Indiscriminate Bombing? What Is Israel Doing in Gaza?

The United States has backed Israel’s war on Hamas to eliminate the terrorist threat to Israel’s life, but it has asked Israel to obey international laws of warfare and minimize civilian casualties. Since the aerial bombing and the casualties in this conflict are higher than in any previous clash with Hamas, the charge that Israel is bombing indiscriminately has been widely spread around the world. Apparently even President Biden, who has embraced Israel and its just cause, gave some credence to this claim by quoting it at a donors’ reception. So is Israel living up to international laws of warfare? Has the IDF lowered its moral standards?

Analyzing the situation and the numbers shows that Israel is doing its best to minimize civilian casualties, which is the essence of international laws of warfare. The key metric of minimizing civilian casualties is the ratio of civilian casualties to military casualties. Colonel Richard Kemp, head of the British forces in Afghanistan, reported that in a bid to win popular support against the Taliban, the Allied forces made an all-out effort to reduce civilian casualties. They were able to get the ratio down to three to four civilians killed for every one Taliban fighter killed. This was a historically unprecedented achievement. The ratios of civilians killed by the Allied forces in World War II and in the Iraqwar in the 2000s were significantly higher.

In its previous Gaza conflicts, Israel brought the ratio down to approximately one civilian killed for every fighter killed. This is a sad but noteworthy accomplishment particularly because (as in Iraq) the enemy/terrorists embedded their soldiers and their military infrastructure inside civilian populations and structures. This makes civilians more vulnerable to be collateral damage from an attack on the military assets located in their midst.

What is the ratio of killed civilians and fighters in the Gaza War? We don’t have vetted statistics. The main source for Palestinian deaths is the Gaza Health Ministry, which is controlled by Hamas and which has shown willingness to lie and distort in order to harass Israel. Consider the Al Shifa hospital incident, which they blamed on an Israel air strike when it was caused by a Palestinian rocket fired at Israel that fell short in Gaza. They initially claimed 500 dead. Later reports suggested that the correct number was about 50.

Nevertheless, various analysts agree that the Health Ministry numbers are roughly correct. In fact, they may be undercounted because there are probably many bodies in the destroyed buildings of Gaza not yet uncovered. The Health Ministry numbers apparently include Hamas fighters killed in battle as well as civilians.

The Health Ministry reports 20,500 dead as of December 27. The IDF estimates that it has killed 8,500 Hamas soldiers in the Gaza fighting. An additional 1,000 were killed inside Israel during the counterattack which liberated the southern Israel communities whose residents were massacred and taken over by Hamas. The Health Ministry numbers do not identify how many Palestinians were killed by rockets fired at Israel that fell short and landed in Gaza. An estimated 20% of the more than 11,000 rockets fired from Gaza fall short. These launches are frequently from inside or near civilian buildings including schools, mosques and hospitals,which suggests that they cause not insignificant civilian casualties.

Let us make a necessarily rough assessment. Let’s stipulate that 8,500 of the 20,000 reported dead are Hamas fighters. (We are attributing no deaths to Hamas/Islamic jihad rockets, to offset the uncounted dead in the rubble of Gaza.) The conclusion is that about 1.5 civilians are killed for every 1 fighter killed. This is sharply lower than any ratio achieved by Western armies in recent decades. Non-Western armies have much higher rates of civilian casualties. Some — like Hamas — primarily target civilians.

The Israeli accomplishment is all the more astonishing since Hamas has embedded its fighters and intertwined its rocket launches and military tunnels in civilian homes, schools, mosques and hospitals to an unprecedented degree.

It is no secret how Israel manages to reduce civilian casualties. First, it instructs the civilian population to evacuate from areas where there will be fighting. Israel also evacuates its own civilians to reduce its civilian losses. Over 125,000 Israelis have been evacuated from Southern Israel (the Gaza envelope) and Northern Israel against the probability of a Hezbollah full-scale war. Israel has been condemned for pressing over a million Palestinians to evacuate North Gaza but, plain and simple, it saved hundreds of thousands of lives that way.

In Southern Gaza, it has set up safe zones and protected areas to allow those civilian residents to escape the fight over Hamas’ main centers and with its best brigades in Khan Younis and Rafah. The announced safe zones allow Hamas leaders and fighters to find safety from attacks, so Israeli soldiers lose the advantage of surprise in their incursions. But Israel does this to reduce civilian deaths.

