My brother in law is jewish and served his three years, during which the gaza conflict was really unstable. He shifted my views too. He is jewish, but is not against a piece of land for Palestina at all, in fact he's all for peaceful co-existence. The israelian citizens tire of war. Literally half the country are avid users of weed, there's a cause for that. There are very little jewish citizens who don't know someone who's died during another war. Hamas though doesn't want a palestinian country, because that'd mean they'd have to co-exist with Israel. No, Hamas wants ALL of Israel, and all of the jews gone from the middle east.
He told me a bit about how misunderstood, how demonized he felt when he read foreign papers during his time serving the army, since he personally was there to warn locals for an incominig attack, wary for his life since you never know if a terrorist is hiding between those citizens. He has been through countless lessons and meetings about how to prevent palestinian citizen casualties, about how there were lessons that they should prevent citizen casualties as much as possible since any single citizen casualty would reach and be magnified by foreign media.
He also told me a bit about the trauma Israeli soldiers came back with, when - while trying to do everything to prevent citizen casualties - they literally witnessed hamas forcing Gaza-citizens right in between the firing line between Hamas and Jewish forces... All of their effort gone into smoke, tens, sometimes 100s of citizens, dead.
In war there are no winners, and Israel certainly doesn't get out 'clean' or 'blameless'. But the country is defending itself. Israel doesn't want war. They fcking came from WW2 into Israel, only to immediatly get declared war by ALL surrounding countries. My B-I-L had a grandparent who survived a nazi death camp, only to have to fight for his life again 7 years later.
That sets bad blood, and a lack of trust, which is partly the reason why it's an ongoing process and issue. How can you ever make peace with a people who keep testing your defenses, silently wishing you gone. How can you ever trust such a peace...?
Yes, Israel makes mistakes. Some big ones too. Palestinian citizens have died, and still die sometimes, by jewish gunfire. They lack the trust to act friendly towards any 'muslim race'. But they lack that trust for a reason: the anti-Israel narrative is unjust and really short- and narrow-minded. It's an incredibly complex situation, one we as 'westerners' can't really ever form a good opinion on, not unless we've been there at both sides. I'm not pro-Israel, eventho my brother in law is jewish. My gf has done humanitary work in Lebanon, and told me some about the other side. About how most regular lebanese people are completely fine with having Israel as a neighbour, but how some others have nothing but blind hatred towards anything jewish. She also told me about the Arabian racism towards Palestinians(...), apparently palestinians are treated even as bad or worse by their Arab 'brothers' compared to the jewish government... Something I never knew about. All these stories, from my brother in law and from my gf, have showed me that I know very, very little. I certainly knew too little for the strong opinion I used to have, which used to be extremely critical and even cynical towards the jewish government. But it's all narrative, unbased on the true complexitity of reality.
I'm not pro-israel, but I'm certainly not pro-hamas.