I feel a little bit like you OP and I feel quite conflicted.
When I have been in support of Palestine, I have separated in the my mind : the ordinary Palestinian people vs Hamas.
I have never been in support of Hamas for one second, of course! And it’s frustrating that people who speak in defence of Palestinians are automatically labelled Hamas supporters or people who hate Jews.
I did assume though that the majority of Palestines were not Hamas supporters and were as appalled by October 7th as I was, how can anyone possibly support that?
I knew that Hamas had been voted in, but I assumed that the elections were rigged/that people were forced to vote for Hamas and did so out of fear (in a similar way that the Taliban forced Afghans to vote for them). Look at the way that Hamas behave and it’s very clear that they couldn’t care less about the people of Gaza. They were happy for them all to die, women and children. It didn’t make sense to me that anyone would vote for them by choice.
I had followed a journalist from Gaza from the beginning of the most recent conflict and I had a lot of respect for him. One things that I felt a little uneasy about was the description all people killed as “martyrs” but then I thought that it is just a difference in language.
Recently, when the hostages were released, I went to his Instagram page to see if he had covered that, and if that was something celebrated. He hadn’t.
But there was a lot about the ceasefire agreement in the stories, that seemed to be described as victory. There were hundreds of comments on there from followers of his who DO clearly support Hamas and their aims, and no comeback from him against that.
I started to wonder if this man does support Hamas and if he did actually celebrate October 7th… I unfollowed him and some other accounts and I felt a little uneasy that I had seen him and his account in the way I did. I don’t believe for a second that the footage is fake though, there is no need for fake propaganda when the reality is so horrific.
When I saw the first hostage releases on tv, I was really shocked by the amount of Palestinians present, who weren’t Hamas, who were crowding and jeering. Some of those are the “ordinary people” who I have been in support of, but I didn’t know that they had such evil views and beliefs and behaviours.
I don’t know what the answers are but I know that there are innocent children in Gaza - who could of course grow up to support Hamas (and to be honest that seems extremely likely based on the horrendous situation they are growing up in at the hands of the IDF) - but they don’t have a choice though, regardless of parents beliefs or influence. They need to be protected but they aren’t being protected and Israel is behaving in an evil way when they drop bombs and make to effort to avoid civilian casualties.