Imagine being born next to Gaza for an hour before Hamas guns put an end to your brief life (not by accident, but on purpose, using the most cruel means available and to put an end to the possibility of lasting peace that was closer than in three decades).

how do you accidentally bomb a refugee camp?

twice?

you accidentally kill civilians trying to hit a military target

You may even kill civilians on purpose to hit a military target, if on balance the military objective justifies the civilian loss of life.

Tragic but true.

I hate war.

The fact that there were military installations below the "refugee camp" (which actually is a legit, permanent city, not a tent city as the name suggests) places the war crime on Hamas - it is forbidden under international law to place military targets near civilian installations, and yet Hamas keeps doing this all over again and then goes crying about war crimes.

> and then goes crying about war crimes

So your strategy is just to wipe the entire place? Interesting, do you have a court system in your country or do you follow similar strategy in internal affairs?

The legitimate and legal (under international law and the articles of war) way is to weigh the military objective against the civilian damage and casualties and decide if this is still a viable target. E.g. it might be legitimate to flatten a house with one civilian and a hundred soldiers in it. It would be grossly out of proportion to kill a hundred civilians just to kill one soldier. Everything between those extremes will be decided by maybe a war crimes tribunal, public international opinion, the conscience of the warfaring parties, circumstances, propaganda, etc.

And there is no possible comparison between the usual peace-time internal court system and international law and wartime law. Those work in completely different ways. International law and articles of war are basically only applicable if some party makes them applicable by force. E.g. if the victor or a sufficiently mighty third party creates a war-crimes tribunal. In all other cases, those are mere "guidelines".

I can't speak for everyone, but in my country the military tries not to create legitimate military targets in the middle of our cities, so it's not really something we've had to deal with.

Gaza strip is 41 km x ~9 km. How big is your city?

that's a big size actually. and let's not pretend they're doing due to lack of space. you don't put your HQ under the biggest hospital due to lack of space. you don't stash your rockets under a school due to lack of space. they know exactly what they're doing and civilian casualities is just another weapon in this conflict. for one side at least.

Thats tiny if you also have to farm land for food. Which they do, they can't just build over all of it.

No doubt Hamas uses human shields, but there are also accounts going back decades of IDF targetting aid workers, journalists and civilians On Purpose.

But we've already established we're talking about underground facilities. They're largely underground in the city as well. I don't see what the need to farm has to do with anything.

As we speak Israeli warplanes have just targeted a convoy of ambulances carrying patients too critical for Gaza's hospitals to cope with and who were on their way to the Egyptian border for treatment abroad. The convoy's departure time was announced to the IDF and the world but the IDF added them to the death toll regardless.

Do you really think so?

If you were to carpet bomb, lets say, all the car factories in Detroit, which is a perfect dual-use target, how much of the city would be left?

The more appropriate question would be, imagine a group of American terorists staged a 9/11-equivalent in China. Imagine 4000 people died and that militarily China has an upper hand.

Would carpet bombing Detroit be the right thing to do in responce?

Do these terrorists also happen to be the elected American government (like Hamas is in Gaza)?

Is there a history of America bombing China (like Hamas is doing in Israel)?

Is the US government in fact firing rockets at China at the very moment when China retaliates with the bombing?

Are the Chinese bombs in your scenario actually carpet bombing or are they bombs or missiles directed at specific military targets that America happens to build below hospitals?

> also happen to be the elected American government (like Hamas is in Gaza)?

> military targets that.. happens to [be] below hospitals?

It is tragic that folks in the Anglosphere do not realise how this sounds to someone from a neutral country, say India.

Surely a rational person cannot believe that hamas uses babies as human shields, but at election time they are virtuous and organise free and fair elections?

Unless you also believe that Russian referendum conducted in Crimea, at gunpoint point, was free and fair?

When Russian military would bomb a school, they would also do a press release about a bunker under than school. I think this is copyright infringement

You misunderstood what I‘m trying to express.

I am not defending Hamas or saying the government is legitimate. Quite the opposite. I am attacking the analogy with China. I wanted to emphasize that China attacking a US city due to the actions of some American terrorist citizens is a flawed analogy because the terror that is coming from Gaza is not just some citizens but it‘s state sponsored, by the Gaza government and of course also by Iran.

> So your strategy is just to wipe the entire place?

No one but some fringe elements of the Israeli far-right are calling for flattening the Gaza Strip ffs.

