been derelict in its duty as a governing force had it not tried to smash Israel’s wall (but not as negligent as the government of Israel, which on October 7^th permitted a music festival three miles from Gaza Concentration Camp and failed to respond to the distress calls at the kibbutzim for 8 to 20 hours, in a country whose length you can drive in 5 hours).

The what of October 7^th was noble, justified and necessary. The how, on the other hand, falls terribly short of the standards we expect from a guerilla resistance organization engaged in “asymmetrical warfare.”

Civilian non-combatants are never legitimate targets in armed conflict. While Hamas resistance fighters had the moral and legal right under international law to break down that fence, enter the territory of the violent country that had been mercilessly occupying their people, and attack IDF infrastructure as well as uniformed personnel (between a quarter and a third of the Israelis who died on October 7^th were active-duty soldiers), they should have left civilians and their property unmolested. (Of course, they had the right to defend themselves against civilians who shot at them.)

Captured IDF troops should have been treated with respect in accordance with the Geneva Conventions. Kidnapping and assault, including when victims are uniformed troops captured in battle, is impermissible.

For an irregular resistance formation like Hamas, it is even more important to uphold the highest standards of comportment in battle than for a widely-recognized state, like Israel, which enjoys international legitimacy and control of the propaganda narrative in the media and so can easily brush off reports of its crimes.

October 7^th was a giddy orgy of vengeful violence. Though understandable and unsurprising, it was also a lost opportunity. Had Hamas’ fighters acted with scrupulous discipline and refrained from harming civilians, they might have inflicted more damage against legitimate military targets. They would have made a favorable impression on open-minded Israelis. It wouldn’t have taken as long for the world to turn against Israel after it launched its scorched-earth campaign of mass terror. It would be easier for Western allies of Palestine to argue that Hamas should retain power after peace is achieved. Murdering and brutalizing civilians was a mistake as well as an atrocity.

October 7^th was a good idea with poor execution.

(Ted Rall, the political cartoonist, columnist and graphic novelist, is the author of “Never Mind the Democrats. Here’s WHAT’S LEFT.” Subscribe: tedrall.Substack.com. He is co-host of the podcast “DeProgram with Ted Rall and John Kiriakou.”)