Yes... You had plenty of people saying "this is going to be your own version of Afghanistan/Iraq if you decide to do what you want to do..."
Israel wanted revenge, not a solution. Their strategy has guaranteed that there will be another cycle of violence as the kids that grew up seeing their parents blown up in airstrikes are understandably going to be ripe for recruiting into whatever organization steps into power in place of Hamas.
It's simply their strategy, really. Turning Palestinians desperate so they turn to violence ("terrorism"), in order to justify turning their territory into even more of a shit hole, so Palestinians who can't take it anymore will emigrate, until the "problem" is gone.
I find such sentiment flabbergasting. Do you claim that Germany and Japan continued cycles of violence because the Allies firebombed Dresden and nuked Hiroshima? We learned after the two world wars that peace is possible if and only if there is hope, reconstruction, and a magnanimous victor. Hold Israel and the UN accountable to that. “Pacifists” preach the myth that resistance is a futile tragedy. But unfortunately violence is that can only be stopped by violence.
This worldview also shows a lack of understanding of conflicts: why the “proportional response” assumption is nonsensical. Wars are extensions of political means, and the political objective is to remove Hamas as a viable regime or fighting force. However as much violence to achieve this will be expended: possibly no more if one side surrenders today. To think the cost will be or an eye for an eye is beyond naive. To think it should be is retributive.
Unfortunately wars tear down all humanitie’s values and no side is innocent. Yet justice is a stochastic process, such that each person thinks at the back of their head and judges should the decision must fall, whose cause they would get behind.
You compare Gaza, half of the population being children, with Nazi Germany and talk about learning from history? While the IDF is blowing up courts and universities and people talk on Israeli TV about making Gaza "unlivable"?
The Nazis talked about the people they murdered exactly the same way. Himmler and his stuff about the great sacrifice the SS made for the benefit of humanity, all that... they excused murdering children with "international bankers", the same way people excuse genocide in Gaza with Hamas. "No side is innocent, it's all so very complex". Nothing changed.
Israel wanted revenge, not a solution. Their strategy has guaranteed that there will be another cycle of violence as the kids that grew up seeing their parents blown up in airstrikes are understandably going to be ripe for recruiting into whatever organization steps into power in place of Hamas.