#justification

More generally, what tools are "valid" for non-state actors in pursuit of becoming a state?

(these are genuine questions im curious to hear your answers to, not a gotcha attempt)

Here's how Haviv Rettig Gur answers this question:

You want to know if Zionist paramilitaries were justified using terrorism against the British.

The implication is clear: if they were justified, then is Hamas justified now?

But discussion of "justification" misses what actually matters and is a strategic reframing of the comparison you're suggesting.

Here's what we should compare:

1. Could the British leave?

Yes. They had England. They were occupiers by choice.

Can Israelis leave?

No. They literally have No Other Land. (Yes, that's where the line comes from - it was appropriated by the makers of the propaganda film)

This isn't "colonial power vs natives." It's two peoples, both with national claims, with nowhere else to go.

2. What did Zionist groups want?

To expel the British and create a state.

What does Hamas want?

To eliminate Israel. Not "end occupation," but to eliminate the state. Read the Hamas charter.

These are very different goals.

People keep reaching for "justification" because it's simple and clean. It gives you a good guy and a bad guy. You pick your side, you're done. You get to feel moral clarity. That's what the Free Palestine movement is about: emotional resonance.

The actual situation offers no clarity. You can argue about who's more wrong or who started it, but justification framing skips past the harder question: what do you actually do when neither of these two peoples is going anywhere?

Justification turns a political problem into a morality play. It lets you have an opinion without needing a solution.

"Justification" is what Hamas supporters rely on to rationalize, then excuse any Hamas atrocity.

"Justification" is a fundamentally broken way to evaluate terrorism.

Targeting civilians is always wrong, and never, ever justifiable.

The identity of the attacked doesn't matter. The identity of the attacker doesn't matter. The goals being pursued by the attack don't matter.

This is a big one. If you are a highly empathic individual, then the moment their switch "flips" when it is time to take accountability, you forget what it was they did to you and the reason that it was hurtful. The thing is, your subconscious mind and your body do not forget. They keep note on all the times you abandoned the feelings of what was affecting you. No matter how much you try to convince yourself that what they did is okay, deep down, you know that it was not.

People who fall into this category have become highly maniuplative during their lifetime. Others in their environment always bent and caved to whatever it is they did as not to be uncomfortable.

His love is bigger, vaster, and always more than any possible set of reasons. He doesn't think he could ever explain it fully. He loves her because she is she, the exact and only person that she could be, a unique individual who cannot be replicated or replaced. Everything she is to him could never be reduced to mere reasons. It could never be captured by words, not in this language or in any language. There is always more to his love, always something beyond what he could say.