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Source: https://www.jpost.com/jerusalem-report/article-874421
Hamas Exploits Western Ignorance of War
(Jerusalem Post) Maj. (ret.) Andrew Fox - I am neither Jewish nor Israeli. In the case of Israel's war in Gaza, my experiences, academic knowledge, and military training lead me to believe that the IDF has fought this war in a manner that adheres to the laws of armed conflict. If I thought Israel was committing genocide or war crimes at scale, I would say so. Having weighed up the facts, I believe the evidence I have seen points to the opposite conclusion. The vast majority of those criticizing Israel have not seen firsthand evidence. Most have only seen carefully curated Hamas propaganda, filtered through complicit media working with Hamas, amplified and repeated unwittingly by other news outlets, and turbocharged by social media. This propaganda campaign works on emotion. Israel's enemies have weaponized the power of empathy. They have taken the images of war and have portrayed them as something unique. In doing so, they spin the world's only Jewish state, and the only democracy in the Middle East, as something uniquely evil. People do not understand the true depth of the horror of Oct. 7, nor do they understand what a war looks like when fought against a terrorist state on your own border. War is a terrible thing, in which civilians and children always suffer the most, especially when forced into harm's way by their own leaders' policy of human sacrifice for PR gains. People deny what I have seen with my own eyes, based on things they themselves have only seen on social media. And because I represent the rational narrative, I am told that I am uniquely evil - with all the death threats and insults that come with that designation. I will continue to share what I believe to be true because when the dust settles from Gaza, a just outcome needs the truth in its corner. The writer, who served in the British Army for 16 years, is a research fellow at the Henry Jackson Society.