What's the point of hiding soldiers among civilian targets if Israel is just going to bomb the civilian targets? The point of any fighter using human shields is that the enemy doesn't fire because they don't want to hurt the human shields. If they're willing to kill the human shields, they don't help you, so why bother with them?
This apparent myth rubs me the same way as "there's no food because Hamas is stealing it" - really? All of it? For what purpose?
It's just noise. Scaling this to other examples: if there was a school shooter inside a school, should the school be bombed? The answer is a resounding no, but with Gaza it turns into a yes.
This is why the common rhetoric given from politicians and jingoists is that all of them are guilty and that no one is innocent. Using the same example, the workers and students of that school are de facto responsible because they allowed that school shooter to enter the school.
> if there was a school shooter inside a school, should the school be bombed?
If there were multiple school shooters inside one school, and they were coördinating with other shooters across the country, that becomes a valid trade off. (In a classic solo shooter scenario, everyone you want to save is inside the building. There is no external context.) In the same way that a hijacked plane, post 9/11, is a valid target for being shot down.
Much as I asked the other commenter, how many school shooters would need to be in the school before we believe it's valid?
Let's change the analogy: ISIS terrorists take over the MIT campus. Inside the university are 50 armed terrorists. Is it valid to now bomb the university? What if there are 100 terrorists?
There is no issue with scale here. No matter how much it scales, you won't reach a point where there is an ethical position that argues for the mass murder of people that we actually view as people. It only becomes ethical when we dehumanize the people affected.
So what do you think would happen if terrorists took over the MIT campus, students sympathized with them, rockets were launched from it, and the US police had no presence there and very sparse intelligence?
The shame here is what you described is literally Hamas' reasoning for carrying out the October attacks. Dehumanization, hyper aggression, and hiding it all behind 'the opposition is inherently evil, guilty by association, so we are fundamentally justified'.
Then a courier arrived with a message from Yahya Sinwar, the head of Hamas in Gaza, saying, in effect: Don’t worry, we have the Israelis right where we want them.
Hamas’s fighters, the Al-Qassam Brigades, were doing fine, the upbeat message said. The militants were ready for Israel’s expected assault on Rafah, a city on Gaza’s southern edge. High civilian casualties would add to the worldwide pressure on Israel to stop the war, Sinwar’s message said, according to people informed about the meeting.
This apparent myth rubs me the same way as "there's no food because Hamas is stealing it" - really? All of it? For what purpose?