For most of the pro-Israeli posters on this site, this conflict is existential not ideological

[fly2man]

8. No existential threat on either side

Complete nonsense. 1,200 dead Israelis is not an existential threat. That is 1 out of 5,000 Israelis. Now if Iran gets a nuclear bomb, that will be existential because that can kill 1 million.

The argument is really silly because 15,000 Palestinians have died. So if you go by numbers, there is more of an existential threat to the Palestinians. But in fact only about 1 out of 500 Palestinians died, so it is not even an existential threat to the Palestinians.

Also don't be fooled by the numbers. Some people have made the argument "if only 1,200 Israelis died, then obviously it was illegal to kill 15,000 Palestinians." International law rejects that argument. The 15,000 killed is proportionate because the issue is not how many Israelis already died, but rather how many might die without a heavy handed Israeli reaction. That is the principle of proportionality that is International law.