This is the type of excuse that people look for when they want to deflect responsibility. No matter how implausible or unevenly applied.
The fact is, everyone has civilian infrastructure close to military bases. Israel's IDF headquarters is famously located in central Tel Aviv. Do you use the verb "squeal" when the Israelis lament an attack?
In my hometown in Western Europe military barracks are scattered everywhere among houses, schools and hospitals. Is this a hideous plot to make the enemies (Russians, presumably) look bad when they nuke a hospital instead of a military installation?
If it's used as an excuse, yes. We should be able to hit military compounds next to schools without hitting the schools as well.
If it's offered as a description, I don't think it's in bad faith. Putting barracks among hospitals and putting them underneath them are different. To my knowledge, Iran hasn't been directly doing the latter. But its proxies have, and we now have allegations rockets are being fired from residential buildings.
All of that combines to make it more likely schools will be bombed. Intentionally, because the other side's behaviour creates a convenient excuse for bombing just about anything. Or even accidentally, because intelligence thought they saw a commander go into the school and assumed it was a clandestine command post.
It was obviously in bad faith because it was used to paint one side as particularly evil for something that is perfectly normal.
> Putting barracks among hospitals and putting them underneath them are different. ... its proxies have
This, besides being of absolutely no relevance here (and therefore only brought in as a way to paint one side as particularly evil) is another unproven allegation by Israel, that used it repeatedly to strike hospital and destroy most civilian infrastructure in Gaza (even in the already conquered parts- demolished with explosives, exactly like the Nazis did in Warsaw).
There is substantial evidence Hamas stored munitions in hospitals and at schools. One hospital in particular has long been notorious for dual use issues [1].
We don't yet know if Iran is doing this. (There are allegations. But not yet substantiated.) But if a source is confused about whether Hamas waged war from hospitals and schools, it's not a reliable source for this war.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alleged_military_use_of_al-Shi...
For the hospital in the current war, sources are broader than that. When I last looked, German, Indian and Chinese languages sources were concluding similarly to the U.S.
Go back to 2014 and it’s pretty much agreed across the board that hospitals were being used for military purposes. (And torture.) I suspect we’ll see similar clarity once the fog of war burns off, and I say that while acknowledging that it implicate Israel.
Those of us who would prefer not to see schools get bombed.
Like, you have a point. Iran hasn't been playing by international law since basically its founding. America flirted with the idea of blowing off international law before fully committing to the bit in 2025, joining Russia, China and Israel. So we have a theatre where those limits don't apply.
That doesn't mean we shouldn't argue they should, or ask if Iran would have been better off playing by the rules.
If Iran hadn't engaged in war crimes since the 1980s, including but not limited to restraining itself from supporting Hamas, before and after its October 7th attacks, chances are it wouldn't be at war right now.
That isn't a satisfying answer. But part of why we have these norms is to reduce the sort of cross-contamination of belligerence that occured in the lead-up to each of the Napoleonic Wars, WWI, WWII and then the Cold War.
Wanting to kill one guy really, really bad is not really a justification for killing children.
It shouldn't be. But historically it has been.
The world tried, once after the Napoleonic Wars and again after WWII, to establish the norm that it isn't. But the norms were rejected first in parts and then wholesale in WWII. And then, again, in parts during and after the Cold War and then altogether with Russia into Ukraine, Israel being Israel, China going on about Taiwan and now America under this regime.
Put another way, if you choose to engage in war today, you're going wind up killing children.
I assume you're fine when those children are Israeli then. And Hamas or Iran are the killers.
It's guerilla tactics. Not what nation states are supposed to do.