Scale is the most important factor when talking about the harm done. A dead person is dead, regardless of if it was murder or manslaughter.

Criminal punishments are more about the social consequences than about the crime itself. If someone gets X years in prison for crime A and another person gets 2X years for crime B, it doesn't mean that crime B was twice as bad. It only means that after taking a large number of factors into account, it made sense to give twice as long sentence for crime B.

Intent matters, and disregarding it disables your ability to determine right from wrong. If someone attacks you and you kill them by acting in self defense, you absolutely would hope that the people judging you for your actions would consider your intent. You would probably feel you don't deserve to spend a moment in handcuffs, let alone night in jail, let alone go through a criminal trial, let alone be sentenced, even if it is negligible in comparison to a murderer.

Right and wrong are kind of irrelevant in international politics. When there are no enforceable laws, no shared values, and no expectations of justice, justifications don't really matter. Consequences and reciprocity become more important. If you do something because you think it's justified, others will do similar things if they think their actions are justified. It doesn't matter what the others think about the justifications of your actions or what you think about the justifications of their actions.

Political power comes from what populations think. At first, the US thought there would be clear support for their position given Hamas’s actions, and acted accordingly. That has not really been the case, so they are moderating their position. Some of that is a result of large numbers of people thinking things like “Scale is the most important factor when talking about the harm done. A dead person is dead, regardless of if it was murder or manslaughter.”

> If Israel could remove Hamas without injuring any non-combatants I think they would.

Surely you jest. How is this attack supposed to remove Hamas? It seems designed to strengthen Hamas, just as Israel has been supporting Hamas since their formation.

The existence of Hamas prevents a united Palestinian people while simultaneously giving Israel the excuse to reject a 2-state solution. If Hamas didn't exist, Israel would have to create a Hamas from scratch.

You seem to ignore the fact that Palestinians have rejected a 2-state solution and have elected hamas themselves.

You seem to ignore the fact that hamas was elected in 2006 and has indefinitely postponed elections since then. Given the demographics most Palestinians weren't even alive when hamas was elected.

That doesn't change the fact that it was elected in the first place, showing that at the time Gaza was not interested in peace.

My point is that Palestinians have their share of blame.

Remind me, when was the last time people in Gaza were given a chance to vote?

Don't see why that changes what I said.

Parent comment blamed everything on israel when clearly Palestinians have a fair share of blame - you can't deny that.

In a democratic election held before around half it's current population was born. Not that the results would likely be much different today.

> Surely you jest. How is this attack supposed to remove Hamas? It seems designed to strengthen Hamas, just as Israel has been supporting Hamas since their formation.

This attack is supposed to remove Hamas by killing them, or forcing them to surrender. There's a lot of legit criticism of what Israel is doing, but if you think it's designed to bolster Hamas, then you're really misunderstanding what's happening.

That's the most absurd thing I've ever heard. How do you kill a political movement? After all this slaughter, there'll be thousands more terrorists willing to fight the occupying force that's killed their parents and children.

Hamas isn't just a political movement. It's an organization with a group of members, with weapons caches, with plans, etc. They have people trained to invade Israel and kill civilians, have proven that they can do this, and have promised to do it again.

They can be stopped by arresting/killing the members. Why wouldn't it be possible? Similar groups have been stopped.