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"... This concept is not unique to Israel. Every
military throughout history has killed civilians, and future armies will
no doubt do so as well.
That’s not “local rules,” as Friedman called
it. That’s abiding by the same rules followed by the US, Europe and
every army around the world, the IDF official said.
In last summer’s Gaza war, between 50 to 70 percent of those killed were civilians, depending on whose statistics you believe.
Even the most dramatic figures, however, pale in comparison to the most conservative estimates for Assad’s Hama massacre.
Of the 20,000-40,000 people killed in Assad’s
campaign, only approximately 2,000 are believed to have been insurgents,
meaning 90-95% of the casualties were innocent civilians. Some within
Assad’s own family even put the figure closer to 97.5%.
The
Gaza conflict’s civilian-to-combatant ration is dramatically lower —
not only than Assad’s massacre, but than the US campaigns in Pakistan
and Yemen. The Reprieve human rights group found that in US drone
strikes against 41 wanted individuals in those countries, some 1,147 people were killed — a death toll that was 96.4% noncombatant.
Civilian casualties are a fact in every war.
Even in Kosovo in 1998-1999, in which NATO attacked then-Yugoslavia to
save civilians from a genocide, a third of the 1,500 casualties caused
by NATO were among the very civilians they were trying to save.
Do the US and NATO play by “Hama rules?”
The difference between simple war as fought by
the likes of the US and Israel, and Friedman’s so-called “Hama rules,”
the IDF official claimed, is that one side deliberately targets innocent
people, while the other works to avoid civilian deaths."
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