Consider Daniel Levy, a former Israeli peace negotiator and top adviser to former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak, who told the BBC, “If anyone told me that what the militants did on the weekend was a legitimate response to years and years of occupation. I would say: ‘No, you’re wrong-headed. You’ve lost sight of humanity and reality.’ And if anyone tells me that what Israel is doing in Gaza today is a legitimate response to what happened on the weekend, it’s exactly the same.”

Israeli human rights lawyer Michael Sfard, an expert on the rules of war, observed Wednesday that “Hamas committed abominable war crimes for which there can be no forgiveness. But the laws of war weren’t meant only for situations in which our blood is cool, or when there is no justified anger or understandable desire for revenge.” The lawyer explained:

It’s not easy for Israelis to think about Gazans’ rights in a week when Hamas committed crimes that are still impossible to digest and our whole society is mourning and crying. But Gaza’s catastrophe won’t wait for the end of our seven-day shivah.

Consequently, this needs to be said: Israel has held millions of people under a brutal blockade for more than 15 years with the support of the entire Western world. That is inhumane and inconceivable, and every solution to this bloody conflict ultimately includes respecting the rights of all people, both in Gaza and Sderot, to live with security and human dignity. And that begins with respecting the most basic rules as set down in the international laws of war, which are designed to reduce the harm to civilians.

Widely known commentators offered candid criticism of Israeli leaders and Western officials who back them without questions or conditions.

In an article headlined “Arriving Again at the Cycle of Vengeance,” Amira Hass, who for more than three decades has reported from the West Bank and Gaza, reflected on Saturday’s murders and kidnappings of hundreds of Israeli citizens by Hamas and the Israeli government’s decision to launch bombing attacks that have already killed hundreds of Palestinians.

“The automatic Israeli conclusion, as on previous occasions when its normalcy was shattered a bit, is that if death and destruction haven’t achieved their goal until now, more aerial killings of Palestinians and more destruction and vengeance are the answer. That’s the conclusion of both the government and the army, but also of many Israelis,” wrote Hass. “And it’s also apparently the conclusion reached by Western governments, which raced to voice support for Israel while ignoring Israel’s structural violence and cruelty, and the context of the Palestinian people’s ongoing dispossession from their land.”

A child of Jewish Holocaust survivors who has been honored with the International Press Institute’s “World Press Freedom Hero” award and a Reporters Without Borders Prize for Press Freedom, Hass observed after the Hamas attacks:

In a few days Israelis went through what Palestinians have experienced as a matter of routine for decades, and are still experiencing—military incursions, death, cruelty, slain children, bodies piled up in the road, siege, fear, anxiety over loved ones, captivity, being targets of vengeance, indiscriminate lethal fire at both those involved in the fighting (soldiers) and the uninvolved (civilians), a position of inferiority, destruction of buildings, ruined holidays or celebrations, weakness and helplessness in the face of all-powerful armed men, and searing humiliation.

Therefore, this must be said once again—we told you so. Ongoing oppression and injustice explode at unexpected times and places. Bloodshed knows no borders.

Hass is one of the most prominent journalists in the Middle East. She writes for Haaretz, the 105-year-old Tel Aviv–based daily newspaper that the Center for Research Libraries says is “considered the most influential and respected [Israeli paper] for both its news coverage and its commentary.” Not everyone in Israel shares that view. Haaretz is frequently criticized by Israeli political leaders—and plenty of citizens—who accuse it of being too sympathetic to the Palestinian cause. And there are many popular publications with different views. Yet Haaretz’s reporting is highly regarded; indeed, some of the most harrowing accounts of Saturday’s bloodshed and violence were written by Haaretz journalists—including a piece by Amir Tibon, a resident of a kibbutz that was attacked by Hamas who recounted how he and his family spent “hours in the bomb shelter with armed terrorists on the other side of the wall” before finally being rescued by his father, a retired military commander.

Widely read and referenced, Haaretz is very much a part of the debate in Israel.

Often bluntly so. Hours after the October 7 attack, the newspaper’s editorial declared, “The disaster that befell Israel on the holiday of Simchat Torah is the clear responsibility of one person: Benjamin Netanyahu. The prime minister, who has prided himself on his vast political experience and irreplaceable wisdom in security matters, completely failed to identify the dangers he was consciously leading Israel into when establishing a government of annexation and dispossession, when appointing [extreme right-wingers] to key positions, while embracing a foreign policy that openly ignored the existence and rights of Palestinians.”

Plenty of Israeli readers disagreed with the editorial, just as plenty of Americans disagree with calls for de-escalation from Omar and Tlaib, the only two Muslim women currently serving in Congress.

But to dismiss the views of Omar, Tlaib, and other dissenting voices in Congress by saying, “There are not two sides here…” is to reject the reality that there are many sides to the debate in Israel, in Palestine, and in the United States. Labeling arguments that recognize the humanity of everyone involved, and that propose strategies for breaking cycles of violence, as sickening and “repugnant” diminishes reasoned debate at a point when it is more necessary than ever.