If your enemy is literally hiding behind children, you don't say, "My enemy made me kill children." You say, "I couldn't kill my enemy, because there were children in the way."

Unless, of course, you don't think the children are really human in the way that your children are human.

That killing other people's children is necessary to protect your own children is an attractive belief to many people. Israel killed more than 2,000 Palestinian children in the 21st century prior to October 7; did that keep its children safe?