I wrote this on Reddit to argue against someone who suggested that Israel's response is justified, given that Hamas won an election. Here's what I responded:
There are several significant issues with your reasoning:
- Voting has never implied being responsible for the crimes of your government.
- There have not been elections since 2006. The Gaza Strip does not have a democratic system. This further challenges the argument that the population should pay some kind of price.
- Hamas won the elections by taking 74 of the 132 seats in parliament. This means that 60 seats were for non-hamas participants of these elections. Consequently, many people who are trapped in Gaza and want nothing to do with Hamas are being punished/killed.
- About 50% of the Gaza population is under 15 years of age. Attacking Gaza in this way should never have been on the table given these demographics.
In other words, the average voting age isn't too relevant.
Sorry maybe I sounded a bit harsh. I think we're on line here, but to be sure. I mean that the average voting age in 2006 could be an interesting detail when doing an analysis of the origins the current situation. So would other themes that played a role in the campaign before the election. I remember reading about this that the corruption of the alternative parties was an issue for voters too.
But when it comes to justifying huge numbers of civilian casualties, it's a pretty well established principle that civilians can never directly be held accountable with violence for the actions of their government. So that means that we don't need to engage with arguments about whether voters knew what they were getting into or any specifics about the election. Because doing so would be giving in to your opponent (in a hypothetical debate) and you'd be undermining your own position.
Maybe my points have the same problem. But since people who support the bombings don't seem to care about international law, I felt like these were a good second line of defence.