There’s more than one way to whip up hatred.

For example, someone could stand on a street corner in an Israeli city less than two weeks after the Oct. 7 massacre, and urge the crowd of hundreds to repeat the following:

Hisham’s Gaza will not bow, not to a tank and not to artillery … Gaza, Al Aqsa and Sheikh Jarrah … the nation calls for a struggle … there’s no solution and no solution  … only uprooting the occupation … Raise your voice … Death is preferable to humiliation …

Greetings from Um al-Fahm to the freedom fighters (shahidim) … Greetings from Um al-Fahm to proud Gaza  … Hey, people join [them], join [them] … Our nation is sacrificing its blood  … Hey, join us, our people. [Original in Arabic. Translation from Hebrew to English by CAMERA.]

Someone could also conceal the contents of these words, and falsely portray them as anti-war sentiment, then depict the innocent speaker as unfairly persecuted by a repressive regime, as was done in this news article: “Israel cracks down on Palestinian citizens who speak out against the war in Gaza.”

In the first case — not a hypothetical — Ahmed Khalefa led chants at a demonstration that took place without a police permit in the northern Israeli town of Umm al-Fahm on Oct. 19, 2023, well before Israel’s ground operation in the Gaza Strip even began.

At the gathering — which was broadcast live on Facebook — the Israeli Arab lawyer expressed solidarity with the Hamas terrorists who carried out the atrocities in southern Israel, and urged his fellow citizens to join them.

In the second case — also not a hypothetical — a leading news organization, the Associated Press (which claims a daily global audience of 4 billion), covered up Khalefa’s incitement, recast him as an anti-war protester, and fostered antipathy against a supposedly repressive Israel.

In the telling of Sam McNeil’s Nov. 24, 2024 article, Israel has imposed a “yearlong crackdown against Palestinian citizens who speak out against the war in Gaza.”

McNeil presented Khalefa as the poster child representing “more than 400 Palestinian citizens of Israel who, since the start of the war in Gaza, have been investigated by police for ‘incitement to terrorism’ or ‘incitement to violence,’ according to Adalah, a legal rights group for minorities.”

“Ahmed Khalefa’s life turned upside down after he was charged with inciting terrorism for chanting in solidarity with Gaza at an anti-war protest in October 2023,” intoned McNeil.

The AP journalist repeatedly referred to Israel’s allegedly heavy-handed laws — “Just being charged with incitement to terrorism or identifying with a terrorist group can land a suspect in detention until they’re sentenced, under the terms of a 2016 law” — but never once specified what exactly it was that Khalefa said which resulted in the charges.

Instead, McNeil relied on Khalefa’s characterization — or, rather, whitewash — of the words that landed him in hot water:

[Khalefa] said Israeli prosecutors took issue with slogans that broadly praised resistance and urged Gaza to be strong, but which didn’t mention violence or any militant groups. For that, he said, the government is trying to disbar him, and he faces up to eight years in prison.

Not only did McNeil withhold from readers Khalefa’s actual words, a peculiar oversight for a news organization that insists it works according to the motto of “advancing the power of facts,” but he notably also never bothered to consult with the Israeli jurists who handled the case.

Moreover, the AP neglected to mention that Khalefa’s case was heard in Israel’s High Court, a significant fact that challenges the flimsy narrative in which Israeli authorities “see us more as enemies than as citizens,” as the defendant told McNeil.

In his decision to release Khalefa to house arrest last February, Israeli Supreme Court Justice Ofer Grosskopf ruled (translation by CAMERA):

In times of peace, as well as in times of war, there are statements that are not protected by the freedom of expression, and there are forbidden exhortations which do not fall under the right to protest. From a theoretical standpoint, the line is very clear. Even during wartime, the expression of stances regarding the war is legitimate: one may call for its end; it’s permitted to express support for its continuation. It’s permitted to support a ceasefire arrangement which will bring back the hostages; one may call to continue fighting until Hamas is eradicated. One may express horror at the consequences of war;

It’s permissible to point out the dangers of stopping it before its goals are achieved. These are all positions which are worthy of being heard, which are permitted to express, even when the mortars are noisy and the guns are thundering. In contrast, expressions of support for the enemy and calls for carrying out war crimes are harmful and dangerous, and their use is unacceptable and forbidden. The freedom of expression does not protect, and the freedom to demonstrate does not legitimize, voicing views supporting atrocities carried out by Hamas on Oct. 7, or cheering our enemies’ position, or calling for their victory in the military campaign in Gaza. They do not enable the voicing of support for genocide, or calls for mass expulsion.

