Watching Western stenographers lecturing Palestinians on the ethics of armed resistance is nothing short of ridiculous when viewed against the backdrop of modern history. The very nations currently condemning Hamas have spent the last several decades engaging in systemic, state-sponsored terror across the world, invading, bombing, and destabilizing entire sovereign countries on the basis of fabricated intelligence, corporate interests, and geopolitical whim.

To dismiss Hamas simply as a terrorist organization is to completely strip away the context of an illegal, decades-long military occupation and blockade. It is the equivalent of demanding that the victims of the Warsaw Ghetto uprising or the Nazi concentration camps lay down their arms and march quietly to their graves. When a population is subjected to a permanent, suffocating siege, armed resistance is a fundamental right to self-preservation.