Israel is winning battles, but losing the PR war

Israel is militarily kicking Hamas’ collective asses. They have done  a severe number on a number of Hamas’ hangouts, has apparently reduced Hamas’ ability to hide in tunnel complexes so that their occupation of hospitals is more overt, and can willingly strike Hamas anywhere, and any time – which brings us to today. I thought of calling this one “The Fog of War”, but it entails more than that.

Seven staff members from World Central Kitchen, the Andrés-founded humanitarian aid group that has been frantically working to get food aid to Palestinians in war-wrecked Gaza, had been killed late Monday in airstrikes on their convoy near the town of Deir al Balah.

“There was a tragic case of our forces unintentionally hitting innocent people in the Gaza Strip,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Tuesday. “It happens in war — we are fully examining this.” LA Times

Happens. Unfortunately, even the best-intentioned people get killed in wars, just by being in the wrong place at the wrong time. It happens literally every war, whether we read about it or not. Collateral damage, civilian casualties, and they may have every man Jack of them been wonderful people, bravely helping others less fortunate. (Of course, had they not been there, they may have lived out March in peace – but thank God there ARE people like that in the world.)

What hurts is that this plays into the hands of the folks who loudly proclaim that Israel is the aggressor, they are evil, and that if they only would leave the Palestinians alone, no harm would have ever occurred to them. Usually these claims air like just before Yom Kippur in ’73, or June of ’67, or even October 6, 2023. But Israel is losing the War of the Big Lie, that they have killed almost 33,000 Palestinians, that 70% of them are non-combatant women and children, that they are targeting hospitals, that they shoot anything that moves. The world press trumpets this, and everyone with half a brain believes it. (Many actually have more than half a brain and don’t, but there are many, many half-wits.)

The World Health organization, which stayed silent on the October attacks against Israeli citizens but loudly condemns Israel targeting hospitals despite their status as refugee care centers –  ignore that:

…even as the Israel Defense Forces continued to engage with fighters from Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad, both U.S.-designated terror organization, who barricaded themselves inside the hospital’s maternity ward and emergency room and other places in the expansive center in Gaza City. “Hamas itself has admitted to using almost every hospital in Gaza, including Shifa Hospital,” Itamar Yaar, a former deputy head of Israel’s National Security Council, told Fox News Digital. “This information has been on the table for a long time.” Fox News

Or maybe see what an unbiased (by our standards) expert,  John Spencer, the world’s foremost authority on urban warfare. Chair of urban warfare studies at the United State Military Academy at West Point, he served as an infantryman for 25 years, including two combat tours in Iraq. He says:

…Spencer said, moving civilians out of harm’s way to an unprecedented extent and deploying “technologies never used anywhere in the world” to preserve life. This has included 70,000 telephone calls, 13 million text messages and 15 million voicemails warning people to evacuate by designated routes to safe areas.

Giant speakers have been dropped by parachute that begin broadcasting warnings once they touch the ground. Military maps have been handed out and tracking technology has been used to keep people safe. “Ironically, the careful approach Israel has taken may have actually led to more destruction,” Spencer pointed out, since by assisting Hamas it likely prolonged the war.

The credible casualty figures stand testament to these efforts. Gaining exact data is impossible, but the true ratio, Spencer concluded, is about 1 combatant to 1.5 civilians. By comparison, when Britain, the US and other allies destroyed Islamic State in Mosul in 2016-17, the ratio was about 1 to 2.5; and according to the UN and the EU, the global average is 1 to 9. “Given Hamas’s likely inflation of the death count, the real figure could be closer to 1 to 1,” Spencer wrote. “Either way, the number would be historically low for modern urban warfare.”

What madness has possessed us? We would never dream of trusting data from the Kremlin or Islamic State. The statistics coming out of Gaza are obviously bogus. A paper by three distinguished academics, published this week, found that “the casualty figures concerning women and children are statistically impossible”, at one point even involving “the statistical equivalent of the resurrection of over a thousand men”. The 70 per cent figure has been decisively debunked.  The Telegraph

Read the articles. Call out those who use the Big Lie.  Right now our politicians, and our media, is supporting that lie.

Category: Israel