A question of intent

As we have seen, under international law, in many cases the question of intent is paramount to determine whether one is guilty of war crimes. In the two major accusations against Israel by the anti-Israel crowd, of violating the principles of distinction and proportionality, that intent is clearly not there.

On the contrary. Israel has great disincentive to kill civilians, and great incentive to keep them as safe as possible while targeting terror targets.

Hamas, however, makes no secret of its intent, at least in Arabic. It is instructing its members, and indeed all Palestinian Arabs, to kill every Jew they can.

We've seen Hamas claim that they are legally allowed to attack every Israeli:

...[W]e hurried to strike anywhere in Israel - from Dimona to Haifa - and we made you hide in shelters like mice. . .

Again, we warn you - if your government does not agree to all of our conditions, then all of Israel will legally remain open to our weapons fire.

Hamas spokesman Fawzi Barhoum:

Our rockets are aimed at the Hebrews, the murderers, the Israelis, the criminals.

Barhoum again:

Anyone who has a knife, a club, a weapon, or a car, yet does not use it to run over a Jew or a settler, and does not use it to kill dozens of Zionists, does not belong to Palestine.

When one factors in the essential feature of intent, then the "scorecards" that we have been seeing for the past six weeks are proven to be deceptive. Because the only scorecard that matters is the intent of the attackers, and when that is factored in, it looks like this:

(This only counts the targets of the rockets, not the terrorism that Barham called for to attack every Jew.)

When people accuse Israel of "genocide" or "ethnic cleansing" or "targeting civilians" or "indiscriminate bombing" or "war crimes" they are knowingly inverting both international law and simple morality.

Not only that, but they are proving their own bigotry, because there is no ethical difference between falsely accusing a racial or religious group of being bloodthirsty and falsely accusing a national group of the same.

Any discussion of the relative morality of Israel and Hamas that ignores intent is in itself immoral.