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by skinkestek 631 days ago
No.

This is rather clearly described in the laws of war.

If militants hides behind civilians or use civilians as shields for military infrastructure, the lives of the civilians is their responsibility.

This might seem counterintuitive at first but is perfectly obvious once you stop and think:

If it was legal to use civilians as human shields and it would shield your military infrastructure everyone would do it.

Because the laws of the war is so clear about it nobody does it except Hamas and they only do it because they know western media and commentators will blame Israel despite international laws being very very clear in this matter.

2 comments

> Because the laws of the war is so clear about it nobody does it except Hamas

Everyone does it. We just call it espionage. That said, when a Western espionage mission goes awry and it results in collateral damage, the government doing the fuckery is properly blamed.

Not sure if we are talking about the same thing?

I'm talking about Hamas literally

a) putting missile ramps and ammo depots in busy areas

b) preventing civilians from leaving after Israel has dropped leaflets, called phones in the area and dropped noise bombs

I don't see how the west does anything similar.

Sure, Hamas dials the tactic to eleven. Point is hiding merchant raiders [1] and clandestine activities (e.g. the CIA's fake vaccine campaign to verify Bin Laden [2]) operate on the same principle. And when those go wrong, we properly blame the people using civilians for cover.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merchant_raider

[2] https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-cia-fake-vacc...

Why does Israel target civilian targets that have nothing to do with Hamas?
Because the war is only partially about engaging with Hamas. It is also about cementing is stranglehold on the West Bank, and in creating conditions in Gaza favorable to what its current regime coldly refers to as "voluntary transfer":

https://www.timesofisrael.com/israel-in-talks-with-congo-and...