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Comment by GuardianCaveman | Hacker News Reader

Ww2 Japan was bombed by the United States and thousands died after they launched a surprise attack which killed thousands of Americans including hundreds of civilians.

Palestine launched a surprise attack killing thousands and now they face the same thing.

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The US didn't bomb Japan in retaliation for Pearl Harbor, but to accomplish a military objective. Also, past errors, to the extent there were any, are not valid reasons for current ones - otherwise we'd quickly have no laws or morality at all.

The Law of Armed Conflict (LOAC), which is taken very seriously by militaries, requires distinguishing between military and civilian people and assets, only pursuing military targets and objectives, and when civilians will be harmed, requires that it be in proportion to the military benefit.

Here are a couple of links. The first is the authoritative International Committee of the Red Cross's very usable LOAC page, and the second is the application of it to the Gaza war by leading experts:

https://ihl-databases.icrc.org/en/customary-ihl/v1

https://www.justsecurity.org/89489/expert-guidance-law-of-ar...

Terrible example, since the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were also extremely unethical

A lot happened before those two bombs were dropped, so how would you articulate your stance about those I wonder? Axis and Allies were bombing each other all over the place. Plenty of cities (in Japan, since you hyper focused on the nuclear bombs) were devastated and wrought with bombings before.

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