Two weeks ago marked 600 days since the war in Gaza began. Six hundred days and nearly 100,000 casualties later, many have woken up to the clear immorality of Israel’s assault on Gaza. However, there are still many Americans who cling to a few talking points that allow them to justify the brutality — talking points which, over 600 days in, seem just as tired and trite as the war itself.

One of the most stunning of these claims is that raising questions about Israel’s killing of civilians is “antisemitic.” In fact, many Jews, having been through centuries of persecution and a holocaust, view the actions of the Israeli government and say “not in our name.”

If it were used in any other context, the thinking behind this claim would probably come off as absurd. Consider, for example, the genocide of Uyghur Muslims in China: no one who spoke out in opposition to this killing, to my knowledge, has even been labeled “anti-Chinese.” It just doesn’t make any sense: we all understand, at least in principle, that it is possible to condemn the actions of some members of a group without attacking the group in totality.

Yet despite this understanding, many Americans, including a columnist for the Gazette, continue to distract from the true nature of the war by suggesting that if you are opposed to the killing of Palestinians, then not only are you anti-Israel, but you are blatantly antisemitic. This idea could not be further from the truth.

Not only are myths like these untrue, but they also have dangerous implications. Demonizing all those who criticize Israel moves us further away from reaching a collective condemnation of what are clearly acts of evil being committed in Gaza–and also in the West Bank, where IDF soldiers have shot innocent civilians on the streets of Jenin, Jerusalem, and other cities.

At this point in the war, it is almost as futile to claim that the destruction of Gaza and an ethnic cleansing aren’t the ultimate goals of the current regime. If Israel’s actions — indiscriminate bombing and the recent shooting of starving civilians seeking aid — aren’t enough evidence, then just take it from Israeli officials themselves.

Members of Prime Minister Benjamin’s Netanyahu’s own cabinet, including national security minister Itamar Ben-Gvir and finance minister Bezalel Smotrich, have explicitly stated that eliminating the Palestinian state is their goal, and make no mistake about it: Netanyahu would espouse the same exact beliefs if he didn’t need to continue soliciting aid from the U.S. and other Israeli allies.

These were Ben-Gvir’s exact words during a debate about IDF “open fire rules” back in February of 2024: “We cannot have women and children getting close to the border,” Ben-Gvir said. “Anyone who gets near must get a bullet [in the head].”

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In a similar fashion, in 2024, Smotrich said the quiet part out loud as it relates to intentionally withholding aid to Gazan civilians: ”Nobody will let us cause two million civilians to die of hunger, even though it might be justified and moral,” Smotrich said.

When it comes to politics–especially foreign conflicts–we can almost always benefit from considering all sides and all the nuances of the situation. There are few conflicts that require moral absolutes, and there is almost always some validity in the stances of both sides.

But there are also actions that are so undeniably evil that no amount of context or nuance will justify them. Is calling for Gazan refugees to be shot in the head not a perfect illustration of this reality? However reprehensible the actions of Hamas may be, would it make the starving of two million civilians “justified and moral” as members of Netanyahu’s cabinet suggest? Again, the condemnation of Hamas and calling for an end to the intentional slaughter of civilians are not mutually exclusive–we have a moral imperative to call out both.

In the past week, the UK has joined Canada, Australia, New Zealand and a number of other countries in sanctioning both Ben-Gvir and Smotrich for comments like the ones mentioned above, which British Foreign Secretary David Lammy described as “monstrous.” These sanctions suggest that the world is waking up to the dishonesty and corruption within the current Israeli regime.

However, here in the U.S., those trite claims keep us from indicting evil wherever it exists.We are too stuck in all-or-none thinking to understand that to call for an end to the “monstrous” killing, as Lammy put it, does not mean that we hate Israel–just as condemning Hamas does not equate to hating all Palestinians. At a certain point, evil is simply evil, regardless of the side from which it originates. More than 600 days into this tragic war, we must make that proclamation.

Olin Rose-Bardawil of Florence is a recent graduate of the Williston Northampton School where he was editor in chief of the school’s newspaper, The Willistonian. He will be attending Tufts University to study political science in the fall.