I’d like to interject that you can know some information before an investigation. The investigation finds out the why/how the event occurred - the what is usually already somewhat visible, and it’s generally what starts an investigation…
Yup. During Inherent Resolve in Iraq/Syria, a lot of CIVCAS incidents were self reported by the involved units based on strike video. Turnaround time on intial “oh shit” impressions can be very quick.
A thorough investigation can and sometimes does arrive at a greater understanding of just what happened leading up to an incident, but the bare fact that something bad happened can be known with considerable confidence very quickly.
Collateral damage and casualties resulting from the siting of legitimate military targets is the fault of the people siting legitimate military targets there. If it's common knowledge that a war aim is approximately the extinction of the political and military leadership of Hamas, for f*ck's sake keep the political and military leadership of Hamas away from everyone and everything else.
In every war there's eventually going to be a dead child video, particularly if fighting occurs in populated areas, and regardless how righteous the cause and conduct is. Nations - including supporters on the sidelines - need to decide in advance what they're going to do when it happens, and whether they're going to allow their policy and aims to be deflected when the tragedy they reasonably knew was inevitable finally has a human face. If they can't handle it and won't prepare for it or think they can just weasel their way along for as long as deaths are just statistics, they ought to just suck up whatever outrage occurred and say: "Thank you sir. May we have another?"
Big problem with how incomplete your reasoning is here. You’re looking at the military legitimacy of a target and treating it as a be-all end-all, but that’s far from the whole equation. A target can be impeccably valid, yet the means used to strike it can be badly - even criminally - disproportionate or imprecise. Your simplistic logic here would not distinguish between dropping on a community centre with hundreds of refugees to kill one gunman, or killing a dozen high value enemy leaders in a command post where you incidentally kill a civilian janitor. In reality, proportionality and discrimination always have to be considered because they’re always in play. You very much come across as being in the “Israel can do no possible wrong” camp, and it’s clouding how rigorously you apply logic.
Yes, Hamas started this latest round of violence with the atrocities of October 7th. Israel has a right to exist and to defend itself. However, Israel is still responsible for how it chooses to strike one particular target or another.
Yes, in war you can kill civilians, accidentally or even deliberately in anticipated collateral damage. In certain circumstances you could conceivably justify knowingly (in advance) killing children if the military target is critical enough and you’re still being reasonably proportionate and discriminate. But it’s not a
carte blanche.
Israel has, generally, a very powerful and effective intelligence apparatus. They’re pinpointing valid targets. How they prosecute those targets, however, (or if they hit a particular target at a particular time at all) remains a choice Israel must make in each instance and they are separately accountable for each decision. If Israel decides to bomb an IDP camp (where people were specifically told by Israel to evacuate to) in order to take out a couple Hamas leaders, Israel has to wear that choice.
I hope Israel has some idea of a long term diplomatic and political game plan- and I’m talking on a generational scale. They’re going to need it, because the choices they’re making as going to prove increasingly alienating and isolating.