Response to Ilhan:

But, they also said, "drawing false equivalencies between democracies like the U.S. and Israel and groups that engage in terrorism like Hamas and the Taliban foments prejudice and undermines progress toward a future of peace and security for all."

False equivalence between Hamas and Taliban for sure - Taliban is a wildly regressive movement that represses women, destroys culture, has killed people rather indiscriminately, and has torn down actual democratic governments while keeping Afghanistan backwards 40 years.

Hamas is a largely minor league political-quasi military group representing a largely imprisoned minority with the embarrassment of corruption and occasional bloodshed. It's almost like comparing Crips vs Bloods level disruption in the Palestinian ghetto with the Burmese/Myanmar junta that's out bombing its minorities and opposition en masse again. If Hamas did not exist, Israel would be forced to create it. Similarly the 1000s of lowgrade "missiles" fired by Hezbollah at Israel serve to pretend a real threat. It's pretty much pure theater and a type of terrorism, but frankly not as much terror as the Israelis' ability to say destroy 5% of impoverished Gaza's infrastructure at a go (or annexing 5% of it's tiny tiny territory (same size as Philly, 6x the size of Manhattan)  as a "security perimeter") and telling international correspondents they have 20 mins to am-scray before demolishing their headquarters just to let the world know that they don't give a fuck about anyone's opinion about what they do. Meanwhile the body count of just Palestinian children killed vs any Israelis in the latest test of Iron Dome is rather imbalanced. Should "Israeli shows of force against largely powerless Palestinians whole increased illegal settlements building all to improve Bibi's chance at re-election" count as terrorism? Or is that too rude?

Glad I'm not running for office, so I don't have to subscribe to all this overly parsed bullshit.

If I look up Hamas, they were a largely ineffectual "terrorist" org - perhaps responsible for 200-300 Israeli deaths during the naughts, who displaced the more peaceful Islamic Brotherhood branch and dimishment if the PLO(?), and successfully overtook Fatah as Palestinians' elected leadership in response to unhappiness with Fatah corruption and ineffectiveness. Since say 2008 - 13 years - i see maybe a couple dozen, let's say no more than 50 Israeli deaths due to Hamas, vs say well over 1000 Israeli caused deaths, mostly civilian, in repeated punishment raids that mostly effect civilians - many actions tied to the continued building if illegal settlements.

https://m.timesofindia.com/world/middle-east/timeline-hamas-and-israel-a...

In the last flareup, the Israelis took out 6-9 hospitals, another 15-20 health clinics, et al. hard to believe not communal punishment against civilians as largely considered illegal under international law. Alright, BBC:

At least 256 people were killed in Gaza, according to the UN, and 13 people were killed in Israel during the hostilities.

[66 children, 39 women on the Palestinian side - PP]

The UN said at least 128 of those killed in Gaza were civilians. Israel's military said 200 were militants; Hamas's leader there, Yahya Sinwar, put the number of fighters killed at 80.

A land and sea blockade of Gaza, which is imposed by Israel and Egypt, looks set to make reconstruction slow and complicated.

This was introduced after Hamas seized full control of the tiny territory from the Palestinian Authority (PA) in a bloody internal battle in 2007, a year after it won the last general election.

It has crippled the economy but has only partly succeeded in its stated security aim: to stop weapons and other supplies from reaching militants.