Yeah, I'm almost as unsympathetic to this taking point as I am to the "human shield" rhetoric. There are over two million people in Gaza. Many of them poor and most of them children. Telling them to simply move to another area of the small, densely populated area they're blockaded into is not the humanitarian win some people seem to think it is.
As for the rest of the “misleading information”:
1. This follows on from the point above, but Khan Younis is in Southern Gaza. Y'know, the part of Gaza that a million people were kindly told to uproot themselves to at the beginning of this conflict because they were told it would be safe. People in Khan Younis have specifically been given conflicting instructions by the IDF telling them both to leave and to stay in place (the instruction to stay came the day before Layan's family was killed).
2. I mentioned that Giora Eiland is retired in the article. And while I grant that he doesn't have any direct power, I strongly suspect he's privy to details about Israeli strategy. But I really just included his quote because a) it directly contradicts what the current Israeli ambassador said, and b) it states openly what everybody with their head out of the sand can already see.
3. If you believe those soldiers will be punished, or even that they aren't acting with the support of their superiors, I have several bridges to sell you. This blind refusal to acknowledge what the IDF is doing wrong, even despite the unprecedented video evidence, is wild to watch in real time. It's as crazy as the people claiming Hamas didn't rape or kill innocent people despite the videos.
Yes, looting is pretty universal in war. But filming yourself doing it? Making TikToks as you ransack civilian homes and make racist comments? That's less common. But they've done so because they know there will be no repercussions. I mean, come on, they're just mirroring the rhetoric of their most senior officials. Right up to Netanyahu.
Lastly, I'm not sure what "a more targeted war" looks like after 65,000 tons of bombs. Was there a "targeted" phase after Hiroshima or Nagasaki?
