re: The fundamental flaw in Israel's "Hamas hides amongst civilian population" justification

quote:

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Even IF they are hiding amongst the civilians (in one of the most densely populated regions of the world) when did it become OK to take out the civilians as well just to get the terrorists? If someone is holding my child hostage and hiding behind them for cover, I would hope that they send in the most accurate snipers to take out the perp and not launch a grenade that would kill them both.

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This is an incredibly short-sighted stance.

Hamas (and other Muslim radical groups) have made it a habit of firing on enemies from behind human shields. This cartoon is pretty fricking accurate:



as is this one...



and this one...



etc.

They fire off arms from behind these civilian shields then bitch and whine about "genocide", "you're killing innocent civilians", etc. when their enemies fire back. To use their argument in any sort of justification for urging their opposition to pursue peace is to encourage them to do it more and more often (which is exactly what we've seen over the last couple of decades).

Israel, to its credit, has gone well above and beyond the call of duty by creating and implementing a "roof knocking" protocol to alert civilians in an area where Israel is being attacked from that they are about to be shelled (ie: so they should gtfo).

The other part of this is the misunderstanding of what it would take to snipe these asshats. These aren't people shooting missiles from 100 yards from the border wall. Gaza's width ranges from 3.5 miles to nearly 8 miles wide and is nearly 25 miles long (the world record for longest sniper shot was just over 2 miles, that was likely from a point high on a mountain looking down into an open area). Much of this area is built up with many areas containing a large, dense population housed in tall residential buildings, many of which are well beyond the range of any sniper in the world (much less just the IDF). So not only are they likely firing from outside the limit of most of the world's snipers, but they are definitely doing so from a spot completely shielded from sniper fire.