I read your article with interest and had many thoughts, far too many that would fit into a comment. So, I turned my response into a full article here:

https://medium.com/@pontifico/apologists-and-abolitionists-a74b847cce0a

The main points is that you're playing a childish rhetorical game by insinuating that people like me 'defend' terrorists or 9/11. You know full well what we mean, but are simply attempting to deflect criticisms of Israel as 'support' for terrorism. At no point have I ever made any statement to the effect that I defend the terrorists or their actions.

However, I can understand how terrorism arises. Understanding something is not the same as supporting it.

If two drunk guys are brawling in the street, and one hits the other. The other might respond in kind with violence, let's say by smashing a bottle over his opponent's head. Do I 'support' or 'defend' smashing bottles over people's heads? No.... but witnessing the brawl, I can understand how and why it happened, and what led up to that man's decision to react the way he did.

Ultimately, power dynamics in politics and conflicts absolutely do matter, and you can't just dismiss away criticisms you don't like by calling it 'woke' or 'new leftist' or whatever.

The ideas you put forth in your article are essentially the same ones used to defend slavery in the United States: That because some slaves got violent and killed some children, slavery was justified. It's a propaganda tactic that has been used to defend oppression, slavery and war for ages.

It's also dishonest to view the entirety of Israeli society as entirely 'righteous' that has some bad elements (i.e. Likud), but Palestinian society as solely Hamas.

You're framing this issue as Israel vs. Hamas in order to justify ongoing systemic oppression of the Palestinian people (i.e. apartheid, occupation, checkpoints, denial of rights, denying them a right to a state, etc.)

This is exactly what slavery apologists did (and still do) in the US: They attempted to frame the issue as US vs. violent Blacks in order to justify slavery. In reality, the REAL issue wasn't violent Blacks, but the institution of slavery itself that had to go.

Ultimately, I think your goal - whether intentional or not - is to dehumanize Palestinians (as slave apologists did to Blacks) to justify their ongoing oppression, slaughter and denial of basic rights at the hands of their Israeli occupiers.

You can call an anti-slavery abolitionist 'woke' as much as you'd like, but their position is still correct, and history has proved that, regardless of how many white people slaves killed.