[ayyy]

Trevor's thesis is here: "Set aside motives and intentions, just look at technology, technology alone ... If you are in a fight where the other person cannot beat you, how hard should you retaliate when they try to hurt you? ... When you have this much power, what is your responsibility?"

To arrive at this question, he judges the conflict in absolute numbers dead and injured on both sides, and concludes that because more Palestinians are harmed than Israelis, Israel should show more restraint.

I understand his point, but I don't know if I would want my government to show restraint if rockets were landing in my city. I would probably want the enemy thoroughly destroyed so that I could feel safe. "But don't kill too many of them!" would not be my first thought.

Similarly, if a much stronger enemy was raiding my villages and taking my land, I would probably want generations of insurgency to make them pay for the harm they've done. "Make sure those rockets only hit military targets!" would not be my first thought.

I think having a measured response to your home being attacked is too much to ask for humans.

[JoeyBananas]

The fact that Israel has killed more Palestinians is a consequence of the fact that they are winning. It is absolutely not their moral responsibility to make sure that every conflict they are involved in ends up with a 1:1 kill ratio. There was never any doubt that Israel will use its superior military to defend themselves from threats. The leaders of Hamas are also at fault for getting their own people killed by attacking a foe they cannot defeat.

I 100% agree that Israel has a responsibility to show more restraint than Hamas because they are more powerful. And I think that that's exactly what they do. Israel has a reputation for military professionalism. This incident is an example of that.

[tguvot]

One little known fact it's that in Israeli army there is heavy involvement of lawyers in ongoing activities to make sure that things are as kosher as possible with regards to rules of engagement and international law. Ground units I believe have embedded video operators for same purpose.

Also there were long project (probably still ongoing) which tried to determine the "acceptable" amount of collateral damage (civilian casualties) under different operational scenarios, e.g. if there is somebody who about to shoot rockets into Israel or cross border to explode in a bus or go through underground tunnel to Israel just to shoot somebody how far is it acceptable to go to prevent it.

The bottom line, nobody in Israel interested in civilian casualties on Palestinian side, both because people are not a blood thirsty monsters and because every little incident will be in the news everywhere around the world and nobody really interested in it.