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To some extent. Most notably, we eventually managed to cut off the main source of their funding (American, unfortunately) which I think slowed them down considerably. The thing is, Israel was doing quite well at cutting off Hamas' backing before Oct 7. In fact, if I remember correctly, most of Israel's neighbours had made big steps toward official relations with them, mostly with the intent of opposing Iran. One of the most plausible reasons for Oct 7 was that Hamas needed to split the neighbouring muslim nations off Israel by provoking bloodshed.
That sounds like yes, especially since in practice anything short of Xinjiang levels of overwatch don't seem to work. I'm pretty nativist and I might abide by that if I had to but I wouldn't call it 'moral'.
This seems kind of like:
It's pragmatic, yes, but it seems a weird way to allocate sympathy. Certainly the West would probably be in much better shape now if we'd exterminated all our slaves and colonial subjects rather than merely repress them for a couple of centuries, but again I can't call that moral. Likewise, Israel did essentially steal much of the land and is therefore not starting with a firm moral foundation; you have the settlers, you have clear instances of extremely poor behaviour against both Muslims and Christians, and now you have them massacring Gazans. Two years ago I would have told you I was firmly in the Israeli camp! But frankly I can't condone what's being done, and I get increasingly creeped out as the pro-Israeli contigent (not pointing at you specifically) talk about how necessary all of this is and even sometimes say cheerfully that exterminating the Gazans man woman and child would be best for everyone.
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