He continued:

These are stances forbidden from public discourse during times of peace, and in times of war they pose a special danger. Indeed, voicing treason and hatred is not a freedom held by anyone; it poses a danger to our ability to coexist during times of peace, and is liable to turn into a viable threat to our very existence in times of war.

The distinction that Justice Grosskopf clearly delineates is completely lost on the AP’s McNeil, who cannot consider anything aside from a double standard. He wrote:

Over the summer, around two dozen anti-war protestors in the port city of Haifa were only allowed to finish three chants before police forcefully scattered the gathering into the night. Yet Jewish Israelis demanding a hostage release deal protest regularly – and the largest drew hundreds of thousands into the streets.

It also seems to have eluded McNeil that Israeli laws banning incitement and glorification of terror organizations resemble those in other Western democracies, including the United Kingdom.

Concerning the specifics of Khalefa’s case, Justice Grosskopf ruled:

Both the magistrate court and the district court determined that the defendant’s statements at the demonstration overstep the boundary between permitted and forbidden. I accept these positions. The statements which the defendant and Jabareen made at the protest, according to their plain meaning, possess expressions of praise for the enemy, and words of backing for their deeds.

The aforementioned Jabareen, as in Muhammad Jabareen, also made an appearance in McNeil’s article, which stated:

“Anyone who tries to speak out about the war will be imprisoned and harassed in his work and education,” said Oumaya Jabareen, whose son was jailed for eight months after an anti-war protest. “People here are all afraid, afraid to say no to this war.”

Far from saying “no to this war,” Jabareen led the crowd in these chants:

Blessings from Um al-Fahm to proud Gaza … resist, resist, resist … do not bargain with your rights … raise, raise, raise the voice … death is preferable to humiliation, Hisham’s Gaza will not bow … not from a tank and not from artillery. Resist, resist, resist … and do not compromise on Gaza. Resist, resist, resist … do not compromise on your lands. There is no other. The shahidim are beloved to God. [Translation from Hebrew to English by CAMERA.]

McNeil also used rhetorical tricks to demonize Israel as an undemocratic oppressor of minorities.

“Israel says its Palestinian citizens enjoy equal rights, including the right to vote, and they are well-represented in many professions,” he wrote, qualifying the easily verifiable reality of strong professional representation and full rights for Israel’s Arab citizens (whom he misleadingly terms “Palestinians”).[Emphasis added.]

In reality, not only can Israeli Arab citizens petition Israel’s High Court, but they may also serve on the bench, as does High Court Justice Khaled Kabub, a Muslim.

On the other hand, McNeil stated as fact the following questionable claim with zero qualification: “However, Palestinians are widely discriminated against in areas like housing and the job market.”

Applying McNeil’s methodology, the conclusion is damning: The Associated Press says it advances the power of facts. However, the wire service widely discriminates against Israel, concealing facts that don’t serve its predetermined anti-Israel narrative.

Tamar Sternthal is the director of CAMERA’s Israel Office.

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In a recent column in Haaretz, Prof. Yagil Levy claims, based on a “fundamental comparison,” that the IDF in its war in Gaza is not the moral army it purports to be. His claim is based on little evidence from the field and relies mainly on comparisons of numbers.

Levy’s database is simple. As of October 2024, about 43,000 Gazans had been killed in the war (Hamas data), of whom about 17,000 were terrorists (IDF data). There were about 350 IDF casualties. According to Levy, the best way to assess an army’s morality is to examine the ratio between soldiers and civilians killed. According to his calculations, the ratio in the current war is 68 Gazan civilians for every soldier killed. This is a higher ratio than was the case in Operation Protective Edge in Gaza (2014) or in the American battle to capture Fallujah (2004). In Levy’s opinion, this ratio indicates that the IDF “transferred the risk” to Gazan civilians more than Western armies have done in other cases.

