At last count, over 90 Palestinians were killed in Israel’s latest air strike on schools cum refugee shelters, this one on the Taba’een school in Gaza City. Israel’s new defense of their action amounts to a claim that they only killed 4 civilians for every combatant.
On Aug. 10, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) and Shin Bet domestic security agency claimed that they succeeded in killing 19 Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad terror operatives in the airstrike, listing them by name and photo. Despite such precise information, they were a bit more “hand-waving” when it came to the number of civilian corpses, merely explaining that their three “precision munitions” against the “command room” inside the mosque “could not have caused the damage that corresponds to the casualty reports” from Gaza.
IDF spokesman Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari repeated the time-honored formula used for such occasions: “After we received clear intelligence of the threat posed by these terrorists and in accordance with international humanitarian law, we took numerous steps to mitigate the risk to civilians, including using aerial surveillance prior to the strike and selecting very precise munitions to avoid civilian casualties. Early this morning, the IDF conducted a precision strike against the terrorists in one specific building of the compound. An area that, according to our intelligence, no women and children were present.”
He also took exception to Gaza’s casualty count, as it did “not match the information held by the IDF.” He then explained further: “Since the beginning of this war, the Hamas and Islamic Jihad terrorist organizations have been systematically abusing the civilian population and infrastructures in Gaza for their terrorist activities against the state of Israel.”
U.S. National Security Council deputy spokesman Sean Savett repeated: “We know Hamas has been using schools as locations to gather and operate out of, but we have also said repeatedly and consistently that Israel must take measures to minimize civilian harm.” Democratic Presidential candidate Kamala Harris’s statement read: “Yet again, far too many civilians have been killed. Israel has a right to go after the terrorists that are Hamas. But they also have an important responsibility to avoid civilian casualties. We need a hostage deal and we need a ceasefire. And I can’t stress that strongly enough—the deal needs to get done. It needs to get done now.” The EU’s diplomacy chief Josep Borrell posted on X: “Horrified by images from a sheltering school in Gaza hit by an Israeli strike, with reportedly dozens of Palestinian victims. At least 10 schools were targeted in the last weeks. There’s no justification for these massacres.”
