Civilian casualties are Hamas’ goal

Hamas is targeting Israeli civilians with its war. It started the war with a civilian massacre on October 7 and then took hundreds of civilians hostage. Rockets from Gaza are also aimed at civilian objectives in Israel.
Added to that, Hamas uses Palestinian civilians as human shields as they operate from deep in the heart of the civilian population, from children’s bedrooms, from schools, and from mosques and hospitals.

The 500 people who, according to the Ministry of Health in Gaza, were killed in the explosion at Al Ahli Hospital, which was caused by a misguided rocket fired by the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, are included in the death toll presented by the Ministry of Health. Screenshot: Tasnim TV/commons Wikimedia

Hamas’ vicious tactics to deliberately aim at Israeli civilians in the war while using the suffering of Palestinian civilians as a weapon in their propaganda war against Israel have made the war in Gaza bloody.
A great deal of skepticism over the high death tolls broadcast by Hamas Health Authorities arose right after the explosion at the Al Ahli hospital in Gaza last October when Hamas immediately claimed that 500 people had been killed by the detonation of an Israeli missile, when the blast was in fact caused by a failed rocket launched from Gaza by Palestinian Islamic Jihad. This example reveals Hamas’ deliberate falsehoods about the number of civilian casualties as well as the cause of the death toll.
This incident also highlights how media in the Western world uncritically forwarded numbers from the Ministry of Health in Gaza. Major media channels such as the BBC and the New York Times had to apologize for their incorrect reporting on the explosion at Al Ahli hospital.
Hamas’ Health Ministry said early that the death toll in Gaza had risen to more than 27,000 Palestinians. This number cannot be independently verified and is believed to include both civilians and Hamas fighters killed in Gaza, including lives lost to the terror groups’ own failed projectiles.

Over 12,000 rockets have been launched from Gaza toward civilian populated areas in Israel since October 7. Added to this are rockets from the Iran-backed terrorist groups Hezbollah in Lebanon and the Houthi rebels in Yemen. As a result, 100,000 Israelis have been evacuated from their homes in southern and northern Israel. Between 10 and 20 percent of the Palestinian rockets have landed inside Gaza itself, which means between 1,200 and 2,400 failed Palestinian rockets. How many Gazan civilians have been killed by these, there’s no information to tell.
The Israeli Army stated early in February that 10,000 Hamas terrorists had been killed since October 7 in addition to the approximately 1,000 killed in Israel in the aftermath of the terrorist group’s invasion and its attacks on October 7.
Hamas targets Israeli civilians with its warfare. The October 7 massacre, the abductees, and the rockets from Gaza – all have targeted civilians in Israel.
Moreover, Hamas uses Palestinian civilians as suicide-bombers and human shields while operating embedded in civilian areas, from children’s bedrooms in family homes, from children’s schools, and from mosques and hospitals.
Beside this, Hamas blocks roads to stop civilians evacuating from war zones and shoots at Palestinians attempting to do so when the Israeli Defense Forces have issued directions on how they can leave for their own safety.

This means that Israel’s Defense Forces face a very difficult task when neutralizing the Islamist terrorist group that has controlled Gaza since 2007.
“Israel has done more to prevent civilian casualties in Gaza than any other known army in the world,” asserts John Spencer, professor, military analyst and internationally recognized expert and consultant on urban warfare.
In an extensive thread on X (formerly Twitter) in late January, Spencer gave several examples of precautions the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) take that he claimed other armies do not, at least not to the same extent, or not at all.
One of the most well-known examples he mentioned is the way the IDF uses various methods to warn civilians before launching an attack against Hamas by “making phone-calls, sending texts and dropping leaflets above the roofs of buildings,” explained John Spencer, who has written for Time Magazine, the New York Times, USA Today, the Wall Street Journal and the Washington Post and is a frequently recurring military analyst and commentator for CNN, FOX, BBC and many other news organizations.