In the Israel-Gaza war, what hasn't been fully disclosed in respect to the calculus of collateral damage is the eerie symmetry shared by both sides.
Let us hypothesize a residential complex where 12 mothers, 30 children and 12 grandparents reside. Six Hamas freedom fighters decide to embed themselves in the building. Israel cannot grant a safe haven to non-combatants, because it would be waging a war it cannot win since it would allow Hamas to strike with impunity. So it advertises its intentions via leaflets and electronic media, destroys the building and the enemy, and accepts responsibility for what the world views as unacceptable collateral damage: the killing of innocent children, their parents and the elderly, not speak of the many who are seriously injured and scarred for life.
To put an end to the daily horrors inflicted on non-combatant Palestinians, Hamas, currently waging a war it cannot win, has only to surrender; but it refuses. Its position is that it would rather continue fighting than capitulate, and that no sacrifice is too great for the cause of self-determination and nationhood. And since we have not heard so much as a peep of protest from the local population, should we assume it supports Hamas and is willing to make the ultimate sacrifice?
Prior to the war the majority of the population supported Hamas but only 25% approved of the military option. It does not constitute a stretch of the imagination to propose that a mother and her five young children and ailing grand parents will not be celebrating the arrival of six Hamas freedom fighters and the near certainty that their residential complex will be targeted and demolished.
The Palestinian population is by and large mute because Hamas rules Gaza with a reign of terror, and to speak out against it is tantamount to death sentence.
As it concerns the tragic calculus of collateral damage, both sides are on the same page, which begs and answers the question: who is responsible for the death of the tens of thousands of non-combatant Palestinians.
Both sides.
. . . unless we reprioritize what has become over time an incidental fact that Hamas started the war with the deliberate targeting and massacring of Israeli non-combatants . . . unless Hamas reprioritize what has become over time . . . (begin infinite regression).
Which means that Israel is losing the public relations war on the same scale Hamas is losing the actual war.
Presently, the ball is in Hamas' court. It has already lost the war.
One wonders how many more innocents Hamas is willing to sacrifice in a lost cause?
