There is an awful lot of rubbish talked about what is going on within Gaza during the current Israel/Hamas war. The Left and the Islamists along with the fellow travellers of these groups are basically doing no more than repeating, whether as slogans or their commentary, the propaganda put out by Hamas. We get from them the usual ‘genocide’ bollocks about the current state of the Gazans despite it being very clear that there is no genocide going on, it’s just the usual taqiyya and lies from the Left / Islamic alliance and should be ignored.

But what is really going on in Gaza with regards to civilian death tolls? Of course we have to admit that as this is a war zone and Israel is fighting an enemy that regularly uses civilians as human shields therefore there are bound to be civilian deaths. However what appears to me to be quite remarkable is the care that Israel is taking to avoid civilian deaths. We’ve not seen this sort of behaviour in other wars with other combatants and the result has been that civilian deaths make up a large proportion of death tolls.

The way that Israel is prosecuting what I believe to be a just and justified war against Islamic terrorists is being noticed by those with interests and skills in military history and those whose primary focus is on urban warfare.

One writer who has spoken up favourably about Israel’s conduct in this war is John Spencer who is an expert in urban warfare at West Point in the United States. He has detailed in his article for Newsweek magazine, some of the extreme lengths that the Israeli military is going to in order to protect civilians and they are doing so even if it puts the Israelis at somewhat of a temporary military disadvantage.

Mr Spencer said:

The Israel Defense Forces conducted an operation at al-Shifa hospital in the Gaza Strip to root out Hamas terrorists recently, once again taking unique precautions as it entered the facility to protect the innocent; Israeli media reported that doctors accompanied the forces to help Palestinian patients if needed. They were also reported to be carrying food, water and medical supplies for the civilians inside.

None of this meant anything to Israel’s critics, of course, who immediately pounced. The critics, as usual, didn’t call out Hamas for using protected facilities like hospitals for its military activity. Nor did they mention the efforts of the IDF to minimize civilian casualties.

In their criticism, Israel’s opponents are erasing a remarkable, historic new standard Israel has set. In my long career studying and advising on urban warfare for the U.S. military, I’ve never known an army to take such measures to attend to the enemy’s civilian population, especially while simultaneously combating the enemy in the very same buildings. In fact, by my analysis, Israel has implemented more precautions to prevent civilian harm than any military in history—above and beyond what international law requires and more than the U.S. did in its wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Having followed this war quite closely it’s clear to me that the Israelis are not behaving towards those civilians who have been endangered by their enemies as other nations might. Not for the Gazans the mass starvation and mass indiscriminate shelling that was the fate of those civilians who were trapped in places like Stalingrad and Leningrad in WWII. The Gazans have also not had to suffer the sorts of indignities and death meted out to the Vietnamese during the Vietnam War at the hands of often frightened US conscripts faced with an enemy that blended with the people a fear that made some US soldiers worryingly trigger happy if you believe some accounts. If you look at any major conflict where there is a large element of urban warfare and compare it to how Israel is prosecuting the Hamas War then you can see clearly that this war is different.

The Israelis are giving the sort of assistance to civilians that is almost unheard of in a war situation. The Israeli Defence Forces are also taking the sort of actions to keep civilians safe that would be almost unthinkable in either previous conflicts or by other armies in current ones.

Mr Spencer added:

Israel gave warning, in some cases for weeks, for civilians to evacuate the major urban areas of northern Gaza before it launched its ground campaign in the fall. The IDF reported dropping over 7 million flyers, but it also deployed technologies never used anywhere in the world, as I witness firsthand on a recent trip to Gaza and southern Israel.

Israel has made over 70,000 direct phones calls, sent over 13 million text messages and left over 15 million pre-recorded voicemails to notify civilians that they should leave combat areas, where they should go, and what route they should take. They deployed drones with speakers and dropped giant speakers by parachute that began broadcasting for civilians to leave combat areas once they hit the ground. They announced and conducted daily pauses of all operations to allow any civilians left in combat areas to evacuate.

Taking these actions has hampered the Israeli prosecution of this war because Hamas terrorists blend in with civilians when civilians are moved at the behest of the Israeli military. This makes it more difficult to do what needs to be done which is to kill every Hamas operative that can be found. But despite these military disadvantages the Israelis have done their utmost to keep civilians as safe as possible.

It’s absolutely impossible for there to be an urban warfare situation where there are zero civilian deaths. Civilian deaths can occur because there will always be a small proportion of civilians who for whatever reason refuse to leave the war zone and some will die because of the mistaken targeting by either offensive or defensive forces but Israel is doing its utmost to reduce the number of civilians who become collateral damage. Can you imagine other nations in the modern world taking the same approach as the Israelis have taken? If it was the Russians or the Chinese who had been subjected to something as monstrous as the 7/10 Pogrom then I doubt very much that these nations would care one jot about the civilians of the hostile nation. If a terrorist group had done to the Chinese or the Russians what Hamas did to Israelis then I’ve little doubt that the response from these two nations would be to make the land that the terrorists came from into a wasteland of dust and dead bodies.

We should all ignore the idiotic whining, dishonest claims and the incontinent emotional sperging out of the ‘pro-Palestinians’ and look at what is really happening in Gaza because what is happening in that place is a form of urban warfare that might influence how other conflicts elsewhere are fought in the future. The Israelis have gone way way beyond what should be expected of a civilised nation with regards to protect civilians and the Israelis should be praised for the way that they are fighting and not condemned.