I mean yes in the sense that the capture of civilians has a clear military objective. Doesn’t make it less awful.

One genocidal state doesn’t justify another one. There are no good guys in this conflict. That said one side has more bombs than the other so we should be focusing on that side. But please, no justifying war crimes.

I think many find it hard to believe Israel now. The Hamas side of the story is that Hamas were good to the hostages (and we have testimonies for that), and that many attacks were done by Gazan civilians who followed the fighters who broke down the fence, and indeed the video of Shani, the German Israeli, showed non-combatants parading her naked, not Hamas fighters.

Probably in a different narrative, Hamas performed a justified military operation to take hostages to free their own prisoners (whom we know are illegally detained by Israel without a charge and living through hell and torture in Israel prisons, at young ages). So far, it looks justied. Add to that all the evidence we have showing that many people on October 7th, especially those burned, were killed by IDF that was acting as though on steroids. I would be naive to assume no rape happened, but Israel’s evidence for “systemic rape as a war tactic” is extremely flimsy. Israel killed its own people and is now milking their dead bodies for PR to justify a genocide.

That being said, no documented crimes can be denied. A Hamas fighter throwing a grenade into a safe room full for people - there is footage of that.

delusional point of view