@SandyO@urbanists.social @QasimRashid I think in rhetoric and political debate around this it is probably best to start from a shared assumption that Hamas is a baby killing rapist terrorist group of thugs, and so our questions are more about how to best degrade their abilities, stop similar groups from rising up, and so on rather than whether we want them to do something different like return hostages or stop using human shields. Of course all civilized persons think they should free hostages, and stop taking hostages or do sick thuggish/terrorist things like use human shields. No need to call on people like Rashid to repeat that over and over again. He even just said, unnecessarily in his 2nd post, that he believes in the sanctity of Jewish and Palestinian lives.

The useful questions are things more like:
* is there a non-military solution that gets them to stop raping/killing/kidnapping?
* how do we degrade their capabilities without "radicalizing" more people to take their place?
* how do we get actors like Iran to stop using them and the Palestinian people for their own political gains?
* Should we pressure Israel to e.g. better enforce protections against settler violence, or better due process before doing things like bulldozing suicide bombers' houses?

I say "we" here because I'm in the US and as far as I can tell my tax dollars are bankrolling whatever the IDF is doing here: Rashid will have outsized influence on these questions if he wins the election, even though this isn't Israel.