The thing is, one side has seen a loss of life measuring around 20,000 in the past couple months and the other side less than 2,000. So this kind of flattening of "pro-Palestinian vs pro-Israeli" obscures the reality of the situation.
Concerns about "factual views" are orthogonal to which side is getting more press. It is likely (increasingly so, considering the number of times Israel has had to walk back serious claims like the alleged Hamas command center under al-Shifa hospital) that the facts do not support the Israeli narrative and that the level of presence of those claims in the current discourse have come to reflect the news media's skepticism of such claims.
I don't disagree and believe Israel's response is a mistake that is going to backfire, but would like to point out this numbers game people play is not actually that strong argument at all. When the allies invaded Germany a LOT of innocent civilians were killed. It was flattened to destroy the Nazi regime.
You don't see moral outcry over the numbers of German civilians killed. Let's not forget: about 30k Palestinian civilians have been killed in the past 2 decades. During WW2 - a much shorter time period - about half a million (350-500 fucking thousand) civilian Germans were killed, mostly by bombs.
Why is that? Because how murders occur and what kind of evil you're dealing with matters. Not just numbers. I'm nonetheless sympathetic to the view that without the deaths in WW2 we would have seen more deaths because the Nazis were just that evil. Same goes for Hamas. So even if we are just talking numbers consider how many Palestinians (who mostly hate Hamas I might add) we would save long-term if Hamas were eradicated.
That's one thing. Other thing:
I'd pick being an oppressed Palestinian fearing for my life from bombs any day of the week than a hippy that is going about my ordinary day all of a sudden to have jihadists murder my whole family in front of me in my home with their own hands.
Both terrible, one is clearly worse and would continue to be worse even if it were Zionists doing it to Palestinians. This is why Netanyahu admiring a Zionist terrorist is so terrifying. It isn't how many Palestinians he killed, it is how he did it and what motivated him that makes Netanyahu appear so obviously morally monstrous because of his admiration.
who cares about casualty numbers when one side initiated it by killing civilians? Israel has license to kill every single one of them until the hostage taking, rockets and murders stop. Israel didn't initiate this. Palestine did. They did so knowing this would be Israel's response. This blood is on the hands of the Palestinian leadership's intentional strategy.
Don't want your people to die? Don't organize massacres of civilians. Real easy. If your government organizes such a massacre, I'm sorry but your life is forfeit. Maybe vote differently next time.
Casualty counts are irrelevant if we aren't looking at who the casualties are and who started what.
Your arguments imply that you also believe Palestinians have the right to retaliate against innocent civilians because of Israel's actions. IDF regularly takes hostages (calling them "criminals" doesn't change material realities), murders extrajudicially, etc. By your reasoning Hamas was acting in morally righteous ways. History didn't begin on October 7, 2023.
What an asinine argument. 5 minutes on Google and you would not even be able to tell which side you yourself are talking about. Started it? When? This time? Last time? 20 years ago? No matter which side you support, you have lost the argument when you cherry-pick the two minutes of history that you deem most important. The fact is one side kills a lot more innocent civilians than the other side, and it is the same side that have the best weaponry to actually avoid civilian casualties.
>Casualty counts are irrelevant if we aren't looking at who the casualties are and who started what.
You seem to point out that your own argument is completely irrelevant, as you do neither of those things. History didn't start a few months ago.
Concerns about "factual views" are orthogonal to which side is getting more press. It is likely (increasingly so, considering the number of times Israel has had to walk back serious claims like the alleged Hamas command center under al-Shifa hospital) that the facts do not support the Israeli narrative and that the level of presence of those claims in the current discourse have come to reflect the news media's skepticism of such claims.