Oct. 7 was the deadliest day for the Jewish people since the Holocaust. Hundreds of Hamas terrorists breached the Gaza security fence. Armed with rocket launchers, grenades, and machine guns, they proceeded to slaughter over 1,300 Israelis, the vast majority of whom were innocent civilians. 

The attacks were barbaric. Hamas members mowed down over 260 people at a music festival. They executed babies. Israeli forensic teams found evidence of rape. 

They went door-to-door in Israeli kibbutzim slaughtering entire families. They desecrated the bodies of the dead. They burned alive those trying to flee the atrocities. They took more than 150 Israeli civilians hostage, kidnapping mothers with their infants. They even kidnapped an elderly Holocaust survivor.  

While the scale and magnitude of the atrocities are difficult to believe, they were well-documented by the perpetrators, who posted their crimes on social media for all to see. 

The events of Oct. 7 have confirmed everything Israel has been saying for decades about Hamas: It is a genocidal organization hell-bent not on “ending the occupation” but on the complete destruction of Israel. It is a terrorist group funded by the government of Iran. Its rhetoric of mass murder — rarely taken seriously by anti-Israel activists — is literal, as evidenced by Oct. 7. Hamas, seen by some on the left as a freedom-fighting organization, is more akin to ISIS than the Sons of Liberty. 

So, how did much of the “Free Palestine” cause respond to such atrocities? Did they condemn the gruesome violence and abhorrent tactics? Some did not. At Harvard, 34 student organizations (a handful of which retracted their signatures after public pressure) released a statement that not only refused to condemn the violence against Israeli civilians but also held Israel “entirely responsible” for the rape and murder of its own citizens. The New York City chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America, shortly after the attacks, released a statement blaming Israel and promoted a “Free Palestine” rally in Times Square. 

Even worse than not condemning the violence, some celebrated it. Immediately after the attacks, supporters of the attacks in London, Berlin, New York, and other cities took to the streets to celebrate. Yet more rallies this past week erupted after a former Hamas leader called for a “day of rage” against Jews worldwide. The celebration of such violence is nothing new. Famously, sweets have been handed out in cities in Gaza and the West Bank after successful attacks on Israeli civilians. 

The response of many was, implicitly or explicitly, “This violence is justified against the occupation of Gaza.” But this reaction betrays not only an ahistorical understanding of the conflict but a lack of moral sense. 

The blockade of Gaza began after the democratic election of Hamas in 2006. If Hamas didn’t run Gaza, there would be no blockade. The “Free Palestine” movement here mistakes cause for effect. The cause of these gruesome attacks is not the occupation. Though Hamas was not officially established until 1987, attacks on Jewish people in the region preceded the occupation; they even preceded the state of Israel. Hamas’s charter is explicit in showing the group’s desire to carry out attacks until Israel’s destruction (not until the end of the blockade): “Israel will exist and will continue to exist until Islam will obliterate it.”

The cause of the blockade is, in fact, Hamas’s violence. Israel doesn’t want to waste its resources enforcing a blockade for no reason. It enforces the blockade because, even with it, Hamas manages to perpetrate vicious attacks on Israeli civilians. If you want to know why Israel erects fences and limits travel from Gaza into Israel, Oct. 7 is the reason. 

The gravest error anti-Israel activists make is the reduction of all moral questions to power imbalances. For many, Israel is bad because Israel is stronger. Hamas is good because Hamas is weaker. But powerful and good are not mutually exclusive. You can be weak and evil, strong and good. 

The reduction of the conflict’s ethics to civilian casualties is similarly over-simplistic. Hamas valorizes the death and martyrdom of Gazan civilians. The lopsided casualty numbers largely reflect Hamas’s indifference to Gazan civilians. If Hamas actually cared about Gazan civilians, it wouldn’t urge them to ignore Israeli evacuation warnings. It also wouldn’t attack Israeli civilians, as it knows that Israel will respond. 

The grim reality is that Hamas benefits from sacrificing Gazans: to achieve ideological goals, to gain global support, to get foreign aid. Israel does not. When one side is maniacally devoted to the protection of its own citizens (Israel) and the other is maniacally devoted to the murder of Israelis at any cost (Hamas), of course there are asymmetric casualty numbers. Under this misguided framework, if Israel simply let more of its civilians die, its moral standing in the conflict would somehow improve.

I propose an alternative way to evaluate the morality of the conflict. Imagine what each side would do given overwhelming military power. Israel would presumably do very little differently — it already has overwhelming military power. Its primary motive in the use of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) is the protection of its citizens (perhaps with excessive force, though most Western countries in similar situations wouldn’t be nearly as restrained). 

What would Hamas do? It would perpetrate Oct. 7 on an even grander scale. It would slaughter as many Jews as possible, women and children included. What matters when evaluating the conflict is not “power.” It is the intentions and goals of the actors involved. 

The battle between Hamas and Israel is not a battle between oppressor and oppressed. It is a battle between a country that has sought peace for decades and a bloodthirsty organization obsessed with war and martyrdom. 

To those of you whose first response to the atrocities on Oct. 7 was one of justification and rationalization, I ask you to self-reflect. Reflect on whether you really think mass slaughter is ever justified. Reflect on whether you think there is a line that the Hamas “rebellion” could even in theory cross. If you think there is such a line, Oct. 7 must have crossed it. If you don’t think there’s such a line  — and any response to Israel’s blockade is justified — consider the possibility that your ideology is blinding your moral sense. 

I pray for the safety of civilians on both sides: the Israeli civilians who have been taken hostage and the Palestinian civilians whom Hamas has ordered to ignore Israeli airstrike warnings. 

Finally, I pray for the safety of my brothers and sisters in the IDF, many of whom are not much older than myself, entering this war with a strong moral mandate, as they defend their families and their nation, hunt down those responsible for these attacks, and hopefully free Gaza from Hamas tyranny. Am Yisrael Chai. 

Jonah Garnick ’23 is from Brookline, Mass.

Editor’s note: This article was updated online on Tuesday, Oct. 24 at 10:20 a.m. ET. A previous version of this article incorrectly stated that “attacks on Israeli civilians preceded the occupation; they even preceded the state of Israel.” This is impossible, since there were no Israeli civilians before the state of Israel. The article has been updated for accuracy.