> what should a country do when 1,200 of its citizens are brutally killed?

Post people with guns on the borders. Investigate what caused the extremely sluggish response by the IDF, too.

Don't use it as an excuse for war crimes and ethnic cleansing, while talking about the hostages that are paraded around as an objective in public, as "pawns" to be sacrificed behind closed doors.

https://twitter.com/UncapturedNews/status/174516348183630682...

While IDF soldiers make TikToks literally showing off and bragging about war crimes, in the hundreds by now, given licence by hundreds of people from highest ranks of politicians to generals to "journalist" talking about how there are no innocent people, no civilians in Gaza, just "human animals" and so on. And how everyone who talks back is a Hamas supporter and/or antisemitic.

In a self-righteous fury that gets worse, no less. Which isn't explained by grief over a past event or even a knee-jerk "security" reaction, but rather by the increasing guilt: people painting themselves into a corner by running away from crimes they already committed by doubling down on them, and projecting the guilt as hatred onto those who call it out. That's as old as criminals and mobs, and it leads to war crimes in Gaza just as predictably as it emboldens settlers in the West Bank to up attacks, as it does to attacks on people elsewhere:

https://theintercept.com/2024/01/22/columbia-university-pale...

> Regarding journalists: incidents have occurred

That way one can dismiss anything. "brutally killed", "grim reality" on the one hand, "incidents", "oversimplification" and "politically motivated rhetoric that trivializes real and horrific genocides" on the other.

https://rsf.org/en/israeli-politicians-call-journalists-gaza...

and don't forget https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shireen_Abu_Akleh

> On October 26, 2023, a memorial erected at the site of her killing was bulldozed by the Israeli army during a raid.

And this is how they acted during her funeral: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y11CVGz7toM

These are not mere "incidents", they're a criminal habit.

> This rhetoric can trivialize historical genocides, which were real and horrific.

As if this one isn't real or horrific?

https://www.ipcinfo.org/ipcinfo-website/alerts-archive/issue...

"This is the highest share of people facing high levels of acute food insecurity that the IPC initiative has ever classified for any given area or country."

The last number I heard was that 80% of the catastrophically hungry people in the world right now are in Gaza.

Israeli Holocaust Scholar Raz Segal says it's a "textbook case of genocide". Omer Bartov says it might be genocide, but that there are "clear signs of ethnic cleansing" and likely war crimes. To just shrug them and many more off as politically motivated or skimming the surface seems ironic.

> If Palestinians [..] ceased targeting civilians

What does that even mean? As if all Palestinians, instead of starving and freezing, are still holding a rifle pointed at civilians, while IDF soldiers hell bent on keeping innocent people from getting hurt say "drop the weapon"?

Collective punishment is a crime. Nothing you said and nothing anyone could say justifies it.