Israel's Reality

In a strongly-worded statement released on Saturday, Mr Miliband said Mr Cameron had previously been "right to say that Hamas is an appalling terrorist organisation".

"Its wholly unjustified rocket attacks on Israeli citizens, as well as building of tunnels for terrorist purposes, show the organisation's murderous intent and practice towards Israel and its citizens," he said.

"But the prime minister is wrong not to have opposed Israel's incursion into Gaza and his silence on the killing of hundreds of innocents Palestinians civilians caused by Israel's military action will be inexplicable to people across Britain and internationally."

The situation in Gaza is "simply intolerable and must be addressed", Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond says.


Mr Hammond told the Sunday Telegraph the crisis in Gaza could become "an endless loop of violence".

"It's a broad swathe of British public opinion that feels deeply, deeply disturbed by what it is seeing on its television screens coming out of Gaza," he said.

"The British public has a strong sense that the situation of the civilian population in Gaza is simply intolerable and must be addressed - and we agree with them."

He said there "must be a humanitarian ceasefire that is without conditions", adding: "We have got to get the killing to stop."

many of these signs are clearly anti-Semitic with a few reading "the Holocaust was a hoax" and "American aid should be stopped immediately!" One Jewish leader was just on national TV saying many Americans did not distinguish between Jewish Americans and Israelis and anti-Semitism is now being demonstrated against the former with swastikas painted on homes in Jewish neighborhoods, cars and synagogues.

Speaking of war crimes, surely Hamas firing rockets at Israeli towns is a war crime?

So's collective punishment. Its a war crime. Yet IDF delivers it day after day.

I asked one man whether or not he felt safe. He said he thought the situation wasn't safe, but people were phoning him to ask whether or not they should come back. He was telling them they should.

He said the reason for that, in his own words, was: "I would rather die in my own home than in a UN school".

What good does it do for those in the areas designed to be attacked to go to UN Shelter or somewhere else when the place they go to be sheltered is bombed as well?

So you're comfortable with the collateral damage. They aren't after rocket launchers. They're removing housing for greater Israel.

What good does it do for those in the areas designed to be attacked to go to UN Shelter or somewhere else when the place they go to be sheltered is bombed as well? A man from the Gaza strip put it well.

There is no sanctuary against a determined and overly well armed aggressor for civilians.

Gaza's Civilian Casualties: The Truth Is Very Different

A Hamas military commander recounts on Palestinian TV how Israeli forces gave advance warning to him, to evacuate his home before bombing it. He goes on to describe how after the warning, he rushed to gather friends, family and neighbors on the roof of the building.
Two pictures showing Palestinian human shields gathered on buildings for which the Israel Air Force has given advance warning of a pending bombing.

Civilian to combatant casualty ratio in Gaza around 1:1

Israel has evidence that almost half of Palestinians killed in the 25-day-old Gaza war were combatants, its deputy foreign minister said on Saturday, pushing back against international allegations of a lopsidedly heavy civilian death toll.

Gazan human rights groups say at least 80 percent of the 1,669 Palestinians killed have been non-combatants, including hundreds of children. The U.N. Human Rights Council last week accused the Israelis of "disproportionate and indiscriminate attacks" and launched an inquiry into possible war crimes.

Other significant factors in the count include:

1. The statistics from the 'Palestinian Health Ministry' in Gaza come from Hamas and are therefore not reliable.

2. The statistics from the 'human rights council' counted anyone under the age of 18 as a civilian, whereas Hamas uses 16 and 17-year olds (and sometimes even younger children) as combatants. and even uses babies as human shields.

3. The more significant statistic in determining whether civilians or combatants are being killed is the male to female casualty ratio. The numbers I have seen for Operation Protective Edge put that at 3:1.

4. Israel's record is actually comparable or better than other Western countries.

According to a 2010 assessment by John Sloboda of Iraq Body Count, a United Kingdom-based organization, American and Coalition forces had killed at least 28,736 combatants as well as 13,807 civilians in the Iraq War, indicating a civilian to combatant casualty ratio inflicted by coalition forces of 1:2.[24] However, overall, figures by the Iraq Body Count from 20 March 2003 to 14 March 2013 indicate that of 174,000 casualties only 39,900 were combatants, resulting in a civilian casualty rate of 77%.[25]

The civilian casualty ratio for U.S. drone strikes in Pakistan is notoriously difficult to quantify. The U.S. itself puts the number of civilians killed from drone strikes in the last two years at no more than 20 to 30, a total that is far too low according to a spokesman for the NGO CIVIC.[26] At the other extreme, Daniel L. Byman of the Brookings Institution suggests that drone strikes may kill "10 or so civilians" for every militant killed, which would represent a civilian to combatant casualty ratio of 10:1. Byman argues that civilian killings constitute a humanitarian tragedy and create dangerous political problems, including damage to the legitimacy of the Pakistani government and alienation of the Pakistani populace from America.[27] An ongoing study by the New America Foundation finds non-militant casualty rates started high but have declined steeply over time, from about 60% (3 out of 5) in 2004-2007 to less than 2% (1 out of 50) in 2012. The study puts the overall non-militant casualty rate since 2004 at 15-16%, or a 1:5 ratio, out of a total of between 1,908 and 3,225 people killed in Pakistan by drone strikes since 2004.[28]


By the way, Britain's civilian-combatant ratio in Afghanistan was 3:1.

After Operation Cast Lead, Israel produced a 500-page report which, among other things, showed that it had killed mostly combatants (make sure to watch the video at that link). Subsequently, former Israeli Ambassador to the United Nations demolished the 'human rights council's investigation chairman, Richard Goldstone, in a debate (videos at this link) at Brandeis University, which I live-blogged. After that debate, Goldstone refused to debate anyone else (including Alan Dershowitz) about his report, and eventually he recanted the major accusations in the report - far too late.