But you continue to confuse civilians being hit with attacks on civilians.
No—I’m distinguishing between civilians being accidentally harmed and civilians predictably, repeatedly harmed because you choose to bomb where they live, sleep, and seek shelter.
When you know an area is full of civilians—children, families, displaced people—and you bomb it anyway because there might be a militant target, that’s not collateral damage. That’s foreseeable harm. And under international law, foreseeability matters. The law doesn’t say “don’t intentionally target civilians”—only. It says you must take all feasible precautions to avoid them, and when you consistently don’t, it becomes deliberate by neglect, not by accident.
So no—I’m not confused. I’m pointing out the legal and moral line you keep stepping over, and pretending it isn’t there.
Once again, look at what it actually says.
I have. And here’s what it says—clearly, unequivocally:
Article 51(8) of Additional Protocol I to the Geneva Conventions states:
“Any violation of these prohibitions shall not release the Parties to the conflict from their legal obligations with respect to the civilian population and civilians.”
In plain terms: even if Hamas commits a war crime by embedding within civilians, Israel is still legally required to protect those civilians. There is no exemption. There is no clause that says “unless the other side started it.”
You’re trying to rewrite law into a moral free-for-all. But the Geneva Conventions were written precisely to prevent that kind of tit-for-tat logic from excusing mass civilian harm.
So yes, I’ve looked at what it actually says. The law is crystal clear—you don’t get to abandon your obligations just because your enemy did.
Cameras were set up--which means warning was given. Which means the expected death toll is zero, and if it's not it's because Hamas wanted people to get hit.
That argument collapses under both logic and law.
Setting up a camera or issuing a warning does not give you legal or moral clearance to bomb a densely populated area. The Geneva Conventions do not say, “If you warn civilians, then any deaths are on them.” In fact, Article 57 of Additional Protocol I makes clear:
“Effective advance warning shall be given of attacks which may affect the civilian population, unless circumstances do not permit.”
But it also says:
“An attack shall be cancelled or suspended if it becomes apparent that the objective is not a military one or that the attack may be expected to cause incidental loss of civilian life… excessive in relation to the concrete and direct military advantage anticipated.”
So let’s say the camera shows the launcher in a tent city. If you bomb it anyway—and you know civilians will die—the warning doesn’t absolve you. It only matters if the civilians are actually able to evacuate, and the expected harm remains proportionate.
In other words: a camera and a “knock on the roof” don’t erase the law. If civilians die in large numbers from a strike you knew would kill them, it’s still a war crime—no matter how many cameras were rolling.
Hamas is getting what Hamas intended to get.
And that’s exactly the problem.
If you think mass civilian death is simply “Hamas getting what it wanted,” then you’ve stopped seeing the difference between consequences and intentions. You’ve accepted atrocity as inevitable—because it fits your narrative. But war isn’t supposed to fulfill the enemy’s goals. It’s supposed to stop them—without becoming what they are.
Saying Hamas wanted this doesn’t absolve what’s being done. It indicts it further. Because if your strategy plays directly into the hands of a terrorist group—while killing tens of thousands of innocents in the process—then the moral failure isn’t just theirs.
It’s yours, too.
Hamas is the majority of the GDP of Gaza.
And that proves exactly nothing about the morality of mass civilian punishment.
Yes, Hamas exerts enormous control over Gaza’s economy—because they control the government, the resources, and the black market, often by force. That’s what authoritarian regimes do. North Korea controls its GDP too. Does that mean every North Korean is a willing soldier? Every child a combatant? Of course not.
Saying Hamas is most of Gaza’s GDP doesn’t tell us what people believe. It tells us what power structures dominate under siege, blockade, and fear. You’re using economic control as a proxy for collective guilt—when in reality, it’s just another symptom of the very oppression you’re excusing.
You can’t condemn authoritarianism and then use its grip on the economy to blame the victims living under it. That’s not logic. That’s moral inversion.
Neither are remotely independent. Our only source for the Gaza death toll is Hamas. The only stuff that doesn't simply parrot the Hamas numbers is Israeli stuff--and that's entirely a matter of pointing out errors they can detect in the Gaza data (this person died years ago. That block of people are a cut and paste, simply incrementing the ID number etc.), not an actual count.
That’s false—and telling. You claim that the only source for Gaza’s death toll is Hamas, but that’s simply not true. The United Nations, World Health Organization, Médecins Sans Frontières, and the International Committee of the Red Cross all operate independently on the ground. They gather data from hospitals, morgues, aid workers, and satellite imagery. They cross-reference names and events. They verify incidents through eyewitness testimony, forensic analysis, and third-party review. You can dispute details, but you don’t get to pretend all of it comes from a single, biased source.
Even Israel’s own government has acknowledged high civilian casualties. IDF spokespeople have openly called the toll “tragic” and admitted that children are dying in large numbers. And human rights organizations—Israeli, Palestinian, and international—have documented these patterns for years, long before this war.
If your response to all of this is to deny the data outright, not because you can disprove it but because you don’t like where it leads, then you’re not arguing from evidence. You’re arguing from allegiance. And that’s exactly how mass atrocities get defended—by refusing to believe they’re happening.
Read what Geneva actually says.
I have. And Geneva is clear: even when the enemy violates the laws of war—by embedding in civilian areas, using hospitals, or operating from shelters—their violations do not erase your legal obligations. Article 51(8) of Additional Protocol I specifically states that “a party to the conflict shall not be released from its obligations… in respect of the civilian population and civilians, by reason of the failure of the adverse Party to comply with these obligations.”
In plain terms: human shields do not become fair game. You are still required to distinguish between combatants and civilians, to take all feasible precautions, and to avoid attacks where the expected civilian harm would be excessive in relation to the military advantage. That’s not optional. It’s codified law.
So when you point to civilian geography as the reason civilian deaths are acceptable, you are misreading Geneva—and turning war crimes into strategy.
NHC
