Ethics of War

War, even when fought ethically and within the laws of war, as the IDF is doing, is a horrific situation. There is no such thing as a neat, clean war, and urban warfare is some of the most difficult for precisely this reason.  

In all the conflicts I've researched over the years I have never seen any military as ethical and determined to avoid civilian casualties as the IDF, and I'm not saying this because I'm Israeli, I'm saying they take precautions that I haven't seen any other military take, even to the detriment of their own military goals, and despite that, war is horrific and with a terrorist organisation willfully, intentionally, embedded in a dense, urban, civilian environment, there is no way to defend Israeli civilians without endangering civilians in Gaza.

The IDF gives advanced warning to civilians to evacuate, to the extent of phoning local residents, telling them which buildings are going to be bombed and keeping people on the line and asking them to check that all civilians have been evacuated before a building is bombed. Of course this often allows Hamas leaders and terrorists to escape as well, but the point here is destroying command posts, weapons caches, tunnel entrances, munitions factories and so on. One of the main reasons the IDF takes down taller buildings and towers is that they are often used by Hamas as look out positions or sniper posts. There are tactical reasons certain buildings are the target of IDF strikes.

If the IDF didn't care about minimising civilians casualties they could have literally levelled Gaza and everyone in it in a matter of days and in doing so would probably have saved many Israeli lives, especially those of soldiers, but also civilian lives by ending the massive number of rocket launches at Israel (remember that without Iron Dome Israel would have massive civilian casualties from rockets alone, as it is Iron Dome doesn't give 100% protection and Israelis have been killed and seriously injured by missile strikes)

This isn't about revenge, this is pure and simple about defending Israel from what has become an existential threat to Israel and to Israeli civilians.

The choice is to fight this war and topple Hamas, or to accept the existential threat of a murderous regime which explicitly states its intent to repeat the atrocities of October 7th whenever it gets the chance.

No country can live with that situation. It is Israel's moral and ethical obligation to millions of Israelis to secure their survival.