Thursday, May 27, 2021
Elder of Ziyon
In eleven days, Israel hit more than 1500 terror targets in a heavily populated area.
How many people would normally be killed in such an operation? 3000? 6000? A single bomb could easily kill scores of people.
But the numbers seem to indicate that roughly 300 were killed by Israel, of which 200 were terrorists.
Assuming those numbers hold up, this will be an unprecedented achievement in avoiding civilian casualties in a largely urban warfare environment.
Never in history has any war where the terrorists deliberately place their targets among civilians resulted in a lower civilian to fighter ratio of deaths. And as tragic as civilian deaths are, most of the civilians were killed because they were near high value legitimate targets.
Under Geneva, civilians do not shield legitimate targets, unless their loss is not proportionate. The rules on proportionality depend on the opinion of a "reasonable military commander" given his intel available at that moment.
So as regrettable as the death of civilians are, it is legal and part of war. If a Hamas commander is with his family, Israel has every right under international law to attack the house he is in, even if his family will undoubtedly get killed. This is what happened with Iyad Fathi Sharir, commander of the Hamas anti-tank missile unit, who was killed along with his wife, teenage and toddler daughters.
Israel is literally the model for avoiding unnecessary civilian deaths. It spends millions on ensuring that the strikes are as accurate as possible, in sizing weapons to be big enough to kill the target but small enough to minimize damage to surrounding families. It requires incredible intelligence and a deep knowledge of Gaza, of the targets, and of international law. For better or worse, Israel probably has the most experience in understanding and interpreting the laws of armed conflict of any nation.
Despite this, Israel is vilified as the worst human rights abuser in the world.
No matter that its critics cannot point to any time in history that an army did better at avoiding civilian casualties. That is all irrelevant. Even though this war caused fewer deaths than the 2014 war, the protests were much more numerous and the media coverage was much more negative.
In reality, those who are protesting so energetically against Israel would protest just as much if the death count was 999 Hamas terrorists and one civilian. They would say that Israel killed a thousand innocent people anyway.
Israel tries to minimize the number of people killed on both sides. The terrorists try to maximize the number of people killed on both sides. The supposed "peace" groups who hold up photos of dead Gazan kids agree with Hamas - they love dead Gaza kids. They make wonderful props.
Israel cares more about those kids than these hypocrites do.
Similarly, Israel's critics want to see more Jews killed. That is the only possible reason they keep a scorecard of how many were killed on each side - because they want to say that not enough Jews dying is unfair.
Dead civilians only help Hamas and people who support Hamas. Israel has no interest in killing kids. Israel certainly does not want to kill reporters, as "human rights" leaders accused. People accusing Israel of targeting civilians are Jew-hating liars. It is not easy to drop 1500 bombs and not to kill thousands of people.
And yet, the world media cannot ferret out simple facts.
How hard would it be to find a retired high ranking US or European military officer and ask them whether they think Israel acted inappropriately? How hard would it be to ask them how Israel could have avoided more casualties? Or, even to ask their opinion of the ludicrous notion, published in major media, that Israel should just allow thousands of rockets to be shot at Israeli citizens and pray that Iron Dome does its job?
Not one reporter bothers. Because they support the anti-Israel meme, not the truth.
It isn't paranoia when the world really is against you.
Israel will continue to act as morally as possible - securing the lives of both its citizens and the civilians of its enemies - no matter what others say and lie. It would be so easy to say that they will make up lies anyway, why bother working so hard to minimize casualties?
But Israel doesn't think that way. Instead, right now, Israeli military leaders are looking at the results, learning from any mistakes, and trying to reach the unreachable goal of only killing terrorists and no one else in the next, inevitable war.
And that's the way it will always be.
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