Hamas is Responsible for the Destruction of Infrastructure in Gaza

The IDF warns civilians away from places about to be targeted, even when those warnings remove the element of surprise that is often the critical element in a military attack. The IDF is doing this again in Rafah. West Point Professor John Spencer explains how Israel has “created a new standard for urban warfare”: “Israel Has Created a New Standard for Urban Warfare. Why Will No One Admit It? | Opinion,” by John Spencer, Newsweek, March 25, 2024:

The UN, EU and other sources estimate that civilians usually account for 80 percent to 90 percent of casualties, or a 9:1 ratio [of civilians-to-combatants], in modern war (though this does mix all types of wars). In the 2016-2017 Battle of Mosul, a battle supervised by the U.S. that used the world’s most powerful airpower resources, some 10,000 civilians were killed compared to roughly 4,000 ISIS terrorists.

In Mosul, like Gaza a theatre of urban warfare where civilian casualties are at their highest, the Americans managed to bring the civilian-to-combatant ratio down from the 9:1 in most wars since World War II, to 5:2, which is still far higher than what the IDF has managed to achieve in Gaza. We should be celebrating the IDF’s successful efforts to bring down the number of civilian casualties, not maligning it, as so many are wont to do.

And yet, analysts who should know better are still engaging in condemnation of the IDF based on the level of destruction that’s still occurred—destruction that is unavoidable against an enemy that embeds in a vast tunnel system under civilian sites in dense urban terrain….

There has been great destruction of infrastructure in Gaza. It has been unavoidable, because the Hamas fighters hide themselves, their weapons, their command-and-control centers, and their rocket launchers, in and among civilian buildings and neighborhoods. Hamas deliberately embeds itself in places — apartment buildings, schools, mosques, hospitals — where there will be plenty of civilians. The IDF does what it can to minimize civilian casualties, but it must hit the Hamas fighters where they are, which means it has to hit civilian buildings after most of the civilians have left. That’s why so many buildings have been destroyed in Gaza: the Hamas fighters and their weapons are deliberately placed in and even under those buildings, If the IDF hits the tunnels in that 500-mile network underneath Gaza, their destruction inevitably leads to the buildings over them also collapsing.

An unavoidable consequence of the IDF’s warnings to civilians is that Hamas fighters, too, are forewarned, and while many will stand their ground, some may choose to escape to fight another day. This prolongs the war, but that is a price that the IDF is willing to pay if it saves civilian lives. Israel, of course, gets no credit for this. For all the denunciations of the Jewish state’s war of self-defense in Gaza, when have you ever heard any political leader or government official praise the IDF for the 1:1 ratio of civilian-to-combatant deaths it has managed to achieve?

John Spencer wants us to be mindful of the colossal efforts the IDF makes to warn Gazans, in sector after sector, from north to south in Gaza, so that they have time to move away from areas it is about to target, using millions of leaflets, millions of messages, millions of pre-recorded telephone calls. These warnings, of course, are not heeded just by civilians; Hamas operatives are being warned at the same time. Spencer reminds us that no other army in the history of warfare has warned its enemy of impending attacks. He explains that, even if we were to accept Hamas’ exaggerated figures on total casualties, and were to be very conservative in estimating the number of Hamas fighters killed by the IDF, we still arrive at a ratio of civilian-to-combatant deaths that is close to 1:1. This is a figure never achieved by any other army in the world.

The next time someone starts dilating upon those awful Israelis, killing so many “women and children,” pull out the figures above, explain why it is not the number of civilian casualties that matters most, but the ratio of civilian-to-combatant deaths, and make them understand that no army comes close to the IDF in its managing to keep that ratio at 1:1. That might shut some people up.