From Ian:
Defense experts back IDF’s 2014 Gaza campaign, claim critics are invoking wrong set of laws
Defense experts back IDF’s 2014 Gaza campaign, claim critics are invoking wrong set of laws
Armies of the world would be rendered far less effective if they were forced to operate under the same restrictions as the IDF during last summer’s Gaza campaign, a group of former military and defense leaders from nine countries claim in a new report released Friday.High Level Military Group report contradicts UK media narrative on #Gaza War
Following a months-long investigation into the 50-day conflict, the High Level Military Group — made up of retired generals and defense officials from Germany, Colombia, India, Spain, Australia, the United States, France, the United Kingdom and Italy — found that Israel not only abided by the laws of armed conflict, but far surpassed their requirements, despite damning reports by the UN and non-governmental organizations that accused the IDF of potential war crimes.
The group had already defended Israel’s actions in the Gaza Strip earlier this year, submitting their preliminary findings to the UN Human Rights Commission’s probe into the operation, but the group’s final 80-page report goes far beyond their initial assessment.
“Our findings were diametrically opposed to the UN report,” Col. Richard Kemp, one of the document’s authors and the former commander of British forces in Afghanistan, told The Times of Israel on Thursday, blasting the lack of military expertise by the United Nations commission that investigated the conflict. “The UN report was done too quickly and was done by the wrong people.”
If you were to base your conclusions about the 2014 war between Israel and Hamas solely on reports in the British media, you’d possibly believe that not only did the IDF fail to take adequate precautions to avoid civilian casualties, but that it may have even targeted Palestinian children.Col. Richard Kemp: Royals must be allowed to pay respects in Israel
So one-sided was the coverage, and so lacking in necessary context when reporting on civilian deaths, that the vast moral asymmetry between Hamas fighters who cynically placed their own civilians in harm’s way and the IDF who took unprecedented measures to minimize civilian deaths eluded most observers.
Those who have, until now, rejected such Israeli ‘claims’ as merely representing propaganda will have a difficult time dismissing a new 80 page report by international military experts which concluded that Western armies would be rendered far less effective if “forced to operate under the same restrictions as the IDF”.
The months-long investigation into the war by the High Level Military Group (HLMG), made up of retired generals and defense officials from nine countries, concluded that Israel not only abided by the laws of armed conflict, but far surpassed their requirements.
Israel’s “knock on the roof” technique, telephone calls and leaflets dropped warning non-combatants to leave the area of impending attacks and missions canceled due to possible civilian casualties represented a far higher level of restraint than other Western armies, the report concluded.
Letter published in The Sunday Telegraph, 13 December 2015.
SIR – Your article “The Royals and a long line of snubs to Israel” raises a troubling problem, and one that must be urgently resolved for reasons that go beyond the political.
The ban on royal visits to Israel dates back to the end of the British mandate and the creation of the State of Israel in 1948, which humiliated the Foreign Office, frustrating its carefully crafted plans over three decades to deny the Jewish homeland that had been promised by the Foreign Secretary, Arthur Balfour, in 1917.
The reason was a desire to appease and inveigle the Arab countries, all of which opposed the creation of the Jewish state, in order to gain influence over them and their oil. Also tied up in this in the late Thirties was the legitimate intent to prevent an Arab alliance with the Nazis, which failed.
The Foreign Office continues to harbour a deep-seated resentment towards Israel, refusing to allow a royal visit until the Jewish state changes its policies.
In two years we will see the centenary of the liberation by British forces under General Allenby of the Holy City of Jerusalem. A total of 16,000 British and Commonwealth soldiers died in the Palestine Campaign – the second largest theatre of operations of the First World War.
Will the Foreign Office prevent royal attendance at the centenary commemoration of the war in Palestine? Will it allow its grudge against Israel to deny British soldiers who fell fighting for the Crown there an equal honour to that bestowed on their comrades in arms at Gallipoli this year, when both the Prince of Wales and Prince Harry were present?














