It's a messed up thing that happened, an atrocity. And Hamas is an evil organization. But go to Reddit and you can see people cheering in every article about Gaza being bombed, even if it's about innocents being killed. Is that so different from the oft-cited incident where people were celebrating in the street after the attack? It all comes from the same place: dehumanization of your opponent.

> It's not the same thing, comparing this intentional attack to unintentional breaks of discipline or accidents in military contexts seems insane in my mind.

When the military orders civilian infrastructure to be bombed, they know that innocents will die. It is a certainty. And yet they get to write it off as "collateral damage." I could argue it's a distinction with very little difference. It just so happens that one form of violence is societally acceptable while the other is not. "Law of war" is a comfortable lie we tell ourselves to avoid facing war's true human toll, but in the end, it's all still bodies in the rubble.