I only have one thing to say about Gaza

Content note: violence
There is a lot of anger coming across my Facebook feed about Gaza. More of my friends are pro-Palestine than pro-Israel, but one of the pro-Israel ones makes up for it by posting nearly as much as all the pro-Palestine ones combined. You know who you are. But it wasn’t him who posted this image:

I’ve been saying nothing because I don’t know any more about Gaza than any other New Zealander who follows international news, and saying anything would only mean I’d have to deal with a storm of anger from somebody. But I’m getting the storm of anger anyway. So this is the one thing I have to say about Gaza:
It is morally wrong to fire explosive devices at people just because they are of the same ethnicity, and live near the same place, as the people who have hurt you. Even if they are also politically aligned with those people. It doesn’t make a moral difference whether the explosive devices are mortar rockets or missiles launched from planes. It is human nature to think essentialistically, but neither “Israel” nor “Palestine” is a monolithic entity that is collectively responsible for everything an individual might do in its name. Killing innocents does not redress any wrong, it compounds it.
The death toll in Gaza is in the hundreds, if it’s not thousands by now. I don’t think the death toll in Israel has cracked single figures yet. If you don’t think the number of people you kill is morally important, you are no better than a terrorist. So I am opposed to Israel’s actions. And I’m not swayed by Meir’s little piece of spin. Last I heard, Israel had a highly-trained military force called Mossad. If you want to convince me Mossad couldn’t enter Gaza and take out the individuals firing rockets – by “take out” I mean capture for trial in an international court of justice, but even targeted assassination would be better than bombing the whole place and killing children – then you have a lot of work to do.
But just because I’m opposed to Israel’s actions doesn’t mean I support Hamas. Look, when two groups of people are trying to kill each other you can bet they’re also telling lies about each other as loud as they can. In a movie one of them would be snowy pure and telling nothing but the truth, but real life isn’t a movie. So I don’t believe everything I hear that opposes Israel just because I also oppose Israel in this. But I do believe that young Gazans are likely to know more than me about the situation, and during an earlier outbreak of violence a year or two ago I read a manifesto by some young Gazans that began: “Fuck Israel! Fuck Hamas!”
Violence breeds violence. Two wrongs don’t make a right. These are clichés, but they’re clichés because everyone knows they’re true. And that’s all I have to say about that.