Levy wishes to convey the impression that his conclusion is based on thorough research and is therefore well-founded. In practice, Levy’s claim is absurd. Morality, according to Levy, is directly related to the extent of casualties suffered by the military force. In other words, preserving the lives of our fighters, to a certain extent, becomes a moral flaw. According to this logic, sloppy fighting that results in many casualties for our forces would reflect the IDF’s moral virtue.

Levy’s “morality index” is, of course, Hamas’ dream. The enemy built a combat doctrine on the idea of ​​using its own population as a giant human shield. Its strategy was based on the assumption that it could avoid defeat in the war it itself initiated on October 7 through three components: holding hostages to be used as bargaining chips; maximizing deaths among its own population; and maximizing casualties for the IDF.

The comparison to the battle of Fallujah, a small city compared to the densely populated Gaza Strip, is also out of place. The level of organization, planning, and preparation for battle by the rebels there was immeasurably lower than in Gaza, and there was a much more sparse civilian presence as most had fled the city before the battle. In general, it is very difficult to compare battles and numbers, due to both the unique local circumstances of individual battles and the nature of such wars. Numerical data in wars against subversive forces tend to be extremely unreliable. To Levy’s credit, he emphasizes that he relies on Hamas data – data that has been proven false on multiple occasions.

How can one discuss the morality of combat tactics? Prof. Levy, in his usual fashion, treats war as a one-sided event, but this is of course a wrong view. It is of course worth taking into account comparisons of enemy strength and the risk posed to the soldiers.

In the 2016-2017 campaign to liberate Mosul, for example, a city in and around which about 1.8 million people lived, between 10,000 and 40,000 civilians were killed. The lower number was taken from a West Point study, while the higher number is the estimate published by the British Independent on July 19, 2017. About a million people were displaced from their homes and about 1,200 fighters from the coalition against ISIS were killed (and even as many as 8,200, according to the West Point study). The size of the ISIS force defending the metropolis was estimated at between 3,000 to 5,000 fighters. The numbers, as mentioned, are highly questionable. Still, let’s assume that 3,000 ISIS fighters were killed in the battle (though it is more likely that many of them fled), and that only 30,000 civilians were killed in the battle (though the city was completely destroyed and ISIS prevented residents from fleeing). This would mean that for every terrorist fighter killed, the coalition forces (Iraqi forces led by the US military) killed about 10 civilians. In other words, in the campaign to liberate Mosul, the ratio of civilian deaths to enemy kills was 1/10. Even if we use the most conservative end of the estimates, 10,000 civilian deaths, the ratio would still be one enemy fighter to more than three civilians.

The lives of soldiers also have moral value. Twelve hundred coalition fighters killed in the battle for Mosul means almost one for every two enemy fighters. If we use the West Point numbers, the ratio would be reversed and stand at more than two coalition fighters for every enemy fighter.

In Gaza, the IDF faced a dense space that had been prepared for war for almost 20 years, and an organized military force that numbered about 40,000 Hamas fighters and thousands more from other organizations. This force continues to build itself up, recruiting more Gazans, as the war goes on. These are much more difficult conditions (speaking solely in terms of enemy strength, it is 10 times more difficult) than those faced by the liberators of Mosul. Under these extraordinarily difficult conditions, the IDF has managed, according to the numbers used by Levy, to harm no more than 1.5 civilians for every terrorist killed.

To substantiate the quantitative analysis, we will perform a “sanity check” on the numbers by turning to a report from the Costs of War project of the Watson Institute at Brown University from November 2019. The report examines casualties in the 15 years of the war in Iraq. The use of multi-year data can mitigate the distortions created by the extreme uncertainty of numbers from specific battles. According to the Watson report, in the Iraq War (2003-2018), about 200,000 civilians, 40,000 enemy combatants, and 50,000 coalition combatants (nearly 10,000 Americans and the rest local) were killed — that is, five civilians for every enemy combatant and a little more than one coalition combatant for every enemy combatant.

