superrific
Legend of ZZL
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Of course law enforcement wouldn't be leading the response to them. But my question wasn't really about law enforcement, was it? I mean, I added that flourish to personalize the issue for you, but we both know the answer, right? Of course you wouldn't bomb the shit of the building. You'd find another way.I don’t think that is a fair comparison. 10/7 wasn’t just one lone gunman. It was a coordinated attack by hundreds of heavily armed terrorists. Not to mention the thousands of missiles that Hamas launched into Israel prior to and after 10/7. Hamas is a paramilitary terrorist organization. Law enforcement would not be leading the response to them.
I don't mean that as a complete refutation of your point. Obviously it's not a perfect analogy for a number of reasons. Still, stay with me for a minute and let's think about the circumstances in which destroying the building could be justified. Well, if the guy was planning a huge chemical attack, or was putting the finishing touches on a nuke. In that case, the loss of life from bombing could be miniscule compared to not bombing.
So suppose law enforcement does that. Who would have the burden of proof? Would we insist that the victims prove that the bomber wouldn't have killed anyone else but for the bombing? Or would we make the police explain why they thought it necessary? You know the answer to that question as well. And that's precisely the weakness in your position on Gaza. It should be Israel's burden to demonstrate why it is necessary to kill huge numbers of people to protect itself, not the Palestinians' burden to show that it is not.
[Note: this is one reason why the "what should Israel do" question is so empty]
I see absolutely no reason to trust Israel's claims about doing the minimum required to win this war. I see no reason to trust anything they say, given how many times they've provably lied and dissembled. And yes, I'm aware that Hamas is not exactly a committed truth teller. Conflict often produces propaganda on all sides. In absence of any actual proof that slaughtering civilians is necessary, I'm going with the common intuition that it's not. There is almost never a situation anywhere in which killing hundreds of thousands and starving millions (maybe or maybe not to the point of death) is necessary to defeat a paramilitary organization.