Although the disinformation campaign claims otherwise, Israel attacks only military targets and spares civilian locations in its aerial and ground operations. The big difference in this war is that many civilian locations (including schools, mosques, hospitals, homes) have been coopted by Hamas for its fighting machines. Military use of civilian infrastructure is a war crime that turns the civilians there into human shields. Where the IDF has intelligence that a civilian location has military installations in it, the army does attack — although it makes its best efforts to send specially trained soldiers to capture such local sites while sparing the civilians. This was done at al Shifa hospital, where Hamas had placed an underground base under the hospital command center.

Although the disinformation campaign claims otherwise, Israel attacks only military targets and spares civilian locations in its aerial and ground operations.

The IDF continues to use its other tactics to reduce collateral damage, such as dropping flyers and making mass phone calls to alert civilians to leave because fighting is about to engulf their neighborhood. (Remember that this tactic enables Hamas fighters to escape also. Nevertheless, it is used.) Special munitions that reduce shrapnel scatter and thus minimize collateral civilian casualties are employed. Iron Sting — a new mortar munition with reduced scatter — was developed and used for the first time in this war. There are also “knock-on-roof” shells that alert any civilians inside that a particular home is about to be bombed. This tactic has become less effective in the Gaza War because there is generally less or no time to issue warnings in battlefield conditions.

So why are casualties so much higher in this war? In the past, many operations were scratched when a terrorist target was identified as being in close proximity to civilians. After Hamas’ October 7 massacre, it was clear letting such a terrorist escape meant he was free to kill Israeli civilians. In this war, the mission is not scratched despite the highly regrettable collateral casualties — because we are saving an unlimited number of future Jewish (and Palestinian) lives.

There are two main reasons for the higher level of casualties in this war. First is that the goal is higher: confrontation with Hamas’ military brigades to wipe them out and prevent future massacres. Second is that Hamas fighters are embedded in the civilian population (more likely now wearing civilian clothes) at unprecedented levels. It is simply impossible to fight Hamas without civilians on the spot or immediately nearby. Hamas has done this deliberately, assuming that more dead civilians will generate more criticism of Israel and more international pressure to stop the war.

For its part, Israel deeply regrets the civilian deaths but understands that unless it fights this war, Hamas will have perfected a deadly risk-free massacre program. Kill maximum numbers of Israeli civilians, then tell Israel it must cease fire at once — leaving Hamas untouched — because it is killing civilians. I need not add that this would allow a slow-motion, multi-stage genocide of Israelis with no ability to fight back.

If the international community human rights organizations really wanted to reduce civilian casualties and not provide their shield to Hamas’ genocidal actions, they would call on Hamas to surrender at once. This would stop the civilian deaths at once. Equally important, they should have condemned Hamas’ systematic placing of its military in the midst of civilians and the cynical use of hospitals, mosques and schools as sheltered locations for Hamas fighters and military members. Had they really opposed this tactic, they might have stopped Hamas from committing a gigantic war crime against the Palestinian people by turning them all into human shields.

If the international community human rights organizations really wanted to reduce civilian casualties and not provide their shield to Hamas’ genocidal actions, they would call on Hamas to surrender at once.

Nevertheless, how can Israel deal with the fact that it is killing thousands of civilians including many children? Jewish tradition teaches that every human being is created in the image of God and is of infinite value. It is heartbreaking to kill so many individuals and devastating to realize that the price of saving Israel is the death of so many people (including, not to forget, hundreds of Israeli soldiers). One thinks of Golda Meir’s comment that we can never forgive the Arabs for forcing us to kill their children. Still, it is important for the world to know that Israel continues doing what it can to reduce civilian casualties.

We are living in a terrible world. Genocidal antisemites have great power and lethal capacity. If Israel did not fight back in this necessary but troubling way, then the Jewish state and millions of its citizens would be wiped out. To paraphrase Edmund Burke: All it takes for evil to triumph is for itspotential victims not to fight back.

Rabbi Yitz Greenberg serves as the President of the J.J. Greenberg Institute for the Advancement of Jewish Life (JJGI) and as Senior Scholar in Residence at Hadar.