The IDF, according to Yagil Levy, “transferred the risk” to civilians. But the numbers actually indicate an impressive success of the IDF on both a tactical and a moral level. If the IDF had met the Mosul standard, between 51,000 and about 170,000 Gazans would have been killed in addition to the 17,000 terrorists killed (a ratio of between three and 10 civilians for every 17,000 terrorists). In reality — again, according to Levy, who is basing his conclusions on Hamas data — about 26,000 civilians were killed, about half the ratio of the extreme-lowest estimate for Mosul.

According to Levy’s twisted index, in relation to the 17,000 terrorists killed, the IDF should have paid a price of between 8,500 and about 35,000 of its own casualties in order to meet the Mosul standard, or about 20,000 casualties to meet the overall standard of the Iraq War.

By the way, in the Kosovo War (1999), a war conducted by NATO from the air only, without risking ground forces, the studies indicate a ratio of between 1.4 and two civilians killed for every enemy combatant.

The data obtained by the IDF is not make-believe. It is the fruit of enormous, long-term professional effort, and impressive tactical skill achieved in the midst of battle. Systems of intelligence, air, and artillery support have been built in recent years for the benefit of the forces on the ground, as well as an extraordinary advanced system of warning and evacuating enemy populations – evacuations that are carried out at the cost of giving up surprise in battle. The IDF has reached a level of professionalism and skill in all these parameters that no army in the world has ever demonstrated before. Without delving into details, on a principled level, the IDF’s moral choice was simple: to be strict about protecting the lives of enemy civilians through evacuations from the battlefield, and to protect the lives of our fighters through intelligence-based but also relatively permissive cover of fire support towards buildings and infrastructure that had become enemy entrenchment complexes.

The sight of a destroyed Gaza is not pretty. But Gaza is no more destroyed than Fallujah and Mosul after those battles, and a much lower ratio of Gazan civilians and IDF soldiers were killed in the process. In my opinion, destroying infrastructure is an entirely defensible moral choice in exchange for saving human lives.

Let’s return to Levy’s description of the war. He stresses that, unlike in the past, the IDF did not use the “roof-tapping” technique this time to warn residents before bombing buildings. He does not mention that this technique is unique to the IDF and has never been carried out by any other army anywhere else in the world. In the circumstances of this war, the “roof-tapping” technique was not a practical option. Levy also cites unflattering testimonies about IDF conduct. I believe some of the testimonies are true, and this is unfortunate and dangerous. We must fight against this kind of behavior and condemn the helplessness of IDF command in dealing with it. Unfortunately, in this cruel war, these occurrences are not surprising. But Levy does not describe the enormous effort made throughout the war to evacuate the non-combatant population from the battle zones and ensure evacuation routes and humanitarian aid for them prior to the entrance of the IDF. In Fallujah and Mosul, no one gave a thought to systematically moving supplies and fuel into enemy-controlled territory and ensuring the continuity of medical services there. Nor was any concern given to allowing the flow of water, electricity, cellular, or internet services.

This is not the first time Prof. Levy has launched an attack on the idea of ​​tactical efficiency. About two years ago, he attacked Chief of Staff Aviv Kochavi, and me personally, for the effort that was then being made to improve the lethality of IDF forces – that is, their ability to locate an enemy and destroy him quickly and accurately. As Finkel has described, those efforts made an important contribution to the tactical success of the maneuver in Gaza. Levy denounced these efforts as “necrotactics” and accused the IDF of trying to prevent political agreements by improving Israel’s military capability. Levy even accused me of striving for endless wars because my work, as an IDF officer at the time, was striving for a more decisive military capability that would deny the enemy the ability to fire at Israel.

The current war is not being conducted flawlessly. Far from it. We will have many lessons to learn from this long war, and not just from the failure of October 7. There is also room for criticism of deviations from the morality of warfare.

But that is not where Yagil Levy has directed his criticism. In his article in Telem in 2022 and again in his current column in Haaretz, for Levy, the enemy does not exist in war. The enemy is nothing more than a passive subject whom the IDF kills unilaterally and at will. The distorted measure of morality he presents is a denial of our right to self-defense, or at least of our right to fight to win.

