Are you suggesting that all use of guns and bombs is indiscriminate violence?
Again, for the hard of understanding, I am suggesting that indiscriminate violence in civilian areas by guns and bombs in order to inflict damage on the enemy is the same i.e. shooting and throwing grenades indiscriminately in settlements and bombing indiscriminately in civilian areas is the same.
The reasoning behind both is to try to inflict so much damage on the other side as to try to make one or the other side decide that the human cost of continuing a particular action is too high. Both the Israeli government and the militants have this aim. Usually in these asymmetrical conflicts, militants are out-gunned so civilians are targeted to try to make up for their lack of firepower against a superior army.
The IDF strategy seems to be to try to make the suffering for civilians so bad that militants will be discouraged from trying to resist occupation and repression by attacking settlements.
History seems to show that all this type of IDF strategy does (as in Vietnam) is create more recruits for militancy and a greater willingness to use terrorism against unarmed civilians, as the militant side's own unarmed civilians have been killed and terrorised by indiscriminate aerial bombing. The difference here is that Israel is not going anywhere, unlike the Americans who could leave Vietnam and go home, so they will continue to occupy and bomb Palestinians while they have the political or military support of leaders of the international community.
I am suggesting that collective punishment of civilians for the leaders that are elected - whether by bombing, airstrikes, besieging, shooting, them or throwing grenades at them is the same.
I am suggesting that the arguments made by militants and IDF for collectively punishing civilians are the same.
So when I hear the argument in reference to the siege and airstrikes of Gaza and the West Bank "what was Israel supposed to do, they could not just not react to the Hamas attack and slaughter of about 1,500 Israelis and injury to about 5000 Israelis, many of them children" , all I am hearing is the mirror argument by Palestinian militants for terrorism i.e. "what were the Palestinian militants supposed to do. They couldn't just not react to the continuing Israeli occupation, restriction of airspace and water and movement of people, increasing shooting of Palestinians by IDF and Israeli settlers, land theft and destruction of Palestinian homes, illegal settlement expansion, discriminatory laws, unemployment, poverty, overcrowding, disruption of education and access to medical treatment, lack of human rights, and apparently the 4th October invasion by Israeli ultra-nationalists of the mosque in occupied East Jerusalem
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/10/4/israeli-settlers-storm-al-aqsa-mosque-complex-on-fifth-day-of-sukkot And now after the Israeli airstrikes for 15 days not surprisingly the argument will be "what are militants supposed to do. They can't just not react to the slaughter of 4,500 Palestinians and injury to about 14,000 Palestinians, many of them children...."
