I absolutely support Israel in their fight against Hamas, what happened on October 7 was an outrage. There was no doubt Israel was going to retaliate with disproportionate force, their whole defensive doctrine is based on a savage response. It was pretty clear Gaza was going to be flattened, if you let Hamas in to administer your territory, they can only bring hardship and pain to the people of Gaza. 

The Hamas leaders are cowards, they use human shields to protect themselves. They had years of planning this war, instead of building up Gaza, they diverted the funds to construct tunnels to fight Israel. Hamas staged a surprise attack on Israel and at time of writing, the Israeli citizens kidnapped had not been returned. The sexual assault of the Israeli women is an outrage, there needs to more said about this disgrace that was allowed to happen. 

I cannot say I am a fan of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, there were many failures of intelligence and it appears the government was distracted with other issues. What I am questioning is the nature of the Israeli response, could they have been more surgical in their approach? Could they have used small squads? Well, that is easy for me to say when I am not the one being shot at, but I need to ask the question. When you see Palestinians dancing in the street as the hostage are paraded around, they need to be a little more aware of the image they are portraying. 

Israel has the premier military in the region, they have the technological advantage and the weaponry. Israel has trained soldiers in reserve they can call up at short notice, they have citizens overseas who will come back and fight for their country. They have patriotic citizens who know what is at stake here, they know they face annihilation if they lose to Iranian funded terrorist organisations. Israel knows this is an existential fight for them, they also know the world is watching and they need to show some restraint.