I guess all I can say is I hope it is short lived. I try, as best I can, to keep some perspective. I think we have had a plague of some truly rotten bastards coming to power. However, some of these guys flame out fairly quickly in political terms. Trump was one term, it was disastrous, and every other election he has been involved with since has gone horribly for Republicans and he seems to be running them into the ground for 2024. 

This war between the Palestinians and Israelis is going to cause a lot of bloodshed. The saddest statistic I have heard from it so far is that 50% of the population in Gaza is under 18, so about half of the Palestinians that are being killed are children. That's truly a horror. This is the only world these children know. It's a hellish situation I don't even think it is understandable to many in the western world. 

The media is now really outstanding at revving us up for a war and rapidly painting good guys and bad guys, leaving absolutely no room for nuance or real understanding of these situations. So, basically people just pile onto one of the bandwagons and off we go. 

Saying "Let's try not to slaughter innocent civilians." should not equate to "You are a terrorist sympathizer." but the way these conflicts are sold to us, people I think just want the simplified "Who do I root for?" question answered. Hamas is a terrorist organization, they attacked and slaughtered innocent people, so the simple refrain is "Israel must be allowed to defend herself." 

With Russia and Hamas, they attacked and so, easy to just say they are the bad guys. It's an easy sell but really what we want to know is, how do we stop or prevent these wars. 

So, in this conflict, the answer that Israel is promoting is, kill everybody involved with Hamas. Not sure that works as a solution because as you pointed out, slaughtering a bunch of people, using brutal methods, will lead to perpetuating the idea that terrorism is needed to fight the other side. So, you just make more terrorists doing that. I think the thing you have to kill is the idea that Hamas brings anything good to the table. Attacking and killing Israeli civilians is not going to win you anything except the further destruction of the Gaza Strip. It's a bad way to go. Clear to those of us on the outside but obviously, Hamas did not see that.

I don't think there is an easy solution here and I think the pressure on Israel not to overdo their response will be done behind closed doors and through media pressure. It is a tightrope to walk and politically, the US has to support their ally Israel, there are commitments between the countries that handcuff them together. So, the response of "We stand with Israel." should not be any surprise because there is no way in hell they can say anything that would come across as supportive or going easy on Hamas. The Palestinians sadly are caught in the middle and have but two ways out...death and the intervention of a merciful god and we both know which is more likely.