[vasilipupkin]

your point that you raised seems irrelevant to the specific question at hand.

"Regarding the "governing" status of Hamas, I would observe that the overwhelming majority of Gazans are too young to have ever voted, and that Hamas seized and maintains power coercively, so we should be careful attributing ideas like rightful governing status to Hamas"

I agree, but I did not attribute "rightful" status to Hamas. It's just a factual observation that Hamas had de-facto governing control of the Gaza strip. Elections are not a pre-condition to control

Given that it had control of the Gaza strip, Hamas, as the controlling authority, has responsibility for civilians under its control, not Israel, at least legally

if you want to argue that regardless of legal responsibilites, Israel is still responsible for those civilians, despite Hamas control, that's a separate line of reasoning that leads to its own implications

[tptacek]

At that point you're making a very banal point about the moral status of Hamas. But Hamas has no moral status, so metering it in ever finer units isn't moving any conversation forward. We agree: Hamas is very bad.

[vasilipupkin]

well, it's not as banal of a point as you think because plenty of players treat Hamas as a legitimate organization, including Turkey and others. Palestinian politicians from the West Bank are on record, for example, that future governments should and will include Hamas. Once you agree it's very bad, there are further implications that follow from this assessment and then we arrive at where we are now.

[tptacek]

Anybody who treats Hamas as a legitimate organization has disqualified themselves from the public debate. That is a values statement I am unafraid to make.