More than 90 Palestinians killed in Israeli strike on school and mosque sheltering displaced people, Gaza officials say

[The Magistrate]

168. Israel Has A Choice, Just As Does Hamas

Both parties are moral agents, who choose what they do and bear the responsibility for acting on what choice they make.

Hamas chose to indulge in a sadistic spree of murder, torture, rape, and kidnapping. They chose to do this freely, and are responsible for consequences which flow from doing so.

Israel chose to respond to this by levying war on Hamas, and to use the full weight of its military capabilities in doing so. They chose to do this freely, and are responsible for consequences which flow from doing so.

The nearest approach to mitigation on the Israeli side is that it is vanishingly unlikely that, absent what Hamas chose to do on the 7th of October last, Israel would have chosen to commence a campaign of bombing and invasion in Gaza that month.

The nearest approach to mitigation on the part of Hamas is that its leaders feared peace might be made over their heads between Israel and neighboring Arab powers, and that they had to head this off in order to maintain their dream of restorative vengeance against the Jews,