Israel's response was very similar to the US's response to 9/11. 3,000 Americans were killed by terrorists (a smaller percentage of the population than Israelis killed on 10/7) and as a response the US started two wars killing at least 100 times as many Afghans and Iraqis (there are lots of debates about the total casualties there too just like Gaza). This is not a defense of Israel, just a fact that seemingly is never part of the conversation that I think can help people better understand why this is happening.

You forgot eighty years of occupation, cultural , economical and ethnical cleansing of the local indigenous people called Palestinians with help of US and Western countries mainly.

I am entirely behind this take.

> - Israel's response was hasty, unplanned, purely driven by emotion at the beginning,

You’re being generous. There’s zero chance Israel didn’t know it’d happen and it let it happen anyway. The one country which all but brags about tying off loose ends.

Hamas is a terror organisation funded, and quite possibly created, by far-right nationalist elements in the Israeli government to weaken the Palestinian authority and create a pretext for the occupation of Gaza.

Netanyahu is on the record funnelling money through Qatar. He said it was for "humanitarian aid" - which would be more credible if it wasn't such an extraordinary and unusual outbreak of concern for Palestinian wellbeing.

The occupation is straight out genocide, labelled as such by many Israeli scholars, as well as most of Rest of World.

This level of barbarism and entitlement has no place on a civilised planet.

> and it quickly grew beyond any reason

Why did it quickly grow?

You didn't actually address the actual point. Israel and it's defenders have been lying about the death toll this entire time and Hamas was not.

> - Israel's response was hasty, unplanned, purely driven by emotion at the beginning, and it quickly grew beyond any reason in the next weeks.

This is also an extreme understatement. It's literally a genocide.