[user104658]

Originally Posted by bitontheslide

there is hard evidence of hamas using their own people as human shields so i don't honestly know what the pair of you are babbling on about

Yes there is, and I'm not saying that Hamas don't/wouldn't use their people as human shields... I'm saying that the fact that they are known for doing this makes it very easy/convenient to be able to justify ANY and ALL strikes. Hit a civilian convoy? There was Hamas in it. Bomb a block of flats and kill 50 children? One of the flats had Hamas in it.

It's a catch-all excuse that makes a mockery of the international laws designed to protect against targetting civilian targets with "a loophole". Like yeah sure have laws saying that targetting civilians is a war crime. But all you have to do to get around that is say you had intel that there was "baddies in there too" and all of a sudden, it's a legitimate target?

And even if they are - since when did we start saying "Ahh well, they were being used as a human shield" to morally justify the killing of innocent people? Imagine if the police turned up to an armed situation with a gunman holding a kid in front of them and just riddled the pair of them full of bullet holes then swaggered off saying "Ahh well, poor kid was a human shield, but we had to kill that crim!"