Remorse is an essential human emotion. Not only is it allowed, but on certain occasions, it is warranted, and this very much includes times of war. There is absolutely no connection that can possibly be made between being remorseful and losing conviction in the task you've been assigned.
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When a little Palestinian girl with an injured leg asks IDF soldiers for help, there is no conceivable scenario in which providing her with much-needed medical attention makes them any less valuable for the Israeli cause. It means they're human, and it actually makes them better soldiers who have retained the ability to differentiate between a combatant and a non-combatant.
And when Israeli forces target Hamas but inadvertently harm civilians, we're fully aware (and the world should be too) this isn't about hurting the innocent on the Palestinian side, but rather protecting the innocent on the Israeli side.
We don't need Hamas' so-called "health ministry" to understand civilians are killed, especially as Hamas took the method of embedding oneself among the local populace and turned it into an art form, but killing innocents, in and of itself, does not a war crime make. More to our point, the ICJ does not prohibit the killing of terrorists simply because they're hiding among the locals. Quite the opposite. Article 28 of the Geneva Convention clearly states "The presence of a protected person may not be used to render certain points or areas immune from military operations."
We lack definitive information on most of those who have fallen victim to this war, but thousands among them are Hamas terrorists, with only a few being mentioned. One of those is Al-Jazeera journalist Hamza al-Dahdouh. Freelance journalist Mustafa Thuraya was also killed. A third journalist, Hazem Rajab, was seriously injured.
When a journalist is hurt in Gaza, it garners much attention among the international community. One needs only to look back a few months to the IDF's accidental killing of Shireen Abu Akleh in Jenin. She too was employed by Al-Jazeera. In a matter of hours, New York Times and BBC headlines read "Two more journalists killed."
“I am deeply, deeply sorry for the almost unimaginable loss suffered by your colleague, Wael Dahdouh. I am a parent myself, I can’t begin to imagine the horror that he has experienced, not once, but now twice,” Blinken said in Doha, adding that "too many" innocents have been killed, but how does he know? Is he relying on the word of Hamas when tabulating the dead? Will the Department of Justice inquire into this matter as well?
What really transpired? Why did IDF launch a strike that destroyed the vehicle and both people in it, with a third person wounded? Well, a few minutes earlier, IDF recognized a drone operating in the area, which was designated as hostile. Additionally, the device used to control the drone's movements was tracked back into the vehicle containing Hamza, and the one operating it was Mustafa Thuraya. Yes, he's a photographer, but also a Hamas lookout.
The Hamas propaganda outlet
It takes a certain suspension of belief to define Al-Jazeera as your run-of-the-mill media outlet. It's a propaganda tool utilized by the Muslim Brotherhood, Hamas and Qatar. It does contain a certain semblance of free speech, as Israelis are in fact periodically included among those being interviewed.
That said, it remains a Hamas mouthpiece, systematically hiding valuable facts from its audience. When a resident of Gaza was being interviewed, complaining Hamas terrorists were hiding in hospitals instead of fighting, his mic was promptly cut off. That's as clear a sign as anyone would possibly need to understand it's about propaganda, not facts.
Regardless of which army you're a part of, when dealing with Islamist terrorist organizations like the Taliban, ISIS or Hamas, there are clear rules of engagement when it comes to hurting the innocent. Marc Garlasco, an American military advisor and formerly at the Pentagon as a mid-level intelligence analyst, later becoming chief of high-value targeting, said "Our number was 30. So, for example, Saddam Hussein. If you're gonna kill up to 29 people in a strike against Saddam Hussein, that's not a problem. But once you hit that number 30, we actually had to go to either President Bush, or Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld."
Israel, in contrast, has a far lower ratio of non-combatant victims to answer for, so while it's nice the U.S. goes full-on preacher mode when talking to Israel about hurting innocents, it serves as no indication of their superiority on the issue. They say what they say because as a virtue of being a Superpower, they can. Whether Blinken asks for it or not, he must be presented with the unvarnished truth regarding those journalists who are, in fact, in the service of the murderous terrorist organization in Gaza. The very same one he himself agreed must be removed from the enclave.