The "human shields" argument is completely disgusting to me. If someone takes a hostage and your response is to immediately shoot that hostage you cannot claim moral superiority. There may be an exception if that person is, like, about to blow up a hundred civilians, but considering that Hamas has killed a total of one person in this conflict I don't think that argument flies here.
I also find a lot of claims of "human shields" highly questionable as well. Those children were playing on a beach. Even if a Hamas operative happened to be near them (and I stress that this is highly unlikely, considering that they were in full view of a whole building full of journalists) that doesn't necessarily mean they were taking human shields - what if he was just playing with some kids he knew? Are Hamas members expected to just huddle together in some open area (something that would be pretty hard to find in Gaza, in fact) with a big target painted on themselves, in case the IDF decides to kill them? If an IDF soldier decided to, say, visit their family, would that mean they're using them as human shields, thus justifying a Hamas attack on them?
First of all, this is indeed tragic and whoever is in charge for this fiasco should be put behind bars.
How about the people who ordered the attack? Do you think this incident of wanton slaughter sheds a different light on all the other war crimes that the IDF is currently trying to defend (such as the bombing of a hospital and a school for disabled children earlier in the week)? Basically I believe the IDF has finally been caught completely red-handed, and I don't see why I should trust their vague "well Hamas totally forced us to do it somehow" justifications.
Second, lets not forget that hamas is INTENTIONALLY targeting children on a daily basis. In this operation alone there were several rocket hits on kindergartens that were emptied just minutes / seconds before, saving lives of dozes of children.
If true, then so what? Firstly, western governments do not give diplomatic support to Hamas, nor do they trade with them. They receive nothing but regular condemnation. If Israel is engaging in the same behaviour, should they be treated in the same way? Should they, like Hamas, be blockaded to try and prevent them from doing this in future?
Secondly I think that the armed forces of industrialised countries should be held to higher moral standards than a group of criminals operating in a heavily blockaded region. This is because they have far more funding, a better command structure and (as alluded to above) represent what is supposed to be a functional member of the international community. Quite simply, they actually have the infrastructure to carry out their intentions, unlike Hamas (who have killed a grand total of one person in this conflict, who interestingly was directly assisting the IDF at the time). Do you not think this is true?
The truth, undeniable truth is that hamas is targeting civilians, while israel actively tries to avoid hitting civilians.
Except we now know this isn't true, don't we? An Israeli war ship adjusted its aim and fired on fleeing children. An Israeli air strike flattened a Palestinian hospital. An Israeli bomb killed a group of disabled children for the crime of being in their disabled school. It is becoming abundantly clear that, at the very least, the IDF has a complete and utter disregard for the lives of anyone living in Gaza (and the beach incident would actually suggest even worse). The fact that they also claim that they don't target civilians is irrelevant - actions speak louder than words, and we've now seen their actions.
If you wish to participate in this discussion, a minimum barrier of knowledge is to go read hamas charter otherwise this conversation is simply being handled from a serious gap of knowledge.
Sure, Hamas is a terrible organization (which gets most of its members and support from the grieving families of air strike victims/people affected by the blockade, but let's not go into that now). But that does not give the IDF the unlimited right to kill civilians and bomb hospitals. Generally the best response to such groups is to take away their legitimate reasons for fighting through honest negotiations, not to continuously give them more members by killing children. I'm sure there would still be some hardcore members of Hamas that would keep fighting even if the injustices against Palestinians stopped, but they would lose a huge portion of their members and would no longer be able to count on the support of the general population.
Third, Do you really think killing children was a deliberate action? if the thought that this was deliberate cross your mind for only even a second, your ability to have a conversation is severely limited from reasons that you should look inside yourself.
Why do you think it was impossible that the attack was deliberate? You made the exact same claim about Hamas just a few paragraphs ago. The overwhelming visual evidence strongly implies that the second shell on the children was either deliberate or
incredibly negligent, to the degree where it may as well be deliberate (it's the distinction between "I deliberately shot a bunch of people in a crowd" and "I fired a gun into a crowd but it didn't occur to me that that would kill people, oops").
israel attempts to avoid hitting civilians and because the world is shifting to a delusional left fantasies, israel can only have international legitimacy (which it must have if it wish to do anything about this tyrants that are called Hamas) it must show "clean hands". those civilians are not only a moral tragic, its a tactical and strategical tragic because due to this error, israel won't be able to stop the real evil, the one that intentionally tries to kill our children and makes his own miserable.
Nobody from Hamas forced Israel to shell those children. The blood is on IDF hands, and any international condemnation is entirely deserved.
But more generally I think the rhetoric surrounding Hamas is absurd. Yeah, it's a violent separatist group. Yeah, it targets civilians.
This is not a new thing. Separatist groups in Europe such as the IRA and ETA have used similar tactics, and their actions were not used to justify the mass slaughter of civilians by the government in response (well ok that did happen in some cases, but that invariably made the situation worse). Indeed, those groups ended up crumbling away to nothing after their legitimate complaints were addressed, too.
http://www.ynet.co.il/articles/0,7340,L-4545001,00.html
Mere hours before the cease fire was due to go live, hamas sent 13 operative to conduct a large scale civilian killing/soldier kidnapping in a kibbutz near the gazan border. if this operation was successful, it would have sent the cease fire initiative to the drain..
The part about their intentions appears to be pure speculation?
In ideal world any army should ignore meatshields and annihilate enemy. Should enemy know that meatshield don't work he'll stop using that tactic
Are you trying to make a moral argument, or merely to demonstrate that you do not care about civilian casualties at all?