how is hamas even remotely equivalent to a rogue state that has killed tens of thousands of people in just the past few years alone
I absolutely agree that there is no equivalence between Hamas and Israel, Anon.
Not in structure, not in values, not in accountability, and certainly not in conduct.
Hamas is a theocratic death cult with a charter that openly calls for the annihilation of Jews. It executes dissidents, persecutes minorities, censors the press, and uses children as human shields.
Israel is a sovereign democracy with universal suffrage, a functioning judiciary, LGBTQ+ protections, and religious freedom. Like all democracies, it is a deeply flawed work-in-progress.
You're right that these can't be flattened into being the same.
Casualties ≠ Moral Clarity
"Israel has killed tens of thousands of people."
This is the kind of moral arithmetic that collapses under five seconds of scrutiny.
Civilian death tolls in war zones are tragic¹, but not all civilian deaths are war crimes. The laws of war distinguish between targeting civilians (which Hamas does) and collateral damage while targeting combatants (which Israel, like all modern militaries, attempts to minimize, using warnings, evacuations, and surgical strikes).
Hamas embeds itself among civilians deliberately, turning population centers into launch sites. Every war crime they commit becomes a PR win when it's misreported it as Israeli aggression.
In your haste to announce a moral judgement without stopping to make a moral argument, you use a term you can't define².
A rogue state is generally understood in international relations to mean a government that:
Rejects international norms and laws
Sponsors terrorism
Commits egregious human rights violations as state policy.
Iran? Yep.
North Korea? You bet
Hamas-run Gaza? Damn skippy.
Israel? Not so much. Israel:
Is a member of the United Nations.
Has peace treaties and diplomatic ties with dozens of countries, including former attackers.
Is governed by the rule of law, with judicial review, opposition parties, regular elections, and a free press which savages its government daily.
Has no expansionist ideology, no interest in genocide, no state-sponsored terrorism, and no nuclear first-use doctrine.
You may not like Israel's policies (there are some I don't like either) but that doesn’t make it a rogue state. That makes it a state.
False Equivalence Is Not Moral Clarity
When you ask how Hamas could be compared to a Israel, what you’re really doing is:
Dismissing the nature, motives, and methods of Hamas.
Flattening all actors who use force as morally interchangeable.
Equating a democracy defending its citizens with a terror group built to kill Jews.
While you behave as though you're exposing hypocrisy, you're erasing the difference between a military and a militia, between war and terrorism, between flawed governance and totalitarianism, between tragic collateral damage and gleeful massacre.
Israel is not perfect. It has bad policies, it has bad politicians, and it makes grave mistakes...just like the UK, the US, and every other democracy on earth.
"Democracy," said Winston Churchill, "is the worst form of Government except for all those other forms that have been tried."
Like every democracy, it can be (and is) challenged from within.
If your moral compass places a pluralistic democracy and a fascist death cult on the same level, the problem isn't just your ignorance.
It's your ethics and your refusal to make a moral argument before announcing your moral judgement.
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¹You don't actually care about casualty counts anyway. At least 150,000 have died in Sudan since 2023, but you haven't said anything about that, have you? 600,000 dead in Syria in the last several years, but nobody in the "Free Palestine" camp cared at all. The war in Yemen has claimed about 35,000-400,000 people, but I doubt you're even aware of that
²What you're doing here with 'rogue state' has become common in the Free Palestine cult. You redefine words in order to use them as weapons.²
Since you're allergic to dictionaries, here are other examples:
Genocide Means the intentional and systematic destruction of a people. Israel protects its Arab population (2 million citizens with full rights) and has repeatedly called for civilians to evacuate before striking Hamas targets. That is not genocide. Hamas, by contrast, literally calls for genocide.
Holocaust A unique historical atrocity involving industrialized, systematic extermination. Stop appropriating it to describe a war you don’t understand. You diminish actual Holocaust victims every time you weaponize the term.
Famine There is no famine in Gaza. Malnutrition? Possibly. Humanitarian crisis? Yes, there was one. But famine is a specific stage of food insecurity as defined by the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC). Gaza never reached famine. Repeating the false claim doesn’t make it true.
Other examples of semantic distortion in the movement:
War becomes genocide.
Rape becomes resistance.
National borders become the walls of an "open air prison."
Suicide bombing becomes heroism.
Terrorists become "freedom fighters."
Civilian hostages become "prisoners of war."
A people reclaiming a part of their homeland become colonizers.
The colonizers of the Arab conquests become "liberators."
Words mean things. When you strip them of meaning to make a rhetorical point, you're not helping anyone, least of all Palestinians.
