(The Sun-UK) Col. Richard Kemp - Hamas is the only "army" in the history of war that has deliberately sought to provoke its enemy to kill its own people. This is what its entire strategy is based on. They welcome the deaths of Gazan civilians in Israeli air strikes. Hamas embed themselves in the civilian population. They know that fighting from within the population will eventually lead to civilian casualties. The Gaza Health Ministry, which Hamas controls, will churn out civilian death statistics. These are often grossly exaggerated. Journalists will be brought quickly to the scene to film dead or wounded civilians. Much of the world's media will then condemn Israel. The journalists who feed this machinery of anti-Israel hatred are playing directly into the hands of Hamas. They encourage Hamas to repeat the operation again and again. Israel scrupulously adheres to the laws of war. More often than not, Israel goes well beyond the strict requirements of the Geneva Conventions. Hamas knows it can't defeat the IDF by military means, so their entire strategy is to work towards Israel's delegitimization, vilification and isolation in the world, using the lives of their own people as weapons of war. We must not let them win. The writer, a former commander of British forces in Afghanistan, was chairman of the UK's national crisis management committee, COBRA.
2023-10-29 00:00:00Full ArticleBACK Visit the Daily Alert Archive