There's no moral high ground here so don't even pretend there is one.
Hamas didn't have prior knowledge of the festival, and partygoers were also murdered by the Israeli army. And in general flattening entire cities don't leave their habitants very keen toward Israel either. It just reinforces the cycle of aggression, which allows Israel to take more land.
How long and how far do you go with that justification? Does it work the other way too? Are "their" actions justified forever because of something wrong that was done to them? Can anyone in the world do to you anything and everything forever if they were ever wronged by someone born in the same general geographic area as you?
Whenever you find yourself defending any genocide, under any excuse, defending the killing of innocent children because some other guys from the same general area also killed people, you are the bigger problem and no amount of fresh accounts justifying it makes you better.
That in itself is an abhorrent position and I am disgusted at anyone who takes it.
And further extrapolation as you edited it, if a child has a gun pointing at your head and has been trained to fire it at you, which is exactly what they have been doing, then they are legally combatants. But it makes a good statistical and PR job which is just as abhorrent. Legally and statistically speakingh, children... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cD2FezhJgqA
I would not do this to MY children.
So, like Israeli soldiers?[0]
> if a child has a gun pointing at your head and has been trained to fire it at you, which is exactly what they have been doing
Israelis do exactly the same[1]
As long as Israelis rely on violence, war crimes and human rights violations, there can be no deescalation. We see it in the current ceasefire, where Israelis refused to stop their annexation war (and flattening) of Liban.
[0]https://www.aljazeera.com/video/newsfeed/2024/8/13/israeli-p...
[1]https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20170708-israel-gives-sett...
I am defending facts and stating there is no moral high ground.
So complaining about it while continuing to bomb civilians with white phosphore is rather hypocritical and cruel.
Didn't you?
> if a child has a gun pointing at your head
That sure sounds like defending the killing of children because for sure they were all holding a gun and trying to kill you. Including the babies.
If you show all the YouTube videos in the world, the moment when you find a justification to kill any innocent children is when you become irreversibly the problem.
Your second point literally makes no sense and is based on the straw man that babies are holding guns where I made no point even related to that or collateral kills (which are unacceptable). Secondarily my point is based on internationally legal definitions of combatant and evidenced with a video of combatants being trained. Not like the UN and UNICEF haven't been all over this for decades.
Don't use child soldiers and you won't get statistically significant child casualties.