Israel's army is actually doing a phenomenal job.

This is what mainstream media will not tell you about the amazing work that the Israel Defense Forces is doing to simultaneously protect civilians and eliminate pitiful, cowardly terrorists.

IDF Chief Herzi Halevi (right) in a meeting (Israel Defense Forces/X)

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The cries for Israel to end its response to the Hamas-led Palestinian terror attacks on October 7th are growing by the hour.

Politicians and bureaucrats across the world have been explicitly and implicitly faulting Israel for the humanitarian “crisis” in Gaza. For months, we have incessantly heard about impending death by thirst, famine, and all kinds of other fabrications — none of which came true, so there is no fair reason to believe that current and future propaganda-driven “estimations” will be credible.

This is not to say that Israel’s operations throughout Gaza — again, in response to October 7th — have not resulted in some death and destruction. Of course they have. This is war. To those unaccustomed to it, welcome to the show. No one promised it would be pretty, notwithstanding the Hamas-led terror attacks that resulted in 1,200 deaths and 250 people kidnapped in a single day.

However, the Israel Defense Forces on the whole are doing an unbelievable, unprecedented job considering the circumstances of urban warfare in a densely populated region.

If anything, the IDF and its team members, such as the Shin Bet (the Israeli version of the FBI), should be given a five-minute standing ovation, first for the humanitarian measures they have implemented in Gaza, including:

• Assisting Gazans with evacuations and protecting humanitarian corridors with tanks and soldiers

• Delivering tons of aid to the strip’s hospitals

• Agreeing to inspect more aid and opening an additional border crossing for it

• Taking a plethora of precautions before and during airstrikes

There was a remarkable report several weeks ago in Israel’s largest newspaper, Yediot Ahronot, which said that, just days after the October 7th attacks, an American three-star Marine Lieutenant General showed up in Israel to advise the Jewish state on its strategy in Gaza.

A ground operation, the Americans said, was too costly and not worth the squeeze. They predicted a dire 20 Israeli soldier deaths per day, which would have amounted to 3,580 dead Israeli soldiers as of writing. In reality, the actual number is approximately 1.5 per day.

Meanwhile, on the Palestinian side, Israel has achieved an unworldly combatant-to-civilian casualty ratio, which is believed to be approximately one-to-one — and that is if you accept Hamas’ numbers (which have been proven mathematically impossible). For reference, the international average is a nine-to-one combatant-to-civilian casualty ratio according to the UN.

John Spencer, an urban warfare expert who served for more than 25 years in the U.S. military, reaching the rank of major, asserted that “Israel has taken more steps to avoid harming civilians than any other military in history,” adding that such lengths would set a new standard that other Western militaries would struggle to follow in the future.¹

Here are some other interesting quotes from Spencer in a recent interview:

“Casualties are abnormally low” in Gaza.

“Thirty thousand civilians have not died in Gaza, as a fact, because that number does not account for a single Hamas member.”

“Somebody who says 30,000 people dead is too much — even though it’s an existential threat to Israel — that means they want a much more violent world.”

“By every definition, the IDF have achieved the goals of destroying Hamas military capability. Hamas was a governing authority of a territory, a de-facto state, with a military of 30,000 individuals in light infantry battalions in 400 miles of tunnels with 15,000 rockets.”²

An Israeli soldier in Gaza (Israel Defense Forces/X)

Earlier this week, the IDF culminated a two-week raid of a Gaza City complex housing the notorious Shifa Hospital, which was hijacked (again) by Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad terrorists to hide behind the sick and injured, who waged war from inside the place. Israel also believed that the maternity ward is being used as Hamas propaganda headquarters.

As one satirical social media account wrote, “The IDF discovers a secret hospital over the Al Shifa Command Center.”³

During the raid, which began on March 18th, the IDF said troops captured some 900 suspects, of whom more than 500 were confirmed to be terror operatives, and killed more than 200 terrorists. Among those killed and detained were top commanders in Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad. Valuable intelligence was also seized, the IDF said.

