loquitur

RB: I'm well aware of the history. It's also irrelevant for current purposes. Why thugs act like thugs is not pertinent when the issue is whether someone has the right to stop the thugs from acting like thugs. The reasons for the thuggery might be relevant to what sorts of treatment the thug should get once he is immobilized, but the justice of the immobilization doesn't turn on that. I submit, respectfully, that it's your position that has the ethical issues, if the purpose is to justify thuggery. I understand explaining bad behavior. I understand attempts to understand bad behavior. Those are good things to do; they are responsible things to do. What I don't get is attempts to justify bad behavior, and complain about the efforts to stop it.

Will: I think Israel acts incredibly stupidly at times. Its governmental system is a travesty and many of its politicians are repellent. That has precisely zero to do with whether Israel has the right to shut down self-proclaimed genocidal murderers who hide behind children and seek to exterminate Israel's population. It does. When you ask whether I'm ignoring the half of the equation about whether the bombs Israel is using are too big for the objectives, what's your point? I'm not a military expert and neither are you - neither of us has even a tiny clue what is or is not a weapon big enough to effectively achieve a military goal. You're just assuming that if there is collateral damage that means the bomb was too big, which is self-evidently false. What I do know is that there have been instances in the past where Israel used smaller bombs for the precise purpose of avoiding civilian casualties, and the result was that the bad guys (the leadership of Hamas, as it happens) got away. I can try to dig up a link for that if you want; it's pretty well documented.