Speaking of Israel...

[Philippus Flavius Homovallumus]

Gelcube:

You are operating with a different frame of reference in mind regarding legitimacy in military targeting.

They view the use of any weapons that could harm non-combatants as a war crime. Artillery, rockets, crew-served weaponry of any kind...all of these have margins of error during normal use that virtually guarantee civilian casualties in densely populated areas such as Gaza (which is, of course, exacerbated by the positioning of equipment near or within civilian concentrations). As such, your "opposition" would view ANY such weapons use as wrong and would argue that the Israelis should refrain from counterfire.

They would probably -- in terms of the morality of the specific act, NOT the implied policy -- accept the deployment of military personnel to effect a direct response using small arms after specific identification of the militancy of the target has been confirmed using mark one eyeballs. Even then, I suspect they would expect these soldiers to show the same restraint a police force would for the potential of collateral casualties during such a "shoot."

Please note, even if they accept that such a military response would be moral in its limitation of civilian casualties, they view the policies and behavior of Israel within Gaza as inherently criminal and tyrannical.

I hope I am summarizing this clearly -- that is my read of things based on the above.

I won't speak for the others, but my problem is the huge number of casualties.

What is the end goal here?

If it was to neutralise the rocket launchers, surely that could have been done with counter-battery fire - there would have been collateral damage but it would have been localised. What we have seen, though, are punitive strikes against the homes of Hamas "commanders", intel we mostly have to rely on Israel for, and strikes on populated areas.

The 2006 War in Lebanon and previous strikes into gaza have been primarily punitive - the local populace are ground into the dust to drive home the fact that opposing Israel is worse than opposing the militants.