I understand the taking of enemy soldiers as hostages - because militaries often do that during times of war. You could argue taking Israeli men and women (who are also conscripted) could be a pre-emptive military strike - but the taking of the elderly and the children has no military basis at all.

The law on this is clear in the Geneva Convention. The OP suggests this was a military operation - that is not the case. Military operations do not leverage civilians - this would, by definition, be a war crime. And yes, sure Sun Tzu's Art of War is a good book - but it's application in 21st Century conflicts is problematic to say the last. Let us presume that I'm not a blithering idiot and I've read more than a single book. The left is tying itself into complicated knots over this - having made a knee-jerk guess at the oppessor/oppressed paradigm.

Real life is complicated. History is complicated. I do not condone what Israel is doing, but i'm not going to tie myself into semantic knots, trying to justify Hamas is anything other than a terrorist organisation. You can paint it as 'anti-colonial' if you want, but it is an outright moral failure of the left to adjust its position or to do what the OP here did.

There's history here if you fancy reading the complexity of the situation in more depth. https://medium.com/migration-issues/who-has-claim-3-000-years-of-religion-in-the-land-between-23f220a697f7

And if you want to find my thoughts then they're here. https://medium.com/me/stats/post/c386fbd78166

and here's me two years ago: https://medium.com/lucid-nightmare/why-i-havent-yet-weighed-in-on-the-israel-and-palestine-tensions-d866f7630b68