-Killing (or otherwise physically harming) the innocent families of those -who commit hostile -acts is a mark of the most barbaric regimes in history, including the most -barbaric of all. It -is, of course, a war crime, and those who order, execute or recommend it -may find -themselves one day before the International Criminal Court at The Hague.
So is Hamas committing war crimes? The term war crimes is being thrown around with a bit of abandon. Civil wars are actually largely outside UN conventions on war crimes, except for the singular exception of genocide, and until Palestine is recognized as an independent state, all the legalese around "war crimes" is kind of misguided -- remember, they were going after Sharon only for his acts in Lebanon back in 1982 because of this basic international rule over war crimes.
One reason that civil wars have problems fitting into easy civilian/military target definitions is that such internal wars have a tendency to involve whole populations in the war, with no simple division between civilian and military actors. That is the basic logic of Hamas's terrorism and Schiff's response.
I happen to oppose both approaches, but not for the simplistic argument that civilians on each side have no responsibility for the murders of each respective population,which is demonstrably false, but because such terror just perpetuates a cycle of endless violence without exit for either side in the present Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
-- Nathan Newman