What I'm calling for is for a joint Western occupation of Palestine, the sooner the better. Enforce laws, prevent the rebuild of tunnels and Qassam rocket factories, and get rid of an "education" system that teaches Palestine children from an early age that Jews are to be exterminated.

> A western occupation of Palestine

Like the 28-year British Mandate which gave birth to the "state" of Israel as an extension of British colonialism led by terrorist thugs such as Moshe Dayan and David Ben Gurion whose avowed intent was to expel all Palestinians? That turned-out well, didn't it?

I agree, British colonialism and their incompetence in dismantling their empire was and is responsible for a lot of issues in a lot of their former colonies - but the idea of a nation of Israel primarily came to be as a direct learning of 1933-1945.

why are those people called refugees 3 generations later and their proper neighbourhood a refugee camp? that's also an issue... the fact that they're use just in a political game by either Arab countries or their own leadership.

We are told that the instructions for executing 10/7 were quite specific. Has a convincing reason been given for why on earth anyone, whatever their final objective, would want to proceed in that way? And what did they think the result would be? Appalling civilian atrocities abound in history (Dresden & Hiroshima to pick from an immensely long list) but the morality of these actions aside, they had a definite purpose. Whence the purpose in 10/7? Are we seeing the desired result now?

The story below was on purpose too, just like hundreds more you can find online. And it's been going on for decades. What point is there in trying to one-up OP? And your usage of "by accident" in this context is loathsome, there is nothing accidental about it.

>Israeli settlers in Palestine used petrol to set fire to Palestinian homes in the village of Duma on Friday, burning to death 18-month Ali Dawabsheh and critically wounding and maiming four members of his family.

https://www.middleeasteye.net/opinion/brand-israel-pretends-...

Nobody is defending the settlers. Nobody.

The settlers are a great injustice. That being said, part of the truth is acknowledging that Israel removed their settlers from Gaza and the situation became worse. There is, unfortunately, no reason to believe that any other concessions will make a difference either.

The incident you mentioned is in the West Bank of all places. It is almost like arguing for Pakistan due to an incident in Bangladesh.

Israel may well have toppled Bibi and his far-right policies but Hamas had different plans.

Well, I can see the similarities with the author's post. His granddad born in Nazi Germany and your hypothetical baby being born in Nazi Gaza.

Babies are not to be blame, their leaders are. Sad.

I'm joking of course, there are no bomb shelters in Gaza. Their leaders preferred digging tunnels for self preservation and left the population to be guarded by the UN. Imagine that, the original Nazis were better.

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yg4VqiW0dyo&t=9s

imagine living under a terrorist organization that spent your bomb shelter money on antagonizing its militant neighbor

Are you trying to justify killing babies and wiping entire families, because their leaders attacked? WTF

That's more than barbaric

No, he’s justifying killing the monsters who go out to murder and wipe out families, then put other families deliberately in the line of fire to try and get the opportunity to do it over again

So you just kill the entire neighborhood? Ok And after you killed thousands of kids and families because you're targeting the terrorists, what's the status right now? Did you wipe the terrorists? What is the "good" outcome?

This results of this barbaric strategy don't look good from any angle. Is there a problem with the intelligence? It's been a month I think

You do your best to kill as few people outside the terrorists as possible, accepting that because any military is not all-powerful and the terrorists are incentivized to and do put civilians in the line of fire, you will not get it 100% right and civilians will be killed unintentionally.

It's the least bad of a set of terrible options.

Not even that, he's just presenting the other side of the scenario, in a probably honest attempt to balance the perspective so one-sidedly presented by the flamewar, pre-digested parent comment.

and what is your solution? stand back and wait for it to happen again?

No, punish the criminals only?

a thought exercise for you – two blood thirsty maniacs sit in a house, in which, possibly, several people reside. You have warned the people in this house, yesterday, that maybe the terrorists will come to use their house as a base and suggested a way out. In the hands of the maniacs is also a machine gun and they are shooting at a school full of other kids and successfully kill them one by one. Your only weapon is an RPG – should you blow up the terrorists?

We can already see the outcome on the ground, the response have led to more casualties than the maniacs ever did, and still failed at eradicating them.

Now the question, what would you do in this situation? When you find you've killed and caused more damage than the criminals. And worse, the criminals are still there.

If I was a police chief in that position, and a decent human being, I'd resign for failing to do my job and hand myself for prosecution for killing all these families for nothing.