It means only targeting hostile combatants, not civilians; and it means avoiding collateral damage when possible. It does not mean never hitting a civilian; that’s an impossible standard, especially when your opponent fights the way Hamas does.
Since I’m not an IDF General, I cannot walk you through the decision matrix, no.
You don’t have to present an alternative, you’re right. You’re welcome to continue insisting that Israel is a genociding force until the cows come home. Like I said earlier, though, if your evidence for this is the fact that Israel didn’t do something impossible, I won’t really take that very seriously.
Were the children that died at Jabalia “human shields”? Are we extending the definition of human shield to include people just going about their day?
Because that make everyone, everywhere, any time on the Gaza strip a legitimate target. Which is fine if you are the one that’s doing the targeting. It gives you cover in all instances.
But it also renders the term “human shield” rather useless. Just admit the IDF consider everyone in the strip a legitimate target.
A human shield is not a valid target. The kids who died at Jabalia or otherwise are not valid targets. They also were not targeted.
The valid targets were Hamas combatants, like the high ranking commanders killed in the strike as well as the base of operations inside the refugee camp that they were operating from (and isn’t it incredibly fucked up that Hamas would put a base of operations in a densely populated part of Gaza).
It does absolutely nothing of the sort and I have no idea how you think it does. The only legitimate targets are Hamas combatants, equipment critical to combat operations, etc. Hamas using people as human shields does not make those people valid targets. If Israel started targeting civilians who lived on top of a Hamas hideout, that would be straight up murder.
The IDF absolutely does not consider everyone in the strip a legitimate target. That’s absolutely ridiculous. The IDF considers Hamas militants in the Gaza strip to be legitimate targets. Often they hide out in places where the only way to attack them is to risk hitting civilians in the area; hiding out among civilians in this way is a war crime.
I’m very confused by who you are talking about in your posts. First you seemed to be talking about human shields as targets. Not you are talking about someone “visiting” a refugee camp. Are you saying that if a Hamas commander was there, he might have been just “visiting”?
… Palestinians are also facing an existential threat to their existence. You can’t pick-and-choose who should be required to comply with international law here.
…but they were human shields in your eyes, correct? Which means they are acceptable collateral damage in certain circumstances. Do you think they were acceptable here?
If it were a “base of operations” one would expect the spokesperson to be a tad more specific than just “someone was in the area.”
But maybe my cite is out of date. It’s a fast moving conflict, after all. Please feel free to provide more up-to-date, accurate information to support your assertion.
To say that someone is being used as a human shield is about the behavior of Hamas, positioning themselves deliberately among civilians in the hope that this will deter an attack. It does not label those civilians as “acceptable collateral damage” from Israel’s perspective, any more than any other innocent person. It speaks to the probability that they will be harmed if Hamas are targeted, and Hamas is entirely responsible for deliberately increasing that probability. The IDF must make then make the difficult decision whether to proceed with an attack given that increased probability. The horror of October 7th has changed the calculus dramatically to a (military) consensus that there is no alternative but to attack and destroy Hamas despite their despicable tactics that maximize the civilian casualties from doing so.
It is simply worthless to just say “the Palestinians don’t deserve this” and “this number of civilian casualties is unacceptable” unless you can make a convincing case that there is some other more effective way to remove the Hamas regime that will in the long run result in both safety for Israel and less harm to the Palestinian people.
The objective that is advocated is not “killing a lot of people”, it is removing Hamas from power. Are you advocating that they should remain in power?