Foxy,

Your previous link to which I was referring "To say that Israel has a “right to exist” is effectively to assert that the Zionists’ unilateral declaration of Israel’s existence......No state has a “right to exist”. This concept is a propaganda device invented by the US and Israel."

In another article you linked:" firing rockets at a civilian population is by definition a war crime. Just because “not as many” Israeli civilians have been killed does nothing to mitigate the fact that firing rockets at civilians is a war crime. Likewise, Hamas cannot hoard illegal weapons in UN schools, especially near refugees, and pretend they are not putting innocent Palestinians in harms way."

So as widely acknowledged Hamas started the war deliberately firing at Israel civilian positions, and used its own civilians as human shields. Thus the majority of civilian deaths can clearly be laid at the feet of Hamas.

SR,

You said "the IDF fired 30,000 artillery rounds into Gazan population centers" but the link you provided did not support this. After I challenged you, you modified this "many of them into densely populated areas"

As I said before 30 000 artillery shells fired into population centers would have killed far far more people, especially considering that of the roughly 2000 casualties, about 1/2 were combatants.

After the cowardly and criminal use of human shields the relatively low civilian casualties can be attributed to Israeli restraint.

An independent report by senior military staff of various countries (USA, Germany, Australia etc) concluded:

http://www.high-level-military-group.org/pdf/hlmg-assessment-2014-gaza-conflict.pdf

204. We are under no doubt that Israel did not want this conflict and sought actively to avoid it,pursuing avenues of de-escalation in every phase of the conflict. Israel’s extensive civil defence measures played a significant part in allowing its political and military leaders the strategic space to be deliberate in expanding military operations in each phase only once avenues to avoid escalation were exhausted. Ultimately, Israel had no choice but to defend its citizens from the rocket assault launched by Hamas and other Palestinian terrorist groups and the threat posed by the cross-border assault tunnels. The responsibility for the outbreak of the 2014 Gaza Conflict must be squarely ascribed to Hamas, which sought violent confrontation in an effort to seek to improve its strategic situation.

205. We can be categorically clear that Israel’s conduct in the 2014 Gaza Conflict met and in some respects exceeded the highest standards we set for our own nations’ militaries. It is our view that Israel fought an exemplary campaign, adequately conceived with appropriately limited objectives, and displaying both a very high level of operational capability as well as a total commitment to the Law of Armed Conflict. It did this under challenging circumstances on a formidably complex urban battlefield. This is not to say that the IDF did not make mistakes, which are inevitable in the context of urban warfare against an enemy such as Hamas, that purposefully hides behind a civilian population.

Nor does it mean that there are no individual instances of potentially unlawful conduct by individual personnel, as can be expected in all armies. Where such mistakes or violations were suspected and are confirmed however, these occurred in direct contravention of the deep seated ethos of respect for the Law of Armed Conflict throughout the IDF that we observed, as well as of the extensive practical integration into training, planning and operations of measures to ensure lawful conduct.