They aren’t innocent people. They are all part of a massive terrorist enterprise and there is nothing immoral about defense by force. It doesn’t matter if the number of enemy combatants is 4 million or 100 million, Israel has the right to take out anyone coming at them. So, I don’t see why you think repeating that number over and over is going to help your case.
P.S. I’m not a religious Zionist. As you would know if you hadn’t just created an account here for your university newspaper piece, I generally fall on the anti-Zionist, chareidi side of the fence religiously. I argue with Avi all the time on the CR. This might be hard for you to grasp as a goy, but those of us with that shittah aren’t opposed to the medina because we love Hamas. We still hate anyone who wants to kill the Jewish people as any real Jew should.
War is never pretty. Do you think WWII would have ended without the allies bombing the daylights out of Berlin? And, by the way, the civilian casualties there were probably ACTUALLY innocent, unlike your beloved Muslims.