Tag Archives: civilian casualties

This Isn’t Really Surprising

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Israel is taking a long time to defeat Hamas. Part of that is due to their extreme concern to avoid civilian casualties–to the point of telling Hamas ahead of time where they will attack. Another part of the problem is America slow-walking our promised military equipment and the fact that the corruption in the Middle East is such that supporting terrorism can be lucrative. There is also the fact that Hamas knows that the longer the war goes on, the better their chances of winning the public relations war. And there are also numerous tunnel complexes that make fighting very difficult.

On Sunday, Breitbart reported:

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) announced Sunday that soldiers had uncovered a massive smuggling tunnel underneath the border between Gaza and Egypt in the area of Rafah — where the U.S. had cautioned Israel not to go.

How many countries are quietly undermining the Israeli war effort? We know that the Biden administration shares the goal of the Obama administration to increase the role of Iran in the Middle East and lessen the role of Israel.

The article concludes:

Prior to May, the Biden administration had warned Israel not to enter Rafah, even withholding weapons to pressure Israel to stay out of the area. Israel decided to enter Rafah anyway due to its strategic importance to the war against Hamas.

IDF control of the Philadelphi Corridor, which is a road along the border, has been at stake in recent negotiations with Hamas over a hostage-ceasefire deal. Hamas and the U.S. want Israel to cede control of the corridor, but Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been reluctant to give it up.

Control of the corridor allows the IDF to choke Hamas’s weapons supply; Israel does not trust Egyptian or U.S. guarantees to monitor the border effectively.

Israel is smart not to trust Egypt or the U.S.

 

Why There Are Civilian Casualties In Gaza

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On Tuesday, The Jewish News Syndicate reported that fifteen terrorists were killed on Tuesday in an Israeli air strike on a Hamas command center located in a United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) school in Nuseirat in central Gaza. Note that the command center was located in an UNRWA school. Hamas deliberately puts civilians at risk so that they can claim genocide by Israel.

The article reports:

Among those killed in the strike were members of Hamas’s Nukhba force who participated in the Oct. 7 massacre, according to the Israel Defense Forces.

The incident was yet another example of Hamas’s cynical use of Gaza’s civilians as human shields, according to the IDF.

“The Hamas terrorist organization systematically exploits international institutions and uses the civilian population as human shields in order to perpetrate terrorist attacks against the State of Israel,” said the military.

Throughout the war against Hamas, which is now in its seventh month, Israeli soldiers have found missiles and military gear hidden among U.N. relief supplies in Gaza.

Hamas’s use of UNRWA as cover has been known for a while.

The article notes:

In February, the IDF announced the discovery of a massive Hamas tunnel complex underneath UNRWA’s central headquarters in Gaza.

That same month, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told a visiting delegation of U.N. ambassadors that UNRWA had been “totally infiltrated” by the terrorist group.

Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant told journalists in February that the Jewish state had intelligence showing that 30 UNRWA employees took part in the Oct. 7 terror attack.

The article concludes:

Netanyahu called for the U.N. agency to be replaced.

“I think it’s time that the international community and the United Nations itself understand that UNRWA’s mission has to end,” he said.

“It has been in the service of Hamas [in] its schools and in many other things. I say this with great regret because we hoped that there would be an objective and constructive body to offer aid. We need such a body today in Gaza. But UNRWA is not that body. It has to be replaced by some organization or organizations that will do that job,” he added.

I think it is time for the United Nations to be disbanded.

As The Israeli War Continues

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As the war in Gaza continues, we need to remember what started the war and what was celebrated in Gaza when the war began. On Friday, The American Thinker posted an article that provides some perspective.

The article reports:

Among the heart-breaking scenes from the Middle-East are video reports showing civilian casualties of the current war.  In the West, we cringe at those images, especially the ones showing small children — dead, grievously wounded, or orphaned.

In Gaza, there seems to be little reciprocity of sympathy.  Newsmax reports that more than seventy percent of Gazans approve of the October 7 attack on Israel, in which more than 1,200 Israelis were killed, many by unspeakable torture.  More than eighty percent deny that the atrocities were committed, even after watching the videos sadistically, and boastfully, recorded by the terrorists themselves.  This reminds us of the self-contradiction that might be stated as “We did not commit the crimes, and we are glad that we did.”

This is a case of not cognitive dissonance, but rather moral depravity.  It is lethal hypocrisy.  In seeking to justify acts of evil, the evildoers soon discover that neither have they justification for them, nor do they need it.

Antisemites declare that every Jew should be killed.  The rest of us do not have that same genocidal fervor toward Palestinians.  While antisemites insist that there are no innocent Jews, sane people recognize that some Palestinians are indeed innocent of terrorism.  I recall a news item from years ago in which a Palestinian immigrant to the U.S. explained his reason for leaving his homeland: the people there are crazy, he said, and worse, they demand that all Palestinians join with them in their insanity.  We do not want that for our children.  We want them to live.

It should also be noted that the money given to create a self-sustaining economy in Gaza was instead spent on tunnels and weapons. Somehow the focus in Gaza has always been on killing Jews–even the kindergarten classes are involved (article here). As long as Arab children in Gaza are taught that martyrdom and killing Jews are a goal, there is no point in even considering a two-state solution. Gaza must be tightly controlled until that point (if it ever comes) when generational hatred is no longer the dominant way of thinking.

Both Sides Are Not Playing By The Same Rules

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I wonder if the people who are supporting Hamas understand that Hamas views their country’s civilians as shields in time of war and the enemy country’s civilians as legitimate targets. That has been illustrated by the attack on Israeli civilians on October 7th and Hamas’ use of their citizens as shields and for propaganda purposes.

