Given the intent with which those rockets were launched, I think a ‘heavy handed response’ is still called for.
Well, they took out a dozen or so Hamas operatives including one of their ‘field commanders’ or whatever title he had. They took out the Hamas “police headquarters” building. And they took out an apartment building - but gave the residents 30 minutes notice to evacuate. Presumably it was some kind of storage depot or military value to Hamas.
I recall reading years ago, the IDF drop thousands of rubber pellets onto the roofs of the areas they are going to bomb. The people inside hear them bouncing off the roof and that is their warning. Makes me think about another thing I read about the pre-state times when the Jewish Nationalists bombed the hotel that was the British military HQ. They called ahead to give a warning, but the British thought it was a hoax or something. It was where the Brits had stored most of their files on the Jewish national leaders etc so it had military value and though operated as a hotel, it was also largely a military target.
You don’t intentionally target civilians and I think Israel abides by that despite the leftist rhetoric. In contrast, the Hamas and their cohorts intentionally target civilians, discos, restaurants, buses, synagogues etc. They also use their own civilians as human shields putting weapons caches in hospitals and schools and the like. All war crimes.
There is something else going on here though. I can’t say I put my finger on it exactly, but I got that finger pointing at Iran.