If this isn’t convincing enough more Zionist thinkers can add on. Je’ev Zabotinsky, founder of the Irgun, a Jewish paramilitary group in British Palestine, wrote in The Iron Wall that “It is utterly impossible to obtain the voluntary consent of the Palestine Arabs for converting "Palestine" from an Arab country into a country with a Jewish majority.” He even went on to compare Palestinians to the Aztecs, and Sioux. David Ben Gurion, the founder of Israel spoke of the unjust nature of Zionist settlement. He stated in a June 7 1938 speech that, "In our political argument abroad, we minimize Arab opposition to us. But let us not ignore the truth among ourselves." He elaborates,"Politically we are the aggressors and they defend themselves... The country is theirs, because they inhabit it, whereas we want to come here and settle down." This speech is cited from Simha Flapan's Zionism and the Palestinians, pages 141-142.

These quotes show how Zionism did not form merely to create a peaceful Jewish state. It formed in order to have an ethnonationalist colony in the Middle East, unabashedly so. According to Zionist thinkers, savage indigenous people were inhabiting Palestine, and Jews were to be their civilizers.  Ironically, allegations of antisemitism against anti-Zionists are themselves antisemitic. These criticisms conflate self-determination with the creation of an ethnostate. In them is the implication that it's core to the Jewish identity to take part in settler colonialism. Antisemites can turn this on its head, as they can use this to say that Jews advocate for a genocidal ideology. If any other ethnicity replaced Jew in this ideology, it'd be problematic, but because it weaponizes Judaism some it as having good intentions.

Gaza received many of them after the forced removal, which explains its high population density today. From then on, Israel would continue to enforce its ethnostate with The Law of Return in 1950. The law stated that every Jew is an Israeli citizen by right, and would be assisted in settling in Israel. The Absentee Property Law was also passed, declaring property left from ethnically cleansed Palestinians as legitimate for Israelis to acquire. This violates the Right of Return, a UN resolution upholding the right of refugees to return to their homes. Despite thinking of itself as champions of peace, the UN does not want to start an operation to enforce this resolution in Palestine.

The ethnostate would also fulfill its role as a Western outpost in Asia, just as Herzl wanted. It invaded Egypt in 1956, occupied Gaza and the West Bank from Jordan, and the Golan Heights from Syria in the Six-Day War in 1967. Sinai, conquered from Egypt after the 1967 war, was completely returned by 1982 as a result of the Yom Kippur War of 1973.

Israel has committed many more crimes, but throughout history it has always been a key Western ally, checking anti-West sentiment in its region. Its role is vital because the Middle East is important for many reasons. Geographically, it’s between Asia, Africa, and Europe, giving whoever controls it strong geopolitical power. It’s also oil-rich, with some of its nations even causing an economic crisis in 1973 by cutting off their supply to Israel-aligned nations. Unfortunately, Israel has largely succeeded, maintaining Western influence and enjoying diplomacy with some Arab states. Egypt, a former socialist and Pan-Arabist enemy of Israel, is one of them. The West would lose out on many of the benefits it extracts from the region if Palestine became liberated.

One argument people make in to defend Israel is that it has a right to defend itself. It is an argument echoed by many of Israel’s backers, such as the US through Secretary of State Antony Blinken, as well as the UK in a speech to the UN. The reasoning is that Israel is responding to an attack that killed civilians.

One problem with this reasoning is that it decontextualizes why Hamas attacked in the first place, that being an attempt to liberate all of Palestine against 75 years of Israeli oppression, as outlined by the chairman of its political bureau. Although Israeli civilians have been killed, it’s ignored that the root of the conflict is Israel, a state that not only is built on ethnic cleansing but is currently placing settlers in the West Bank, an occupied territory, as well as blockading Gaza ever since it nominally pulled out in 2005.

Even with the conflict being decontextualized, Israel's conduct goes far beyond self-defense. Besides an indiscriminate bombing campaign, 1.1 million people were forcibly removed from northern Gaza to the south. Despite promising them safety many evacuees were still targeted. A leaked document even detailed the possibility of removing all Gazans to Sinai. With all its actions considered, Israel has no right to defend itself, since it is a fundamentally invalid state. Invoking self-defense for Israel is like invoking self-defense for Germany during the Warsaw Ghetto uprising.

Another argument people make is that Hamas’ politics are not any better. The resistance group is often dismissed as an Islamist, terrorist, and antisemitic organization, but this view is reductive and unfair. The Islamist Muslim Brotherhood may have accepted it as a member from its formation in 1987, but in 2017 the resistance group broke away from it. Although this doesn’t disprove that Islamic Fundamentalists aren’t in Hamas, it does show its attempt to deradicalize.

