You are reading very selectively (and I think fir a reason):

> From 2004 to 2014, these attacks have killed 27 Israeli civilians, 5 foreign nationals, 5 IDF soldiers, and at least 11 Palestinians[11] and injured more than 1900 people.[12] Their main effect is their creation of widespread psychological trauma and disruption of daily life among the Israeli populace.

Please at least try to stay true to the facts, even if you are not willing to steelman the other's arguments.

What fact was op not true to?

Technically they killed more than 28 total people, although I agree with the notion that whether it's 28 or 40 doesn't really move the needle very much.

Almost as if Israeli defenses are working as expected...

> You are reading very selectively (and I think fir a reason):

I've wrote what is in Overview section in the article. Which is "The rockets have killed 28 people and injured hundreds more."

> Please at least try to stay true to the facts, even if you are not willing to steelman the other's arguments.

Please don't imply intentions that were not mine. When I skimmed the article, I literally didn't see the information you mentioned. What would even be the point of that "selective reading"? Are we discussing a difference of 10-20 people against a figure of 17,000? This doesn't make sense.

difference of 5000 fighters vs 12000 embedded civilians

Please make your substantive points without swipes like in your first sentence (and also your last one). This is in the site guidelines: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.

I don't understand the "kill count" comparison that always comes up in such discussions.

What you are trying to say to me is basically that Israel is to blame for being good at defending its citizens (so only 28 of them were killed). What if Israel didn't have the Iron Dome? How many people would have been killed then due to all the missile firing? Think about it.

The intent here is what matters. Hamas obviously has the intent to obliterate not just Israel as a state, but to kill its people, the civilians. It has been trying hard to do that for all these years! Imagine if Hamas were as powerful as Israel in terms of military power, how many people would have died?

P.S. Another argument that I don't get is "but surely Hamas has good reasons to commit terrorism and genocide!". Yeah, and Hitler surely also had his good reasons to mass exterminate Jews.

> P.S. Another argument that I don't get is "but surely Hamas has good reasons to commit terrorism and genocide!". Yeah, and Hitler surely also had his good reasons to mass exterminate Jews.

This is a bit disingenuous. Hamas has more reasons to fight against Israel than Hitler had to kill Jews.

I don't think those reasons justify what they did, nor do I think violent resistance is the correct or moral path for Palestinians. But it's still far more justified than what Hitler did, relatively speaking.

I didn't mean to get into actually comparing "who had more reasons", I was simply pointing out that whatever reasons one had in their mind (good or bad, it doesn't matter), those reasons cannot be an excuse for such actions.

This doesn't make it OK.

Yes, killing over 17000 people, most of them women and children is not OK.

I think we agree that civilian deaths are tragic and should be minimized.

I'm guessing we disagree on who is responsible for those deaths.

The people who killed them, whether they are Israeli or Palestinian. How is this something that people disagree about?

If you attack me and I shoot you, you're to blame for your death, not me.

If a country attacks me and I counterattack to make sure you can't attack me anymore, you remain at blame.

There are details, like deliberate civilian attacks vs collateral, but at the end of the day, the duty of a country is to protect it's own citizens, and not the citizens of the aggressor.

How far back does that go? Does it go back to when Israel the country took Palestinians' property by force?

That doesn't justify attacks on innocent civilians in Israel, and those attacks don't justify attacks on innocent civilians in Gaza.

While rockets are the main weapon (they also like to do stabbings) used in the palestinian-israeli conflict over the last years, the main reason of israeli palestinian hate is their past love of exploding inside busses and restaurants during the first[1] and second intifada[2]

honestly since the iron dome we are kind of "fine" with the occasional rocket (on a personal but also to some extent on a political level)

[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Intifada [2]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Intifada

What do you mean? Hamas said 500 people were killed when that hospital was hit. Everyone agrees it was a misfired Islamic Jihad rocket, so...

Additionally, around 30% of those rockets land in Gaza.