Roeland,

Maybe we're on more the same page.

Does that mean that the attack was justified?

It was of course. But the targeting of civilians delegitimizes the Palestinian cause.

It is justifiably considered terrorism.

Ergo the same for the taking of civilian hostages. Not if the hostages were military as they would rightly be considered POW's.

However, the 373 or so Israeli soldiers /security forces killed during the Oct. 7th attack were legitimate targets/part of the rights of the occupied.

Not sure what to say about the exact number of Israelis killed by IDF forces, some as ordered by the Hannibal Directive.

Maybe I didn't make my point succinct enough in terms of the international treatment of Israel as a nation.

Israel signed many of the UN declarations on the Right of Return for refugees, settling occupied territory, rights of those begin occupied, etc.

To say that the ignoring of Israel's UN agreements has anything to do with the Holocaust, the 6 million Jews, the 8 million plus others - - predominately Russian and Polish Slavs --senselessly slaughtered during what can only be considered genocidal madness, would be wrong.

Israel is enacting much of the same treatment its progenitors suffered upon the Palestinians, and has been for decades.

The Holocaust is not an excuse.

And please don't assume my ignorance.

As a very young man, I worked beside Holocaust survivors at Kifar Giladi in northern Israel.

Visited Yad Vashem in Jerusalem. Stunned into silence.

The skin lampshade gave me nightmares...two swallows holding a scroll which pierced a human heart: the name Sophia emblazoned.

Sophia: the goddess of wisdom.

Still shaking my head at the irony of that illumination. 'What, someone read a book under this light?"

When I returned home to University, I studied Middle Eastern history and WW II.

Focussed on the Balfour Doctrine, the Sykes-Picot Agreement, even wrote a piece on the nefarious Irish Civil War 'Black and Tans' and their role in 'patrolling' the Palestinian Mandate.

When visiting Germany with my students, my colleague and I insisted that they visit Dachau.

My Uncle Henry liberated the Westerbrook Transit Camp in the Netherlands at the close of WW II.

My father, aboard the HMCS St. Laurent, fought the Germans in the Battle of the North Atlantic.

These men were and remain my heroes. To me, they were fighting the biggest bullies ever.

My Uncle Henry, as a Bren gun operator, who saw more combat than my father, never made a single excuse for his PSTD because of his trauma.

Neither should the Israelis.