[freddie]

Originally Posted by haku

Of course there was something to gain for Israel, massive bombings of civilian areas have been a war strategy since WWII, nothing really new here, the goal was the same as when the Allied flattened Dresde or Hiroshima, to terrify and demoralize the civilian population so it would pressure its leaders and army to surrender to the enemy.

The Israeli army is well trained and equiped with the latest hi-tech gear the US can provide them, so when the Israeli army destroys several square km in a particular civilian area, it's no mistake, this kind of mistakes could happen during WWII when bombs were not guided, but not today, those Israeli bombs went exactly where they were meant to go, on civilians and civilian infrastructures.

The reality is that Israel had absolutely nothing to lose in targeting civilians, neither Israel or the US recognize the International Criminal Court and their armies have total immunity from any war crimes they can commit.

But of course they had something to lose. Every civilian target they bomb would make the arabs hate them more... every incident has hundreds of potential extremist group recruits who'll either kidnap more soldiers, blow themselves up in Tel Aviv or fire rockets into Israeli territory in the decades to come. Before the attacks began Israeli army threw leaflets on Lebanese territory warning civilians to either stay in their houses or move temporarily because an attack will ensue shortly. That doesn't look like a tactic of a country that'd "target civilians", does it? Then there's a small thing of israel actually targeting (or trying to target) specific military targets (of course there were mistakes made, since it's not exactly easy to target military structures when you don't even know exactly where they are), while Hezbollah made it clear they're shooting blindly. Hitting civilians was actually their desired purpose.