We must hold the IDF to the same standard as we hold Hamas. Neither is allowed kill civilians, neither is allowed starve a population, neither is allowed detain civilians (whether as "hostages" or "administrative detainees"), neither is allowed to commit rape, neither is allowed commit war crimes.

The issue is that the IDF is much worse than Hamas on all these things:

- Israel has killed 30,000 (though the number is suspected to be as high as 50,000 now, and it continues to increase), while Hamas killed 700 civilians (I'll leave aside the very credible claims that Israel killed a good number of it's own)

- Israel has a much worse ratio of civilians to valid military targets (possibly between 5/1 and 8/1 ratio, while Hamas has 2/1 ratio during Hamas' attack, and it is believed many of those were killed by the IDF)

- Hamas has only killed civilians during the Oct 7 attack. Israel is killing hundreds of civilians per day, and has used rhetoric that indicates this is deliberate [4]. Even Biden, who claims he is a zionist, called Israeli bombing of civilian areas "indiscriminate" [5]. There are plenty of videos online of the IDF killing civilians, including today an old deaf man was killed by a soldier, and congratulated by his squad [11].

- Hamas has apologized for killing civilians; Israel has justified killing and claims it can and will continue to do so, including by denying aid (a war crime)

- Israel denies aid to civilians, directly causing a famine; Hamas does not starve civilians

- Hamas has by all accounts treated its detainees well; Israel tortures and rapes and sexually abuses its detainees [1]

- Israel is deliberately targeting civilians and civilian infrastructure (it claims Hamas is hiding there, which does not excuse it and this is a war crime)

- Hamas has been alleged to have committed a total of 3 acts of sexual violence (this is heavily disputed, see [2]). However the IDF has committed dozens of acts of torture [9] and rape [1] (this is only counting since Oct 7, but Israel has been killing, torturing and committing sexual violence against Palestinians since 1948, eg [12] )

- Hamas took 250 detainees, Israel had over 1000 before Oct 7 [10] and it increased to over 2000 since Oct 7 [3]. After releasing detainees as part of the short ceasefire, Israel recaptured some of the same people. An Israeli sniper shot a child who celebrated the return of a family member.

- There are multiple credible reports of execution of civilians by the IDF outside of combat situations (that is, they came into a place, expelled the women and children, and executed all the men and older boys) [6] [7]

- Israel has been killing thousands of Palestinians for years, including thousands in Gaza in 2021 and 2014, and of course 15,000 killed and 750,000 displaced in the massacres during the original invasion of Palestine by the settlers who created Israel. [8]

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/feb/22/claims-of-isra...

[2] https://www.oct7factcheck.com/sexual-violence

[3] https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2023/11/israel-opt-ho...

[4] https://isitgenocide.com/)

[5] https://apnews.com/article/biden-israel-hamas-oct-7-44c4229d...

[6] https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/1/20/palestinians-accuse...

[7] https://www.aljazeera.com/program/newsfeed/2024/1/18/video-s...

[8] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nakba

[9] https://euromedmonitor.org/en/article/6153/

[10] https://www.btselem.org/administrative_detention/statistics

[11] https://twitter.com/muhammadshehad2/status/17664047969095886...

[12] https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2018/4/10/anger-erupts-over-v...