It’s perverse to frame this as purely Hamas’s fault. Where are the innocent people supposed to go? What do you expect sick people to do when armed militants show up and congratulate them on their new position as a human shield?
Do you expect police or military in other countries to just blow up hostages in an unapologetic effort to destroy the evil-doers?
If you want to protect a hospital, don’t shell it.
But the only way to stop someone from using human shields is to show them that you don’t care. So long as the concept works, they’ll keep on using it. Giving in to them only proves that morality is for chumps.
I don’t believe in rewarding people for bad behavior.
Do you believe they’ll stop doing it if enough homes and people are blown up? I mean, assuming “enough” doesn’t mean “all”.
I realize this is impossible, but the Palestinians should tell Hamas clearly that human shield tactics are unacceptable, and evict Hamas weapons from hospitals.
Again, I realize this is impossible.
Any rockets that aren’t destroyed now, while they are shooting at each other, will be used later to try and kill Israelis.
Or moral people. They are sometimes the same thing, and we could go back and forth all night, but I would say that that attitude is morally obscene. A moral person does not purposely kill children and the sick to prove he’s the bigger badass who will stop at nothing. He finds another way. Like, y’know, talking. Israel could’ve talked to Mahmoud Abbas before he went over to the dark side, but it didn’t. Now it’s time to find a way back to him, but the sales saying is that it’s ten times harder to win a customer back than it is to get him in the first place. Israel fucked up, like it’s fucked up since its independence. It is as if Israel wants and needs angry Palestinians as some sort of Big Bad to justify its paranoia. It has enough Big Bads already. It was stupid to create more.
This is delving into the big war itself though, and whether Israel is justified in waging war at all, not on the actual moral question of the strikes on known rocket teams. I think it’s a good distinction to not lump those questions together. Whether the larger conflict is just war by one side or the other or not actually doesn’t determine the answer to the tactical waging of war question.
You’re right. I’ll step off my soapbox. And to think that was my original reason for starting this thread! :o Though I knew it would get sidetracked anyway, because I started the sidetrack in the OP.
I’ve learned through this thread and my side research that the answer to the question I posed is “surprisingly accurate.” Still not accurate enough to be used in an urban setting, though, but that would put me right back on my soapbox.
It’s not a nitpick to anyone with a background or interest in the topic, but that’s not the reason I made the point. If it’s just the kind of thing where people are annoyed when corrected for calling a warship a ‘battleship’ or something, I let it go.
The reason it’s somewhat relevant here is that tanks in general fire at things their gunners can see, direct fire*. Modern artillery (including self propelled artillery pieces, which aren’t tanks) almost always fires at things the gunners can’t see, indirect fire*. So in the context of civilians casualties in war we’re talking about weapons targeted in basically different way, tanks’ main guns v artillery.
*there were exceptions in the past: artillery generally engaged in direct fire before the 20th century, and direct artillery fire was occasionally employed in the WW’s. But it’s less common since. By the same token tanks were sometimes used as (indirect fire) artillery pieces in WWII (and Korea particularly) where there wasn’t a need for their true mission of providing direct fire support and shock action via maneuver, which is the reason tanks exist and a pretty different mission than that of artillery. But indirect fire by tanks is even rarer in the last few decades than direct fire by artillery.
I have been given to understand that the German 88mm cannon, an anti aircraft weapon, was used against tanks in direct fire because of the flat trajectory it was able to provide.
That, and really high velocities.
They had a flat trajectory because of high velocity. 
Oh, nitpick away. Military history people are among the worst for nitpicking everything. 
Anyway, my thread, my rules.
But who should we talk to? Abbas? I admit that Netanyahu screwed up with him, but then, I think Bibi’s a lousy Prime Minister, and I’ve said as much before on this board. But even if we can salvage our relationship with Abbas, he only controls the West Bank, and right now we’re fighting a war with the independent state of Hamastan, AKA Gaza, and Hamas has shown no interest whatsoever in talking, or compromising, or doing anything really except fighting us. How can we talk with someone who won’t talk with us?
So yeah, things could have been handled better in the past, and Israel definitely deserves a better government than we have now. There’s no war in history that wasn’t preventable at some point. But that doesn’t change the fact that we seem to be fighting an enemy that won’t stop until we’re destroyed, or they are. And I don’t intend for it to be us.
Could have been handled better in the past? After those three Jewish kids were killed Netanyahu went on the warpath, specifically blaming Hamas and its leaders, though latest evidence points in another direction, and that was just a few weeks ago. But you and I agree on nearly everything and I’m just sick of the hair triggers on both sides. Maybe I think in a different way, but my assumption when the Palestinian boy got killed, possibly in reprisal, was that there was some child murderer at work. We all have our hammers looking for nails, and while the people in Israel and Palestine* default to “terrorists,” for very good reasons, I default to “serial killer.” It’s a bad habit.