The most moral army in the history of the world

‘Based on my knowledge and experience I can say this: During Operation Cast Lead the Israeli Defence Force did more to safeguard the rights of civilians in a combat zone than any other army in the history of warfare.’ Those are the words of Col Richard Kemp, speaking at the United Nations. Col. Kemp is a former commander of British forces in Afghanistan, served with Nato and the U.N., commanded troops in Northern Ireland, Bosnia and Macedonia, participated in the Gulf War and worked on international terrorism for the UK’s Joint Intelligence Committee. He went on to say that Israel tried to safeguard civilians ‘while facing an enemy that deliberately positioned its military capability behind the human shield of the civilian population.’ He said: ‘Hamas, like Hizbollah, are expert at driving the media agenda. Both will always have people ready to give interviews condemning Israeli forces for war crimes. They are adept at staging and distorting incidents. ‘The truth is that the IDF (Israeli Defence Force) took extraordinary measures to give Gaza civilians notice of targeted areas, dropping over two million leaflets and making over 100,000 phone calls. Many missions that could have taken out Hamas military capability were aborted to prevent civilian casualties. ‘The IDF allowed huge amounts of human aid into Gaza. To deliver aid virtually into your enemies’ hands is, to the military tactician, normally quite unthinkable, but the IDF took on those risks. ‘Despite all this, of course innocent lives were lost. War is chaos and full of mistakes… but mistakes are not war crimes. More than anything, the civilian casualties were a consequence of Hamas’ way of fighting. Hamas deliberately tried to sacrifice its own civilians. ‘Mr. President, I say this again: During Operation Cast Lead the IDF did more to safeguard the rights of civilians in a combat zone than any other army in the history of warfare.’ Col. Kemp was speaking on behalf of UNWatch replying to the Goldstone Gaza Report on war crimes. You can watch his three minute speech on Youtube. You can get it by typing Youtube Col Kemp into Google search engine.