Civilians make up 61% of Gaza deaths from airstrikes, Israeli study finds

I will address one point you made regarding a misunderstanding about what the international law says about war in and around hospitals. You state the following:

Hamas commits war crimes by storing weapons in schools and hospitals and mosques, and when the Israeli military is "forced" to bomb those schools and hospitals and mosques, it's totally fine and not a war crime and actually justified and also a terrible tragedy that is entirely Hamas' fault.

Hospitals are protected, but not under all circumstances. Hamas’ use of hospitals to stage acts of war means that hospitals can be valid locations of military operations under certain circumstances. See the head ICC prosecutor’s comments:

in relation to every dwelling house, in relation to any school, any hospital, any church, any mosque – those places are protected, unless the protective status has been lost because they are being used for military purposes.

From: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/nov/17/can-hospitals-be-military-targets-international-law-israel-gaza-al-shifa

what you're calling an "ad hominem" I would simply call "evaluating the source of a piece of writing". it's one of the foundational techniques of media literacy.

I would argue that evaluating a piece of writing should extend to more than just the byline. The more important part is the actual content.

so in the first paragraph, it's made clear that it's not just Hamas, it's also mosques.

This is whataboutism -- is this relevant to the argument that Hamas is intentionally putting civilians in harm's way? Any other reasons that Palestinians have are irrelevant, since the only point I am concerned with is Hamas' motivations -- which is gaining human shields, to make the invasion more difficult and to gain sympathetic press coverage due to civilian deaths.

people who listened to the Israeli military and fled northern Gaza into southern Gaza are now being told to flee southern Gaza.

Of course, since Israel intends to sweep the entire territory of Gaza. There should have been no expectation that they would be asked to move only once, so I'm unclear on what the point being made here is.

"forced to respond" is an interesting choice of words. "Hamas chooses" but "the IDF is forced to".

Yes, Israel is forced to respond since not responding will inevitably and immediately lead to more Israeli deaths. There's no meaningful choice here.

On the other hand, Hamas does not have to murder festival goers. There's no universe where their choice to commit this terrorist attack results preventing Palestinian deaths. Hamas was not forced to do this in any sense.

a single Israeli Merkava tank costs $6 million USD. Israel has 360 of them and another 300 more on-order. and that's just of the latest version, the Mark IV.

the Israeli Air Force has 39 F-35 fighters at a cost of $110 million per aircraft as of 2015

but gosh, Hamas spent $90 million (according to estimates from the Israeli military) building tunnels and that shows how bloodthirsty they are, at the expense of the civilian needs of their population.

This is apples to oranges. This figure of $90m covers a mere 32 tunnels -- At its peak, almost 2,500 tunnels running underneath the Egyptian border were used to smuggle in commercial goods, fuel and weapons by Hamas and other militant groups., and doesn't even get into the amount of money being spent on weapons. It's worth noting that the amount being spent on attacking Israel is even more significant when we consider the relative low economic output of Gaza. The diversion of the economy into pointless attacks on Israel is an even greater disservice to the Palestinians when placed in the context of their available cashflows.

do you agree with Stephens on this point?

Is my personal opinion relevant to the argument?