You’re close, more or less, to how I see it but I think you know you’re being a bit cheeky. My views on this are too complex to put into bullet point as you’ve done, there’s too much nuance. It’s hard to even talk about in paragraphs, let alone bullet points. There’s a reason peace in the middle east has been so elusive and so polarizing; it comes down to very personal beliefs.

Targeting civilians is absolutely not okay. Targeting military assets after warning nearby civilians is absolutely fine, as far as prosecuting a war goes. It’s not that I’m just okay with such calamity, I’m just not surprised to see five figures death tolls of civilians when Hamas forces, tricks, or convinces Gazans to literally stand underneath bombs, so I don’t blame Israel for those excess deaths. They are clearly the result of Hamas’s strategy; and it’s their strategy that is the war crime, their strategy of literally using entire cities as human shields, their strategy of not wearing uniforms, their strategy of operating out of hospitals and schools, are the crime against humanity.

In law it’s called transferred intent. If you commit an armed bank robbery and a responding police officer shoots at you but hits and kills a family crossing the street, you are charged for their deaths since their deaths were within the range of probable consequences of committing armed robbery, and among the range of foreseeable risks that make the conduct illegal in the first place.

News reports can be verified, just not fast enough for either the 24-hour outrage news cycle or the coalition of propogandists who are trying to mobilize extremists against the western world order, you know, all these pan Islamists chanting “death to America and death to Israel,” as well as all these dark moneied MAGA loyalists in America trying to mobilize liberals against Joe Biden. I think the public got lied to in the early days of the war and every further lie they see just confirms their initial reaction.

So unfortunately in America the coverage of this war has been utterly one sided and people have a perception of it that doesn’t match reality. Again, monthly casualties have decreased every month since the start of the war. The famine that has been imminent for four months hanot happened. Shroedingers Gaza, somehow simultaneously starving with no aid and also literally has people dying because aid is failing on them from the sky.

Then, to add to that misperception, there are the bona fide war crimes that some Israeli soldiers obviously do commit, which as noted in the ICJ opinion, Israel has a credible record of prosecuting when it can. Events such as the flour massacre or this recent food aid workers’ vehicle.

The legit atrocities get mixed in with the unbelievable rage bait about IDF soldiers just doing sniper rifle turkey shoots of little kids, just scooping up women and kids and torturing them, based on third and fourth hand accounts of “reports” of literal Hamas accomplices, and they always have the same report about how none of the bombs ever hit any Hamas fighters, and never hit any tunnels and there were no warnings, only women, children, orphans, and puppies.

Then there is the echo chamber of media where we hear the same few quotes, day in, day out, such as, “entire families wiped out” and “famine is imminent.” Since November 3, 2023, famine has been imminent, at least according to an NGO in a fundraising press release. Since October 10, 2023, “families wiped out.” Generic info. Scant mention of causation or circumstances. Scant basic details such as identification of which families, or when, or where. Headlines like “strike on aid convoy” or “hospital bombed.” If you only read headlines, you have no idea that you’ve seen twenty-five headlines about the same one or two events, not twenty five separate events. And even if read the articles, you don’t fair much better because the details are just lacking. Obviously when Hamas uses cities, their own families and friends, as human shields, and war breaks out, entire families are going to be killed.

It seems very obvious to me that a mix of true and false “reports” falsely colored public opinion of the entire war, and continues to taint the basic facts. Before you know it, someone has their patriotism exploited and they go to Washington DC and self immolate trying to get their government to intervene on Hamas’s behalf. It’s called lawfare. It almost looks like it might be effective. It seems to have boiled down to Rafah. Will the lawfare provide enough cover for Hamas to survive the siege intact?

International law is based on custom and tradition, and most of all the circumstances. Present circumstances are unprecedented because Hamas has the most extensive tunnel warfare (read: human shield) operation in world history and a well established local customs and traditions of martyrdom (read: letting Hamas build tunnels under your house), and terrorism (read: operating entirely outside of international law while demanding its protection, whilst having an actual genocidal intent).

It seems very obvious to me that people who say Israel is commiting genocide or is an apartheid state are anti semitic or bad faith actors applying a double standard to Israel in order to sway opinion to their self interests, they are themselves anti semites, or they are basing their assessment on the aforementioned falsely colored factual circumstances, on lies and exaggeration, mixed with unfortunate truths.

Like, give me a break, apartheid? Israel has a Palestinian Supreme Court justice. He’s a citizen of Israel. People in Gaza are not citizens of Israel, obviously they don’t have the same rights of travel and protected legal status as people who are born or naturalized Israeli citizens. And still, apartheid is more than not just one group not having equal rights, it is the legal and political subjugation of the majority by the minority, sort of the opposite of democracy. That is the characteristic about apartheid that make it a crime against humanity, rather than merely run of the mill discrimination. South Africa didn’t have any black Supreme Court Justice during Apartheid, and they were not only citizens of South Africa but the majority.