Protests against Netanyahu's Actions in Gaza

[Rev. Rye]

I wrote greetings on bombs -- "here's a big kiss from the G-man" and so on.

Weird that civilians would do that, though. Who let them on the flight-line -- or are they touring bombs for this shit?

I suspect the fact that, unlike most of America's bombing campaigns, the enemy is pretty close to home, geographically, it's probably easier for the civilians to get there. And especially given that Israel has a pretty extreme conscription law (Jewish, Druze, and Circassian males must serve 2 2/3 years in the IDF, and Jewish women must serve 2 years), it's likely that, if the bigger girl in the photo is actually a grown woman, this probably wouldn't be her first time in a military setting. And if they're kids, it probably won't be their last.

At any rate, it's become abundantly clear that, as far as the military forces in this conflict are concerned, the line between civilians and combatants has been pretty bloody thin. Hamas started this particular round off by massacring a trance music festival and openly declaring that, to them, a bunch of Israelis dancing like pricks to EDM are functionally the same as enemy combatants. Israel returned the favour by bombing the shit out of civilian targets in Gaza and claiming that Hamas was using them even when they plainly weren't. And given that most citizens of Israel either are, were, or will be a part of IDF, it's not too hard to imagine that this also applies to the in-group as well as the out-group.