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Comment by k4l3 | Hacker News Reader

Maybe I'm being willfully naive, but isn't the violence of today the reason why? You don't want to give extremists ready access to more detailed targeting information than they already have. Having never aimed a rocket before I don't know how it works, but I'd imagine it would be helpful to have detailed satellite maps showing possible weak spots in infrastructure and strategic locations.

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The Guardian had a quote in 2007 saying that the Al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades was then using Google Earth to target rocket attacks:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palestinian_rocket_attacks_on_...

(Of course, that's one now 14-year-old assertion from one militant group among several, so that doesn't really show whether this is more or less prevalent over time -- and the U.S. legislation on satellite imagery discussed in the newer article is from 1997, so it wasn't responding to this specific practice.)

Satellite imagery is not available, yet HD photos are available in Street View? Doesn't make sense too much.

You tend not to launch rockets from a few metres away from the front door of your target.

It tends to be from kilometres away, and you tend to target from above.

More "satellite view" than "street view".

There is violence is lots of parts of the world. You are correct of course, but this reasoning also applies to Syria, Yemen, and probably some other places where there have been missile attacks as well. Are similar restrictions in place for those locations (maybe there are? I don't know.)

Generally, armed groups with serious missile capabilities are able to source their own intelligence for strikes. The fact that we've ascertained, somehow, that Hamas et al. use Google Maps to inform their targeting calls into serious question claims against the assymetry of capability on which the legitimacy of tit-for-tat missile/air strikes rely.

Israel doesn't justify its counter-strikes based on "equal firepower" or capability, nor should it.

It's more "if you launch a rocket at us we will flatten the militants and workstations of the organisation that fired it", which in my opinion is justifiable.

The alternative would be wildfire rockets in return, and you can be sure the body count would be much higher in that case - particularly given Hamas's tactic of firing from neutral territory (ie in 2018 when they repeatedly fired from the carparks of schools, and housed weaponry in the basements of UN hospitals), also known as "meatshield" defence.

What you're describing is indeed "tit-for-tat"; they hold that there is an equal capability for harm (not "equal firepower", which is a strawman).

But there clearly isn't. Those rockets rarely reach ANY target, and if this is part of the reason why, it makes Israel's behavior that much more repulsive; it's gruesome theater where a superpower allows a few desperate and over-proud men to lob firecrackers at them so that they can "justify" "responding" "in-kind" with indiscriminate force.

The alternative is and always has been retreating from its campaign of colonial expansion and working with Palestine as a partner rather than against it as an aggressor.

But that's obviously not true. Hamas launched these rockets into Tel Aviv and killed multiple civilians.

It is grotesque to claim that Israel should accept this without response, or only launch an equally sized rocket back (???).

Israel still drops blank rounds and pamphlets as warning, before striking buildings used by Hamas (if they also house civilians, which they usually do).

Israel takes steps to avoid any noncombatant deaths. Hamas actively aims for noncombatant deaths.

Edit: oh and I simply disagree that firing rockets at civilians is a legitimate tactic in response to land disputes.

Perhaps some of the Israeli settlements are unjustly resulting in eviction of Palestinians - this is rarely if ever actually proved instead of simply claimed by Hamas and its supporters - but even that doesn't justify bombing civilians in a different city, does it,

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