Israel absolutely targets civilians, and if you don’t believe that they do, you are willfully blind. There are interviews with soldiers joking about shooting out the knees of protestors. International findings that Israel has deliberately targeted/killed journalists. Hell, they bombed refugees on a road they told them to take! Even if you absolutely refuse to acknowledge any of this, the idea that bombing a hospital or school, when you know that the ratio of civilians to combatants there is 100:1, is somehow morally stronger than if there were no combatants at all, is a ridiculous position to take.
So when a soldier takes the initiative to do something horrible it’s all of israel that it’s at fault. But we need to be very careful about distinguishing between hamas terrorists and palestinians. Don’t you think that seems inconsistent?
The Israeli soldier is enacting violence on behalf of the Israeli state. Hamas is doing the same on behalf of the Palestinian state. Is there a pattern of such behavior from Israeli soldiers? Are there appropriate consequences applied in such cases? The answers are yes, and no, respectively. This isn’t just “rogue soldiers”, it is a matter of policy.
If Hamas is a “terrorist” organization, then so is the Israeli government. Neither cares to distinguish between combatants and noncombatants. On balance, my sympathy lies with the Palestinian people, relegated to shrinking ghettoes, while a colonial force imports settlers from all over the globe to illegally occupy their homes and farms.
Hamas is also a “state” in that they are a democratically elected political organization that has a monopoly on violence in Gaza. That’s the definition of a “state.”
However they also engage in terrorism. Kind of a two-fer.
Israel, otoh does not technically engage in terrorism. Instead, their violence against civilians only acts to further the goals and status quo of Hamas. Terrorism by definition is a political act of violence to effect change.
I don’t take anyone calling the descendants of israelites as “settlers” seriously. This is their ancestral home. It doesn’t matter if you reject reality and substitute with your own. There is so much evidence that it’s really imposible to deny it and be taken seriously.
