Argument · heard from pro-Palestinian voices
“What would you do if you were oppressed for 75 years? October 7 didn't come from nowhere.”
Two million people were locked in Gaza under blockade after decades of occupation, expulsion and bombing. Any people treated like that would eventually break out. You can't condemn October 7 without first condemning what caused it, and anyone who asks 'but do you condemn Hamas?' is avoiding the real question.
Common pro-Palestinian argument — e.g. Coalition of Harvard student organisations
Where it's been said
“It is important to also recognize the attacks by Hamas did not happen in a vacuum. The Palestinian people have been subjected to 56 years of suffocating occupation.”
“We, the undersigned student organizations, hold the Israeli regime entirely responsible for all unfolding violence.”
Traps in play:◆ Where does the story start?◆ The strict enemy frame
Why people find it convincing
- The context is real: the 1948 expulsions, military rule in the West Bank since 1967, the blockade of Gaza since 2007, and repeated wars with heavy civilian losses.
- UN Secretary-General Guterres told the Security Council on 24 October 2023 that the attacks 'did not happen in a vacuum' and that Palestinians had been 'subjected to 56 years of suffocating occupation'.
- History has many uprisings by the oppressed that we now admire, and armed resistance to occupation has a place in international debate.
- Demands to 'condemn Hamas first' are often used to shut down any discussion of Palestinian suffering.
What's true
October 7 has a context, and naming it is not the same as justifying it.
Occupation, blockade and past wars are real, and understanding why people turn to violence is necessary for stopping it. Guterres said the same, and the next day added that 'the grievances of the Palestinian people cannot justify the appalling attacks by Hamas' (UN News, 25 October 2023). Explaining isn't excusing, and the question 'what drives people to this?' deserves an answer.
primary documentUN News, 'UN chief hits back at "false" claim he justified Hamas terror attacks' (2023) ✓
24–25 October 2023: the 'vacuum' remarks and the clarification that grievances 'cannot justify the appalling attacks by Hamas'.
What's left out
The question is only ever asked for one side, and it explains the anger but not the targets.
'How would you feel?' is never asked about the Israelis attacked that day: festival-goers, kibbutz families who were often peace activists, and the 251 people taken hostage. Grievance may explain rage; it doesn't explain choosing to kill children in their homes, rape, burn houses with families inside and film it. Most oppressed people in history, and most Palestinians under the same occupation, have never done anything like it. Hamas's own charter, leaders and planning documents present the attack as part of a religious and national war against Israel's existence, not a desperate breakout. And context works both ways: Israel's war in Gaza also 'didn't happen in a vacuum', which the argument rarely allows.
Where it leads if pressed
'understandable' becomes 'justified', and 'justified' becomes 'resistance by any means'.
If oppression explains October 7, the next step is often that it justifies it, and then that civilians were legitimate targets because they were 'settlers'. That is the step from context to permission, and it removes any limit on what 'resistance' may do. It also locks the conflict: the same logic lets the other side justify anything in Gaza by pointing at October 7. The narrower claim holds without the slide: the occupation and the blockade must end, and nothing about them makes the murder of civilians acceptable, on either side.
Traps here:◆ The strict enemy frame◆ Where does the story start?
The usual reply — and its own traps
Arguments travel in pairs. Here is what the other side typically answers. Check whether both lean on the same trick.
heard from pro-Israel voices“Hamas uses Gaza's civilians as human shields, so it is responsible for their deaths.”