Like they agree with me in terms of being “team Palestine”, and understands my analogies of the initial Hamas attack being like if slaves in the 1800s had tried to stage an uprising etc but still “you can’t tell me terrorism is good because it’s never good”, even when I explain to them how non-violent protest actually working (like when schools taught us about MLK JR/civil rights etc) is propaganda…fun times.
International issues and legitimate uses of violence are the final bosses of liberalism. It’s very easy to get frustrated at someone who’s 90% of the way there, because they seemingly will never get there, but that’s forgetting how far they’ve come already and how long it took many of us to take those last few steps.
It sounds like you two might want to pick apart what “terrorism” really is. The modern history of Afghanistan is basically a textbook on this. You can also look at
moments like white mass shooters with explicit political motivations not being labeled “terrorists,” and what that says about how the word is more used as a political tool than an objective label for violence that is inherently bad.