Israel is prioritizing defeating Hamas over making the world like it. This is partly due to the incompetence of the government, partly due to the impossible realities on the ground, but also partly due to an understanding that the survival of Hamas in Gaza and their perceived win is a larger threat.
I would also say that it's the propaganda war against Israel that's causing most of the alienation. To some extent Israel can do no right here and its critics aren't really proposing any alternatives that they would be able to live with if they were in a similar situation. The extent to which social (and traditional) media has been mobilized as part of the war here is unprecedented.
Re: "end and means" why is this argument made here but not e.g. wrt/ the world's war on ISIS/ISIL or Al Qaeda? Or WW-II? Should Ukraine surrender because the end (having a free/democratic Ukraine aligned with the west?) doesn't justify the "means"?
Ukraine isn’t trying to eradicate the general Russian population, they are fighting Russian military on their own territory. The Ukrainian war effort is largely in compliance with international law, which Israel on the other hand is in grave violation of.
Is there any version in your mind that stops Israel from genociding innocent Palestinians while also allowing them to get hostages back?
What does that look like? Is it realistic?
Ukraine gets the luxury of fighting an internationally recognized country with internationally recognized borders who wears compliant uniforms and recognized infrastructure that can be targeted. When Russia faked "separatists" in Ukraine in flagrant breach of laws of war, there was minimal international response and Ukraine was left to fend for itself.
Russia tried to freeze all of Ukraine and Europe to death early on in the war. It's not really a war crime, because blowing up infrastructure and cancelling trade is fair game. Countries did not give Ukraine immense aid even after that. The thing that got Putin labeled a war criminal was abducting children. Not shooting missiles at children, which he does regularly, but abducting them.
Hamas is breaking international law by fighting without official uniform, and is therefore in breach of the Geneva Convention. I don't think they actually recognize it so it doesn't matter. Hamas members commit a war crime every time they shoot at an IDF soldier, so don't lend much credence to "war crime" as a morality thing.
At some point though, you should be willing to recognize that "leave Palestine alone" without putting any requirements on Palestine is just "Let Hamas do whatever it wants", right? Palestinians are not jumping at the chance to replace Hamas. They are being oppressed by Hamas, and dissent is met with murder. Hamas is clear that they intend to keep killing Israeli people, regardless of religion even. Nobody has demonstrated an ability to liberate a populace from terrorists like that. So what strategy can we use to actually fix things?
Israel accepts like 10:1 innocent casualties for every Hamas member they kill, which is obscene. But whats the correct number? If it's zero, you have decided that it should not be possible to fight against non-traditional combatants.
Lets agree Israel needs to be stopped from controlling food going into Palestine (and probably other things). I would also advocate for Netenyahu in prison forever. What next? Assume a magical organization rose up and waved it's hands and those things happened. How do we go from there to both no more Palestinians dying AND no more Israeli people dying?
This isn't a real answer your question, it's just an idea that's crossed my mind a few times.
We've seen with the exploding pagers and all kinds of other covert ops that Israel has a really powerful spy network that's capable of doing precisely targeted strikes that kill specific people. Could they put a lot more into that and use it to carry out an enormous infiltration of Hamas and assassinate lots and lots of Hamas fighters? Like not just leaders but even lower-level participants? It's true that if you detonate someone's pager in a cafe you may injure or kill some bystanders, but it seems like such collateral damage would have to be multiple orders of magnitude less than what's going on right now.
I would also say that it's the propaganda war against Israel that's causing most of the alienation. To some extent Israel can do no right here and its critics aren't really proposing any alternatives that they would be able to live with if they were in a similar situation. The extent to which social (and traditional) media has been mobilized as part of the war here is unprecedented.
Re: "end and means" why is this argument made here but not e.g. wrt/ the world's war on ISIS/ISIL or Al Qaeda? Or WW-II? Should Ukraine surrender because the end (having a free/democratic Ukraine aligned with the west?) doesn't justify the "means"?