Comment So, what response would you support? (Score 1) 1067
Should Israel return fire with unguided rockets into Palestinian civilian areas on a 1 to 1 basis? Maybe an artillery shell?
Should Israel just randomly round up and kill a few Palestinian civilians and execute them every time a Palestinian rocket randomly kills one of its civilians? Is this justice?
A body count is a lousy way of measuring proportionality. Even the means used aren't a reliable method.
As to what a "military target" is, it is, of course, part of the law of war that once a building is used for the purpose of making war on an enemy, it loses any and all protection. If HAMAS uses a hospital as a weapons cache, a mosque as a command post, or a school as a firing position, the building becomes fair game. The purpose of these laws is to encourage reciprocity and to protect civilian populations from unnecessary harm. It's a shame HAMAS has decided not to follow the law.
The HAMAS government has supported and sponsored these attacks for years. That they are now getting their just deserts will hardly cause me to shed a tear. It is unfortunate that civilians are caught in the crossfire, as is almost always the case in war, and I do hope that civilian casualties are minimized. But HAMAS' own decisions to mix among civilian populations and ignore the laws of war have placed their own civilian population in grave danger. Should the Palestinian people ever have the opportunity to vote again, I hope they remember that.