But even if Islamic Fundamentalists are in Hamas, this doesn’t invalidate the organization. Its priority is fighting the 75-year-long ethnic oppression Israel has imposed on Palestine, giving it legitimacy to many Palestinians. Sympathy should be given because they grew up in an undeveloped, abhorrent environment that hinders any organization of social movements. Social conservatism outside of the West is more common simply because there are fewer opportunities for education. Where religion may be their only way to cope, it is understandable that some Palestinians become radical. 

This leads to terrorism, which many people tend to reduce Hamas' actions to. It does attack civilians, but there is more nuance here than it seems. Israel is a settler colony still in its early stages. The indigenous people still make up a large enough population to resist, and settlers continue to steal land. This makes attacks on people in Israel more analogous to the attacks on settlements that Indigenous people did in the Americas in colonial times.

The root of the problem is the decades of murder, displacement, and dehumanization of Palestinians by Israel. If terrorism includes Hamas killing civilians, then it is hypocritical not to include the much more heinous actions of Israel. According to a poll (15) conducted by the Israel Democracy Institute from October 18-19, 83.4% of Jewish Israelis think that harm done to Palestinians should not be considered. In a more recent poll, from November 27-30 the results were nearly the same. 87.2% of Jewish Israelis thought that the IDF's conduct should be similar to how it was before the ceasefire.

Due to the consensus in these polls, it's safe to say that Israelis are overwhelmingly callous and believe in their settler project. It may not be excusable, but it is not at all surprising that attacks are done against them. Terrorism is being used as a politically charged word since Israel's manner of conducting war kills much more civilians than Hamas could ever kill.

As for antisemitism, this criticism is also oversimplified, and fails to look at Israeli violence in Palestine. Even though the group rejected antisemitism in their 2017 charter, people still point to phrases in the 1988 Covenant, pointing to sentences such as “The Day of Judgement will not come about until Moslems fight the Jews (killing the Jews),”. This is misleading because the charter also makes many references to fighting Zionism, giving more context to these statements. Furthermore, even if there are some antisemites in Hamas, it’s understandable since Israel constantly tries to equate Judaism with Zionism.

It’s also hypocritical because Western governments accept that Nazi battalions fight with Ukraine, such as the Azov battalion. Ukraine is a part of a larger antisemitic acceptance of the Double Genocide Theory. It equates the crimes of the Soviet Union with those of Nazi Germany in order to minimize the latter’s much worse atrocities. Much of Post-Communist Eastern Europe, now composed of NATO and EU members, has seen the deployment of this ahistorical argument. With all this taken into account, critics of supposed antisemitism in Hamas are showing a racist bias when they do not show the same concern for the worse antisemitism many of the West's allies hold.

An ignored aspect of the current conflict is the West Bank. Filled with settlers, attacks against Palestinians have ramped up. 275 Palestinians have died, including 63 children, as of November 16 according to Al Jazeera. This is due to raids by Israeli forces, as well as settler attacks. Violence from the latter has always been prevalent in the West Bank, targeting Olive Trees, the agricultural source of income for many Palestinians, as well as contributing to displacement. According to The Nation, by November 15 at least 16 communities have been forcibly removed.

During the ceasefire, many Palestinians tried to return back to their homes in Northern Gaza. Israel, which had already forcibly removed millions of them in an ethnic cleansing, immediately broke the ceasefire by murdering 2 and injuring 11 on November 24. Jabalia refugee camp and Indonesian Hospital were also attacked by the IDF. Over 100 Palestinians alone were killed in the former. Claims of attacks by Hamas have been more spurious, as claims of a Hamas bombing have only came from the IDF.

Nevertheless, Palestinians saw the ceasefire as a sign of hope. The nearly two months of genocidal warfare on them had finally ended, and they were able to feel relief knowing that they might not have had a bomb dropped on them. Even then, Israel saw these celebrations as intolerable slights. Interior Security Minister Ben Gvir said that these actions done by Palestinians were to be prohibited. He stated that "Expressions of joy are equivalent to backing terrorism." Although it was extended by November 27, many wanted a permanent end to the fighting. They had been unjustly removed from their homes in the north, and wanted to return. As soon as the ceasefire ended, 175 Palestinians were killed by airstrikes by Israel.

Its main boycotts include Puma, HP, Siemens, and Israeli food and drink companies such as Sabra. The organization has also endorsed more grassroots campaigns against McDonalds, Burger King, Papa John’s, and so on in a released statement. Starbucks has also been the target of a boycott, reportedly losing $11 billion according to The Cradle.