"I’m not ready to accept Norman’s theory that on Oct 7, Palestinians killed as many Israelis as they could in order to destroy those who have made them suffer so much for so long..."

I was puzzled by him on that. It's always been my understanding that this was essentially a hostage raid: that those taken were to be exchanged for those hostages Israel held in so-called "Administrative detention. "
Supporting this it's pretty obvious that the majority of the dead were already being transported in cars when the Israeli army helicopters were given orders to pound every vehicle in sight with cannon and "hellfire" missi!es...which they did before returning to base to re-arm and do it all again.

"Palestinian civilians were able to stream through the border and some of them might have gone crazy with hatred..."

I agree. It seemed to me that the unfortunate parading of the body of Shani Louk: the tattoo artist killed at some point in the outbreak, to be displayed in the back of a pick up truck was part of such irregular individual action. We do not know if the perpetrators had themselves suffered From Israeli "mowing the lawn" mass murders in previous years, but it was an own goal of huge magnitude.
- From the point when that went viral the very idea that there could be a hostage deal was gone.