Thursday, July 17, 2025
Elder of Ziyon
The executive summary is available here in English.
It is excellent. It is not a whitewash - it criticizes the IDF at times and notes apparent war crimes by individual soldiers. But it comprehensively debunks the idea that the IDF and Israel are intentionally targeting civilians, let alone waging genocide.
So, of course, it is being ignored in the media.
The report has eight chapters, each of which destroys the anti-Israel libels.
Chapter 1 examines accusations of the deliberate starvation of Gaza’s civilian population. it shows that the statistics given by the UN of truckloads of food to Gaza before the war are faulty and in fact sufficient aid has been entering Gaza. I am not sure if it addresses distribution issues where parts of Gaza may not be getting the food required, but it is obvious that there is no deliberate policy of starvation, as has been repeated over and over.
Chapter 2 gives context for understanding Israel’s military actions during the war, particularly the challenges of urban warfare. It notes that any analysis of IDF actions without describing Hamas' own strategy is as crazy as analyzing a boxer's moves while digitally erasing his opponent. This chapter gives hard evidence of Hamas' human shields strategy, including numerous quotes from Hamas leaders and captured documents that not only embrace the strategy for defensive purposes but also that welcome civilian deaths and damage because they believe that this unifies Gazans against Israel.
Chapter 3 provides an analysis of claims regarding deliberate killings of civilians. Out of the 50,000 deaths listed by the Gaza health ministry in March 2025, only 61 has any evidence of deliberate targeting - and even some of those were from unreliable witnesses. even many of those were of civilians who re-entered zones that the IDF had cleared of civilians. The report doesn't deny any war crimes: it assumes that every war will have some and those must be investigated, but there is no evidence that they are widespread in Gaza.
Moreover, the report says "no credible forensic evidence has been provided to substantiate claims of close-range mass killings of civilians or executions of helpless noncombatants." It shows that volunteer doctors are lying when they claim Israel was targeting children with sniper guns on drones, a technology Israel does not have. They also do not seem credible when they claim to have never seen Hamas fighters in hospitals when others, including Israeli captives, confirm their presence.
Chapter 4 investigates allegations that Israel systematically violated the principles of distinction and proportionality in its strikes on the Gaza Strip. It analyzes Israel's use of "dumb bombs" and AI as well as safer (not safe) zones for Gazans that Hamas continued to operate from. I found no violations of international laws on distinction and proportionality.
Chapter 5 critically reviews Gaza Health Ministry (GMOH) data and manipulations.
Chapters 6 through 8 describe how UN agencies, humanitarian organizations, and major media outlets cannot accurately assess the humanitarian situation in closed societies under oppressive regimes such as Hamas, and how they cannot credibly distinguish between civilian and military casualties in those situations. The report shows how these supposedly objective sources consistently fail in their methodologies and do nothing to correct their methods even when they admit they were wrong (like parroting Hamas' false "70% of casualties are women and children.")
The report also situates the conflict within a broader geopolitical context, noting Iran’s role in arming and directing Hamas as part of a strategy to destabilize Israel. Hamas’s actions align with this agenda, making Israel’s response a defensive necessity rather than a genocidal campaign. The authors argue that Israel’s measures, such as warnings and evacuation routes, demonstrate efforts to mitigate civilian harm, despite their military disadvantage and Hamas’s exploitation of these efforts.
There is also a detailed analysis of a startlingly similar situation in Iraq in the 1990s. the Iraqi Health Ministry, under Saddam Hussein, gave out false casualty figures to researchers who publicized that child mortality had skyrocketed during the war. It took years before the truth came out that the ministry had manipulated the data, but the retractions by the researchers were barely covered in the media which has sensationalized the original accusations.
And we see the same thing today. This report is a detailed dismantling of the narratives that the media and NGOs are pushing. It was published July 9. Yet there has been no news coverage of this report in English so far!
The media chooses which stories are likely to get them eyeballs, and a report that shows that they were wrong for the past two years is not something they want to publicize - to protect themselves. So no reporters are digging through it to see if they need to correct previous stories, no NGOs are reflecting on the findings and seeing how they can fix their own procedures to forestall any future mistakes.
Israel bashing is a business model, and reports like this can hurt business.
(h/t Irene)
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"He's an Anti-Zionist Too!" cartoon book (December 2024) PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022) |
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