Quote Originally Posted by Moulin Yarns View Post
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https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cgeqr73p8wyo

That's somehow okay because a Hamas official was killed, to hell with the dozens of innocent victims because, you know, proportionality!!

And our UK government condones this behaviour from Israel!
Without wishing to incur your wrath again, in what way would you say Israel should have fought this war proportionally? A few rockets fired into Gaza in response to October 7th would hardly have landed well within the Israeli population.

The eye-for-an-eye version would, I guess, have been to round up around 1500 people from Gaza (mostly civilians but a few Hamas fighters too), murder the vast majority of them (with some sexual assault thrown in) and keep the rest hostage. Would we have thought that a proportionate response?

So, is what's actually happened way beyond proportionate? We've seen from what they achieved in Iran over a short space of time just what a clinical fighting force the Israelis can be. They basically left Iran reeling with the precision of their missile strikes while their pilots quickly took over the skies. Civilian casualties were relatively minimal. Such a contrast to the mass casualties in Gaza. Why is that? Sure, there are no clear, defined sites for Israel to hit in Gaza (like the nuclear plants in Iran) but a lot of the civilian deaths come down to the way Hamas operate. For example, the operative mentioned in the story you've linked to must have been aware he'd be on Israeli intelligence's acute radar yet he apparently chose to sit among citizens in a cafe, putting them all at risk. I'm not suggesting that bombing the cafe was Israel's only option, but if their mission is to eradicate Hamas how do you do so proportionally when their tunnel network runs under civilian infrastructure and their operatives base themselves within the civilian population?

While I imagine Netanyahu's long-term plans for Gaza go well beyond wiping out Hamas (is the Trump 'riviera' plan perhaps more than a pipe dream?) I'm just not convinced this war could have been fought without a very high number of civilian deaths.