A British journalist has given us a glimpse into the actions of the Israel Defence Forces to protect Palestinian civilians this week with a series of tweets.
Raf Sanchez, a reporter for the Daily Telegraph, was in Gaza this week and spoke to people on the ground.
“We got a sense of how careful Israel was to avoid civilian casualties during the airstrikes in #Gaza”, Sanchez tweeted.
“The Israeli army called one guy we met and spent 45 mins on the phone with him, getting him to evacuate his neighbours before they blew up a Hamas media building next to his.”
We got a sense of how careful Israel was to avoid civilian casualties during the airstrikes in #Gaza. The Israeli army called one guy we met and spent 45 mins on the phone with him, getting him to evacuate his neighbours, before they blew up a Hamas media building next to his.
— Raf Sanchez (@rafsanchez) November 15, 2018
This latest testimony, fresh from the mouth of a civilian in Gaza, supports previous reports that Israel is the most moral army in the world.
Before Israel strikes Gaza, it forwarns civilians using a variety of tools. People in the area receive texts, phone calls and on occasion, physical leaflets dropped by air to warn residents to leave the area or take shelter.
On top of this, Israel carries out “door knocking”. This is where they drop a non-lethal explosive onto the top of a building, which creates a loud noise to forewarn residents that a strike is coming.
The latest example of this was this week when Israel bombed the Al-Aqsa TV station. They sent warnings to the TV channel, gave them a “knock on the door” and the TV crew were able to vacate the building before it was struck, and completely destroyed.
Hamas has been using Al-Aqsa TV to promote terrorism, incitement against Israel and even training civilians how to carry out terror attacks. The IDF consider the channel to be a propaganda tool for the terror group Hamas and therefore saw it as a legitimate target. And Israel ensured that no civilians (or anyone at all) would be injured when they carried out the bombing.
The full thread of tweets for Raf Sanchez makes for an interesting read and gives insights into the attitudes of Hamas and the people of Gaza.
Here is his full thread of Tweets:
Hamas are buoyant about how this went down. News of Lieberman’s resignation is being blasted from all media channels as a sign of victory. Their leaders are going in front of bomb sites to do TV interviews etc.People we spoke to were a) relieved there wasn’t a war b) basically supportive of Hamas and other factions’ decision to shoot rockets. They saw it as a legitimate response to the Israeli commando raid and felt pride that the factions fought Israel to a ceasefire.Hamas are super paranoid after the Israeli commando raid and are looking for collaborators. We went through lots of new checkpoints. There was much more scrutiny of foreign journalists and they searched our bags on the way out.We got a sense of how careful Israel was to avoid civilian casualties during the airstrikes in #Gaza. The Israeli army called one guy we met and spent 45 mins on the phone with him, getting him to evacuate his neighbours, before they blew up a Hamas media building next to his.People seemed basically unconcerned that the fighting was going to set back progress of last few weeks (electricity, Qatari $, talk of a deal). I can’t really explain why they weren’t more worried, aside from they felt the rockets were legitimate.We asked a senior Hamas leader, Ismael Radwan, about the Palestinian man from Hebron killed in Ashkelon. He went down a conspiracy rabbit hole, saying maybe the apartment building was a military site and Israel had put him there deliberately.
