How could Israel justify indiscriminate bombing in Gaza killing civilians?

Answer 1

Israel does not justify indiscriminate bombing, in Gaza or anywhere else. Nor does it conduct such raids. By contrast Israel conducts targeted aerial bombardment of specific areas where rockets are launched. Palestinians have averred that they have received text messages from the Israeli Air Force in Arabic telling them to evacuate in advance of the strikes.

Answer 2

Your compassion is admirable. Did you speak out while next door, the Muslim president of Syria was responsible for killing 150,000 Muslim citizens of his own country, including 1700 this week?

During the Israeli air campaign, the Gaza Health Ministry reported 250 deaths, while Israel reported 1,300 air strikes against Hamas terrorist targets in Gaza. How is your math ? Can you see what that means ? It means AT LEAST 1,050 air strikes that produced NOT ONE SINGLE casualty. You need to ask yourself: "How is this possible ?" You may talk about being harsh on Palestinians. I can personally and confidently promise you that if Israel were out to kill Palestinians, in the same way that Hamas is out to kill Jews, then one Israeli pilot in one Israeli airplane could easily have killed 250 or 500 in a half hour ... it wouldn't take 1,300 missions. The Israeli air force and army have done MORE to PROTECT the rights and security of the Palestinian people than ANY military force in the history of warfare. Israel's fight is with Hamas, NOT with the Palestinian people, and Israel is far more concerned for the welfare of the Palestinian people than their own government is. You only need to think about a few simple questions:

==> Why would Hamas launch rockets from inside a crowded city, where people could get hurt, instead of from open fields?

==> Why would Hamas dig tunnels under the border and into Israel? What on Earth could they be planning to use them for?

==> Why would Hamas spend huge sums of money buying weapons and building tunnels, instead of building electric power, water purification, roads and rails for their own people?

==> What kind of a political party is it that feels the need to write into its constitution that it promises to destroy a neighboring country and its population?

Answer 2

Let's see: In the Battle of Mogadishu (1993), between 1500 and 3000 Somalis died, including hundreds of civilians. How many Americans were killed? Eighteen. Did anyone accuse America for doing what it saw as necessary?During WW2, sixty-seven Japanese cities were carpet-bombed with incendiaries. 300,000 dead. War reportage should not treat the casualty count as a moral scale in which (like Golf) the higher the number, the lower is your rank. The fact that Japan suffered more than ten times the number of people killed than America did, does not change the war's moral barometer. America was fighting a just and necessary war against a heinous enemy.

In 2006, thousands of Hezbollah rockets rained down on us; the Iron Dome defense hadn't yet been perfected. Are you sad that now we, thank God, have an effective defense?

Now why don't you turn the question around and ask why is it that the terrorists in Gaza don't lay down their weapons, which place their own people in danger? They shot over 2500 rockets at us in one month alone (July 2014), forcing Israel to protect itself.

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You should be aware that almost all of the Palestinian deaths occurred as collateral damage while Israel was trying to defend its populace against these terrorist rocket attacks, and terrorist tunnelers and the like. Israel targets military objectives, warning nearby civilians in advance through phone calls and leaflets, while Israel's terrorist enemies target civilian objectives almost exclusively. As one witness said: "Israel uses its weapons to protect its women and children, while the cowardly Hamas uses women and children to protect its weapons" by putting people as a human shield near weapons caches and rocket launchers in Gaza. Thus Israel faced an impossible situation in which the terrorists waited for their own civilians to be unintentionally killed so that they could seize the opportunity to internationally bash Israel in the gullible U.N., the anti-Israel biased E.U., and the media. They shed false tears, which could have been prevented by laying down their Iran-supplied weapons and sitting down to negotiate. When Israeli civilians were killed, these same terrorists handed out candies and sing in the streets.

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The Palestinian attacks violated one of the most basic rules of international humanitarian law, the rule of distinction. Article 48 of Additional Protocol I of the Geneva Conventions of 1949 states that "In order to ensure respect for and protection of the civilian population and civilian objects, the Parties in conflict shall direct their operations only against military objectives." Since the rockets Hamas aimed at Israeli towns were launched into civilian enclaves, each of the thousands of rockets that came into Israel from Gaza represented a war crime.

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Certain facts you should know:
1) Hamas's founding charter calls for the complete destruction of Israel.
2) Israel supplies Gaza with water, electricity, medicines and provisions. What did Hamas do? It even fired at the power station that supplies Gaza with electricity.
3) Hamas oppresses its own Palestinian population, treats women as inferior objects, and persecutes Christians while building an army of fighters dedicated to suicide and "holy" war.
4) Israel treats wounded Palestinians. All the time. A reporter wrote: I saw a Palestinian girl from Gaza being evacuated in an IDF tank to a hospital in Israel. She and her mother were interviewed, from inside an Israeli hospital. They spoke of the fair treatment, the care they received, and described the soldiers who had saved them as "brave and fair." Their faces were covered, for fear of being harmed when they returned to their homes in Gaza.
5) Hamas fired on the field hospital which Israel established in Shejaia, a facility which only treats wounded Palestinians. Hamas did this in retaliation for the IDF's attack on Wafa Hospital in the same neighborhood. The difference is that Wafa Hospital was used as a Hamas launching-pad for missiles aimed at Israel. Israel showed these launches on film; and also has shown footage of Hamas concealing stockpiles of missiles in U.N. schools. Whom did the U.N. speak out against? Israel, of course.
6) Hamas built dozens of underground tunnels from which to attack Israel and try to destroy it.
7) During the first 10 days of the 2014 war, the IDF lost 10 soldiers. Some of them, like the three paratroopers, died because the Israeli Air Force refused to attack a specific target for fear of hurting civilians. Instead, the paratroopers entered a booby-trapped house and were blown up.
8) A significant number of the Palestinian casualties were caused by the Hamas itself, which summarily kills protesters who questioned their policies.
9) Israel withdrew completely from Gaza in 2005. Israel gave peace a chance. Instead of peace, we were fired upon, massively, again and again. Hamas has refused to join any cease-fire Israel agreed to. Hamas seeks to wreak death, to terrorize, to continue to brainwash those whose brains are not already drenched with uncompromising hatred. See also the Related Links.

Link: What impact does the conflict have on the Israelis?

Link: How is Israel different than the rest of the Middle East?

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