“The words you’re looking for are in fact: No medical staff or patients were harmed, but many terrorists were indeed eliminated,” wrote Israeli spokesman Eylon Levy.⁴

For those trying to use numbers to conduct algebraically moral judgements in this Israel-Hamas war, that is a 200-to-zero combatant-to-civilian casualty ratio. Hundreds, if not thousands, of pitiful, cowardly terrorists violated the laws of war in trying to seize a hospital for terrorism purposes — and zero civilians were killed.

What’s more, approximately 6,000 civilians were evacuated by the IDF to keep them safe during this raid.

“These results undermine the false claim that the IDF is targeting civilians,” said Naftali Bennett, a former Israeli prime minister. “If we didn’t care about innocent lives, we’d have simply bombed the whole complex, without risking lives of our own fighters. This is unprecedented in urban warfare. Our military is learning and improving by the day. I’m proud to be Israeli and proud of the IDF, a beacon of light.”

Indeed, John Spencer called “the Battle of Al Shifa Hospital” a “historic battle within a war.”⁵ People are missing just how massively pivotal this operation has been, and it will immediately go down as one of the most brilliant, sophisticated operations in IDF history, to be learned for years by other militaries fighting in urban combat zones across the world.

Meanwhile, many English-language news outlets and social media accounts try to manipulate the public and claim that Israel is “invading hospitals.” But all we have to do is look at Arabic-language media to witness the facts on the ground.

One video shared directly from the Palestinian Islamic Jihad’s Al Quds Brigades, via the “Palestinian Information Center,” had the caption, translated from Arabic: “The Al-Quds Brigades shows scenes of targeting a military vehicle and bombing Zionist enemy soldiers during the battles in the vicinity of Al-Shifa Complex, west of Gaza.”

Two additional terror groups, the Fatah-aligned Al Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades and Palestinian Mujahideen Movement, published their own footage of their “fighters” firing short range missiles toward Al Shifa Hospital.

From Hamas’ social media, a video showed terrorists randomly firing mortars at what the account called “Zionist pigs in the vicinity of Al Shifa Hospital.” Anyone with critical thinking abilities would understand the dangers posed to Palestinian civilians and patients by firing randomly like this.

The point is, Israel cares a million times more about Palestinian civilians than Palestinian leadership, past and present, does — and this fact goes back decades. In 1976, as in 48 years ago, Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir famously said:

“We can forgive the Arabs for killing our children. We cannot forgive them for forcing us to kill their children. We will only have peace with the Arabs when they love their children more than they hate us.”

As for the here and now, I will defer to Naftali Bennett, who said it so eloquently this week:

“A point that Israel’s critics don’t realize about Israelis: We like living. We don’t like dying. Our enemy, radical Islamic Hamas, loves and celebrates death. You see candy handed out after innocent civilians are slaughtered. Their ‘martyrs’ are promised dozens of virgins in their afterlife.”

“We have none of this. We go to war, never with joy or frivolity; only solemnly, understanding our noble duty to defend our lives and freedom. Every Israeli mom that gives birth to a baby boy begins at that very moment to repress nightmares of that knock one day on her door, to be notified by officers of her boy falling in battle.”

“We have a citizens’ army. Everybody’s kids go and serve together, merit-based. You have the boys of CEOs, teachers, merchants, and policemen serving all in one platoon. So it’s very personal for us. We’re not sending ‘other people’s’ boys to war. It’s us. It’s me. I served, fought, and lost my closest friends. My children will have to serve too.”

“So for all of Israel haters out there that are portraying us as a blood-thirsty nation just looking to kill Palestinians: If you think your lies will stop us from defending our homeland — you’re dead wrong.”⁶

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1. “Urban warfare expert says Israeli military taking unprecedented steps to protect Gaza civilians.” Fox News.

2. “‘Casualties are abnormally low’ in Gaza conflict, says John Spencer.” Times Radio. YouTube.

3. Associated Fress on X

4. Eylon Levy on X

5. John Spencer on X

6. Naftali Bennett on X