By Farley Weiss, JNS
John Spencer, director of urban warfare at the West Point Military Academy, said the Jewish state “has implemented more measures to prevent civilian casualties than any other military in history.”
There is no greater just cause than Israel’s battle against Hamas, the terror group that led the Oct. 7, 2023, massacre of 1,200 babies, children, women and men in the most barbaric way, and took 251 others hostage, and whose goal is to do the same to the remaining around 7 million Jews in the country, including around 2 million children.
The evidence is clear and overwhelming that no fighting force has ever been as successful as Israel in an urban conflict in killing the enemy soldiers at such a high ratio. As studies from the Henry Jackson Society and Honest Reporting make clear, despite allegations to the contrary, many of those who have been killed in the Gaza Strip in the last 20 months of war are not innocent Palestinian women and children. Hamas’s own casualty reports, issued in March 2025, significantly cut down on the number of civilians killed during the war with Israel.
The Israeli military’s efforts to avoid civilian casualties have been noted by several experts in battle. Col. Richard Kemp, who served as head of British forces in Afghanistan, has repeatedly stated that the normal ratio of civilians killed to combatants in an urban conflict is nine civilians for every one combatant, and that the best ratio was 4-1. By contrast, Israel’s battle ratio is one civilian killed for every two combatants.
John Spencer, director of urban warfare at the West Point Military Academy, said Israel “has implemented more measures to prevent civilian casualties than any other military in history.” He is not only an expert on urban warfare but has studied every urban conflict in history.
Yet some continue to claim that Israel’s fight is not just, even as Hamas continues to hold 56 people hostage in Gaza, including at least 20 people who are believed to still be alive.
It was pressure from the Israeli Defense Forces that resulted in 148 live hostages and 47 deceased ones being rescued or released as part of temporary ceasefire deals, when hundreds of murderers were freed from Israeli prisons.
Those who oppose Israel’s current military actions, like talk-show host Piers Morgan, are unable to answer the basic question of what Israel should do, outside of military options, to get its hostages back and to prevent Hamas from being in control of Gaza, where it can continue to fire rockets. Podcaster Joe Rogan claims that he cares about Palestinian children, but he seems not to care about Israeli children, as well as the Jewish people’s aspiration to live in peace and security. Likely this is because, as Rogan said in response to a previous guest, he just does not know much about the issue.
The fact that Israel has achieved a low civilian casualty ratio is even more remarkable considering Hamas’s strategy to maximize civilian casualties by having its leaders hide below hospitals and firing rockets at Israel right next to schools. Hamas, which throughout the war has stolen humanitarian relief for its own benefit, has even attacked Gazans standing in line to receive food aid in recent days. Israel has shown it cares more about Palestinian Arab children than Hamas.
Israel is still being attacked with missiles from Hamas, and as such, it has the international legal right to take military action to try and stop those missiles. Further, it has the right to militarily take whatever action it can to get back its hostages from Hamas captivity.
Some have suggested letting the Palestinian Authority run Gaza. Yet its founding document, the PLO Covenant, created in 1964, says in Article 24: “This organization does not exercise any regional sovereignty over the West Bank in the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, on the Gaza Strip or the Himmah area. Its activities will be on the national popular level in the liberational, organizational, political and financial fields.”
To give the P.A. control of Gaza, knowing not just its current antisemitic laws but also its history—it lost control of the Strip to Hamas in a 2006 election and would lose it to Hamas today—is absurd. More Palestinian Arabs in P.A.-controlled areas of Judea and Samaria (more than 80%) favored the Hamas massacre on Oct. 7 than in Gaza.
The Jewish people have a right to their own state in their historical homeland, where their ancestors lived, and which Israel won a defensive war after being attacked in May 1948.
The world agreed to the Jewish right to Israel under international law after World War I in San Remo in 1920, in a decision by the League of Nations in 1922, and in the Anglo-American Treaty ratified in 1925. It was further approved in a U.N. General Assembly vote on Nov. 29, 1947.
Israel is fighting a moral and just war. Those who oppose this fight have failed to come up with another way for Israel to get its hostages back and end the threat of Hamas. Either do that or support what Israel is doing. Israel has no other alternative.
