Former US President Barack Obama has said that what Palestinians are going through during Israel's ongoing ground incursion in Gaza is "unbearable".

Speaking on Saturday in a podcast called Pod Save America, Obama also termed Hamas's October 7 attacks on Israeli communities as "horrific", and criticised social media narratives about the conflict, insisting that "nobody's hands are clean".

"If there's any chance of us being able to act, constructively, to do something, it will require an admission of complexity and maintaining what on the surface may seem contradictory ideas … that what Hamas did was horrific -- and there's no justification for it -- and what is also true is that the occupation and what's happening to Palestinians is unbearable," Obama said in the interview.

Obama: "What Hamas did was horrific, and there is no justification for it. And what is also true is that the occupation, and what's happening to Palestinians, is unbearable…

"You have to admit that all of us are complicit to some degree." pic.twitter.com/FtAGFAexz1

— Yonah Lieberman (@YonahLieberman) November 4, 2023

"And what is also true is that there is a history of the Jewish people that may be dismissed unless your grandparents or your great-parents or your uncle or your aunt tell you stories about the madness of anti-Semitism," Obama said, adding it was also true those being killed in Gaza included Palestinians who had "nothing to do with what Hamas did".

On the social media narratives about the ongoing Israel-Hamas war, he said, "You can pretend to speak the truth, you can speak one side of the truth, and in some cases you can try to maintain your moral innocence but that won't solve the problem," the former US leader said.

"And so, if you want to solve the problem, you have to take in the whole truth and you have to admit that nobody's hands are clean, that all of us are complicit to some degree."