On November 4th, The Washington Examiner reported the following:

Hamas has been holding up efforts to get Americans and other foreign nationals out of Gaza and into Egypt through the Rafah Border Crossing by putting its own wounded fighters on departure lists meant for Americans, dual citizenship holders, Palestinian civilians, and other foreign nationals, according to a senior Biden administration official.

Since Oct. 7, when Hamas first invaded Israel, people holding dual, American, or some other foreign citizenship have been trying to leave through Gaza’s southern border and into Egypt, but their efforts have been blocked by Hamas, who officials have said were making unreasonable demands in order to let them cross into Egypt.

The senior administration official provided insight into these demands during a background call with reporters on Friday. The official explained that Hamas provided the United States, Israel, and Egypt with multiple departure lists that included injured Palestinians who were wounded during the war and should be allowed to leave with Americans and other foreign nationals, which is not objectionable, the official said, but after vetting the individuals on the list, it showed many of them were injured Hamas fighters.

The review found that nearly a third of the wounded Palestinians on the first list were actually Hamas fighters and that it would be unacceptable to allow them to exit Gaza, the official said. While the administration would be happy to let injured Palestinian civilians out of Gaza, they just couldn’t let Hamas fighters leave on the departure list.

A deal was eventually worked out to let civilians (not fighters) exit the Gaza Strip, but this is an example of how Hamas is fighting this war. Israel is doing its best to limit civilian casualties, but when civilians are used to shield rocket launchers, there will be casualties.

Some Perspective

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History tells us that after terrorists attack Israel, there will be a short period of support for Israel followed by requests for a ‘measured’ response by Israel. Somehow the terrorists are never held accountable for their lack of a ‘measured’ response.

On Tuesday, Breitbart posted an article about some comments made on CNN by the Israeli Defense Forces spokesman.

These are the comments:

…IDF Spokesman Jonathan Conricus noted that by telling Gazan civilians to evacuate to the south, “we have just advertised our intentions” but Israel engaged in this move, even though it’s not generally a smart military strategy, “Because we want civilians out of fighting, and we don’t want them to be killed.

Conricus stated, “It is generally not wise for a military to be advertising its intentions. And we are aware of the fact that we have just advertised our intentions by telling civilians in northern Gaza to go south. Why have we done that? Because we want civilians out of fighting, and we don’t want them to be killed. So, there’s a balance here between achieving a military objective and minimizing civilian damage, and, in this case, which is very evident, and you cannot argue with it, we have chosen to — the sanctity of life and helping Palestinian civilians to go south and not be stuck in an area where there will be significant combat activities. There is a risk and we will have to mitigate this risk with the tactics, the weapons, and the time that we use, when and if we’ll operate. There is tremendous desire in Israel to see Hamas defeated, to see the scourge and the terror gone from Gaza, but Israelis, of course, also want the IDF to operate smartly and in a way that doesn’t expose our troops to undue danger in an environment that already is amongst the most dangerous on any battlefield.”

Unfortunately Hamas will do everything it can to make sure civilians are killed–even to the point of faking news reports and articles. There have already been pictures of victims of a war in Syria circulating as civilian casualties in Gaza. Be aware that propaganda is as much a part of a war in the Middle East as the actual fighting.

Avoiding Moral Equivalency

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On Thursday, The Washington Examiner posted an article cautioning Americans to beware of moral equivalency in the war between Israel and Hamas.

The article notes:

Israel’s bombing campaign in Gaza is brutal and devastating, and some very large X, formerly Twitter, accounts are saying that hundreds of Palestinian children have been killed. This is awful, and if true, it’s tempting to lump Israel’s killing of Palestinian women and children into the same category of evil as Hamas’s killing of Israeli women and children on Saturday. But that would be a grave moral error.

At the same time, some of Israel’s defenders make a different moral error. They point to the depravity and evil of Hamas’s terrorist attacks and the wanton murder and rape of Israeli innocents and suggest that Israel is justified to use any means it wants to eliminate Hamas or at least its ability to kill Israeli Jews. This view ignores crucial moral distinctions.

The first moral distinction is about intention. Hamas planned its invasion so as to kill as many defenseless Israeli civilians as possible. It stormed a music festival to kill everyone there and sent death squads into kibbutzim. This was the deliberate murder of innocents, including children, which is evil beyond words. Hamas’s slaughter of Jewish children is made more evil by the ethnic animus behind it and the presumed intention to spark a broader war in the Middle East.

To the extent that the Israeli bombing of Gaza kills Palestinian children, it’s a different sort of evil, and very likely a defensible, necessary evil. (I’m writing in generalities because we don’t have many confirmed reports on Israel’s tactics and strategies.) If you bomb the location of a terrorist cell or rocket depot, but your bombs also kill civilians, that is not deliberate targeting of civilians, it is collateral damage — a regrettable, anticipated, but unintended consequence of necessary military actions.

Israel does not have a duty to avoid all collateral damage. It would be impossible to reduce Gaza civilian deaths to zero, given that Hamas is known to put military resources in schools and hospitals.

Expect the media to make a big deal out of civilian deaths in Gaza. However, the Israeli Defense Forces have warned civilians to leave targeted areas. Hamas has prevented them from leaving. The difference is seeing civilian casualties as the high cost of war and seeing civilian casualties as useful propaganda tools. It should also be noted that Gaza has never built civilian bomb shelters. Israel has them throughout the country. That is the difference in the attitudes of the leaders of the two countries.