“To understand how remarkable the accusations against Israel are, one needs to know about how other countries fight wars”
To understand how remarkable the accusations against Israel are, one needs to know about how other countries fight wars. It is never sterile. Especially in urban combat, civilian casualties are unavoidable — and not illegal. Take some recent examples.
The Battle of Mosul in 2016 involved an effort by a US-led coalition to flush out a few thousand remnants of ISIS from a major city in northern Iraq. The nine-month battle began with the imposition of a siege and ended with nearly 10,000 civilians dead — more than the numbers of ISIS fighters that had been in the city. The entire town was reduced to rubble and its population displaced primarily by US-led aerial bombardment. A similar fate befell Raqqa in Syria. In Gaza, by comparison, the civilan casualty rate is about 13% — despite Hamas’s embedding of their entire military apparatus under civilian facilities.
Yet President Biden insists — Raqqa for me, but no Rafah for thee.
Israel, perversely, stands accused of genocide, though there are no allegations of Israel intentionally striking civilian targets. Rather the complaint is that Israel permits “disproportionate” civilian casualties in strikes on legitimate Hamas targets. Yet the ratio of combatant-to-civilian casualties is between 1:1 and 1:2 — far better than ratios of 1:3 or more in similar conflicts by other Western countries. Denunciations of Israel’s conduct amount to saying that the Jewish state is not allowed to effectively defend itself.
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