<Of course you realize that terrorists locate themselves and their bomb factories in densely populated civilian neighborhoods for just this reason. What do you do then?

Go in and take it down. Minimum force will always apply. You do not blow up a block of residences to take out a plant, I don't care what it's producing. You move in, on foot if you have to. This alerts the bad guys, true. It also alerts the population that it's time to move to safer ground.

On the other hand, if we had located him in an apartment in Paris, would we then fire a missile at the apartment block? Don't think so. Don't even think we would pop him with a bullet under those circumstances. How about if we found him in downtown Kabul, which is now supposedly on our side? How about a village in Pakistan, which is outside the designated Afghanistan battle zone? Would it be okay if the Pakistan air force did it?

No.

God knows we obliterated hundreds of thousands of civilians in earlier wars by carpet bombing cities containing military targets. There was no better way to do it then, although maybe sneaking in thousands of secret agents to individually blow up each munitions factory (preferably after everyone had gone home and the agents had knocked out the janitor and dragged him to a safe distance) would have been a more humane solution.

Use the minimum force required to subdue/capture/kill the objective. There were many level available to Israel: from merely surrounding the block and stopping Shehadeh’s escape and negotiating his capture; through prisoner exchange and rooftop sniper; up to and including their final decision, which was to simply blow up the complex. They chose nothing but maximum force.

This, Tom, is referred to in history books as a war crime.

Dan