Two Hamas members kill three in morning rush hour attack
Attackers were brothers, shot dead at the scene
Attack comes on seventh day of Gaza truce
JERUSALEM, Nov 30 (Reuters) - Two Hamas gunmen killed three people at a Jerusalem bus stop during morning rush hour on Thursday, and Israel reiterated its commitment to wiping out the Palestinian Islamist faction, whose Oct. 7 killing spree triggered the Gaza war.
The attackers, Palestinians from East Jerusalem, were shot dead by off-duty soldiers and an armed civilian, police said. At least eight people were also wounded in the shooting.
“The terrorists arrived at the scene by car in the morning, armed with an M-16 rifle and a handgun,” police said. “The terrorists began shooting at civilians before subsequently being killed at the scene.”
Hamas, which is sworn to Israel’s destruction, claimed responsibility for the Jerusalem attack, deeming it “heroic”.
So long as one side is very deliberately planning and praising the explicit targeted murder of civilians, this isn’t going to end.
Israel is absolutely doing a lot of harm and it’s by no means any kind of angel, but what it doesn’t do is this. There is a meaningful difference between collateral damage and deliberate murder of civilians (even if that’s not going to be any consolation to anybody affected by violence, of course)
I may get downvoted for this, but I don’t know that I fully agree.
Collateral damage implies there were valid military targets being struck.
I know Hamas doesn’t exactly have bunkers and sandbags to shoot at, but the imagery coming out of Gaza looked a lot like an entire nation rolling up to a metaphorical bus stop and cutting loose.
There is nothing just about what Hamas is doing or did here, and I’m so tired of having to include this caveat. But using an entire military industrial complex to perpetrate the same acts on a horrific and unimaginable scale doesn’t qualify as collateral damage.
How can you call it “collateral damage” when you drop bombs on an inhabited city? That’s intentionally targeting civilians.