Quote:
Originally Posted by Azure
There is a huge difference. Israel has openly said that they target rocket sites knowing that there will be civilian casualties because Hamas is hiding rockets among civilians. Apparently Israel feels that civilian Palestinian casualties are acceptable in order to get rid of the rocket sites. This means they will hit schools, hospitals, etc, etc because Hamas hides the rockets there.
Hamas on the other hand doesn't get a rats ass where the rockets hit as they've been firing them for years hoping to hit anyone or anything in Israel. The intent IS to inflict civilian casualties and not military and to gain support from outside influences who are actually naive enough to support what they're doing, or at the very least feel sympathy for their plight.
One can argue about Israeli policies and have great points many of which have been outlined here by Flash, Flames Fan Ph.D and others, but when it comes to the action of the Israeli military in targeting Hamas rocket sites, I find it a bit mind-boggling that people suddenly forget the fact that Hamas is intentionally hiding their rockets and weapons among innocent civilians BECAUSE they want people to accuse Israel of war crimes when they target those exact sites.
I actually agree that as the dominant power, Israel should take the first step to solve the problem, but when it comes to how they fight the actual conflicts, everything isn't as black and white anymore.
|
This a report from Human Rights Watch from the 2012 Operation Pillar of Defense which list multiple instances where civilians were the only apparent targets of attack as well as attacks that caused a disproportionate amount of civilian casualties outweigh the value of the military target.
http://www.hrw.org/news/2013/02/12/i...lated-laws-war
While Hamas deserve blame for using human shields, it's important that Israel not use it as an excuse for every civilian causality. Certainly we wouldn't believe if Hamas started claiming that it's were only targeting IDF facilities in Israel with their indiscriminate rockets attacks.