The @Guardian lies to spin IDF soldiers as monsters - but they show that the @IDF remains the most moral army in the world

The Guardian really wanted to write a story about IDF abuses resulting in gratuitous civilian deaths. They interviewed many IDF soldiers who spoke under the condition of anonymity because they aren't supposed to speak to the press. 

While the British newspaper tries to spin their statements as proving Israel's wartime practices are awful, when you read what they actually say, they prove yet again that the IDF is the most moral army in history - and it is The Guardian' reporting that is immoral.

For example, the  newspaper  says:

Some had not seen Palestinian civilians at all, passing weeks in Gaza without encountering anyone other than small bands of Hamas militants. Others said they had been in close combat almost every day and considered those civilians who ignored Israeli instructions to flee as complicit with Hamas and thus legitimate targets. Those interviewed also expressed sympathy for civilians and said they had tried to help them.   

When you read the details, you see that the "legitimate targets" part was made up by the Guardian:

Some of the soldiers said that they considered any civilian who remained in the combat zone after being warned to leave as complicit, and several described fighting Hamas militants in the upper stories of apartment blocks while families sheltered on the ground floor, or even in the same house.

“What am I going to think? That they’re not supporters of Hamas? What are they doing there then? We should ship them all to Yemen, if [the Houthis] like them so much,” a special forces soldier said.

The soldier didn't say that anyone attacked the civilians. He didn't say that they were legitimate targets. He only said they were complicit - and they almost certainly were. Providing cover for terrorists and seemingly acting as voluntary human shields sure indicates that.  But no one they quoted supports the assertion that the IDF considered them legitimate targets. The special forces soldier was frustrated because they were obstacles to achieving a military objective, not as a military objective themselves. 

If they were legitimate targets, they would have called in an airstrike or artillery round to blow up the whole house rather than engage in a dangerous firefight. These soldiers endangered themselves to avoid killing the civilians.

It is a Guardian lie.

In other sections, the Guardian bends over backwards to validate Hamas lies about casualties. The newspaper tries to understand why none of the many soldiers they interviewed saw any dead civilians:

Several veterans said they had not personally seen women or children killed or wounded, despite both groups comprising the majority of Gaza’s victims, which is possibly a consequence of most of these casualties being inflicted by long-range artillery or airstrikes some distance from most ground troops.

 “You do see a lot of dead Hamas fighters, or men anyway. I didn’t see dead children or women and that helped a lot,” the NCO said.

This indicates that Hamas is lying about the majority of the victims being women and children, a claim that has not been corroborated by a single non-Hamas source - yet that claim is reported as fact by anti-Israel media like The Guardian.

Similarly, the newspaper makes the unfounded "suggestion" that the IDF uses massive firepower unnecessarily, and this kills many civilians. 

The interviews suggest that the soaring civilian death toll is at least in part due to Israel’s use of massive fire power to limit its own losses.

Yet the soldiers they quote on that topic prove the opposite. 

One soldier from the special forces Duvdevan unit said his unit had only encountered Hamas militants on three occasions during six weeks in north Gaza, from where the majority of civilians were ordered to evacuate early in the war.

When asked what tactics the unit employed in such situations, the soldier laughed.

“There are no tactics. We take some fire and identify a target. For an hour we unload everything we’ve got, our own weapons, tanks, anything we can get. Then we advance and find dead terrorists,” he said.

[Another] described how a relatively light injury to a fellow soldier triggered a “massive response”.

“We just took down the whole area where we thought the shooter was,” he said.

Not one civilian was identified as being killed in these two testimonies - but the Guardian says that the huge response to Hamas attacks is responsible for civilian deaths. Without a single shred of proof.

Moreover, the paper implies that a "relatively light injury" does not merit a serious response. What should the IDF do, wait until a soldier is killed before shooting back? A terrorist has revealed where he is; any army would ensure that he is neutralized - and in an area where the civilians have evacuated, the proper response to minimize risk to soldiers is to destroy the building the shooting came from. That is proportional under international law. 

Nothing in the laws of armed conflict proscribe these actions. Every army would do the same thing.

The most outrageous part was when one soldier says that IDF troops died for no reason to make Joe Biden and Anthony Blinken happy:

Another special forces soldier said that advances were “done properly” during the early stages of the war.

“We had everything we needed and all in the right order. First airstrikes and artillery, then the tanks, and only then the foot soldiers. By the time we got somewhere, there wasn’t much left,” he said.

The soldier said that more recently, following US pressure to minimise civilian casualties, tactics had changed. “Now the infantry are going in alongside the tanks and that’s why they are getting killed,” he said.

IDF soldiers are putting themselves in danger, and being killed, to please the US. That is sickening and damning. 

Even though these soldiers were interviewed anonymously, not one of them gave any indication of the IDF not performing its duties properly, fully in accordance with the laws of armed conflict. (If one did, we know the Guardian would have featured that testimony in paragraph 1.) Clearly the newspaper was hoping to find soldiers among dozens interviewed who would angrily claim that his commanders or comrades were wantonly shooting women and children, as Hamas and Hamas supporters claim happens daily.

They couldn't find one. 

On the contrary, every single soldier verified what the IDF has been saying throughout the war. In a place of chaos, where there are thousands of underground hiding places for terrorists, where civilians and civilian objects are cynically used by Hamas to protect terrorist lives, the IDF soldiers from all levels of the army all agree that they are performing professionally and superbly.

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