Levy does not focus on specific incidents of moral excess that are proper to condemn. He chooses to use a broad moral index that purportedly gives him the right to condemn the morality of the war as a whole. In his view, the deaths of thousands of Gazans used deliberately by Hamas as human shields would be moral if thousands of IDF fighters were killed too.

The “Levy index” of morality requires careless and unsuccessful fighting on our part… that is, defeat. Well, Prof. Levy, the defensive war in Gaza is justified and moral. Fortunately, it is being carried out — at least generally and on a tactical level — in a professional and efficient manner. Your index’s moral compass demands the shedding of more Israeli blood. Its practical meaning is the negation of the morality of defensive war. It is your index, not the IDF’s conduct, that reflects the loss of a moral path.

Brig. Gen. (res.) Eran Ortal recently retired from military service as commander of the Dado Center for Multidisciplinary Military Thinking. His book The Battle Before the War (MOD 2022, in Hebrew) dealt with the IDF’s need to change, innovate and renew a decisive war approach. His next book, Renewal — The October 7^th War and Israel’s Defense Strategy, is about to be published by Levin Publications. A version of this article was originally published by Zman Israel and The BESA Center.

The post Yes, the IDF Is the Moral Army That It Claims To Be first appeared on Algemeiner.com.

Saudi Arabia has abandoned its pursuit of an ambitious defense treaty with Washington in return for normalizing relations with Israel and is now pushing for a more modest military cooperation agreement, two Saudi and four Western officials told Reuters.

In a drive to get a wide-ranging mutual security treaty over the line earlier this year, Riyadh softened its position on Palestinian statehood, telling Washington that a public commitment from Israel to a two-state solution could be enough for the Gulf kingdom to normalize relations.

But with public anger in Saudi Arabia and the wider Middle East at fever pitch over Israel‘s military actions in Gaza, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman has again made recognition of Israel conditional on it taking concrete steps to create a Palestinian state, two Saudi and three Western sources said.

Israeli Prime Minster Benjamin Netanyahu is still eager to secure normalization with the Saudi powerhouse as a historic milestone and a sign of broader acceptance in the Arab world, Western diplomats said.

But he faces overwhelming opposition at home to any concessions to the Palestinians following the Oct. 7 Hamas attacks and knows any gesture in the direction of statehood would fracture his ruling coalition, they said.

With both leaders shackled for now by their domestic powerbases, Riyadh and Washington hope a more modest defense pact could be sealed before President Joe Biden leaves the White House in January, the sources said.

A full-blown US–Saudi treaty would need to pass the US Senate with a two-thirds majority — and this would be a non-starter unless Riyadh recognizes Israel, the six sources said.

The pact now under discussion would involve expanding joint military exercises and drills to address regional threats, mainly from Iran. It would foster partnerships between US and Saudi defense firms, with safeguards to prevent collaboration with China, the sources said.

The agreement would promote Saudi investment in advanced technologies, especially drone defense. The US would increase its presence in Riyadh through training, logistics, and cyber security support, and may deploy a Patriot missile battalion to enhance missile defense and integrated deterrence.

But it would not be the kind of binding mutual defense treaty that would oblige US forces to protect the world’s biggest oil exporter in the event of foreign attack.

“Saudi Arabia will get a security deal which will allow more military cooperation and sales of US weapons, but not a defense treaty similar to that of Japan or South Korea as initially sought,” said Abdelaziz al-Sagher, head of the Gulf Research Institute think-tank in Saudi Arabia.

THE TRUMP DILEMMA

The picture is complicated further, however, by the impending arrival of Donald Trump in the White House.

While Trump’s plan to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict excludes any provisions for Palestinian statehood or sovereignty, he is a close ally of the Saudi crown prince.

Palestinian and some Arab officials worry that Trump and his son-in-law Jared Kushner — architect of the “Deal of the Century” and also a close ally of the crown prince — may ultimately persuade him to support the plan.

How the prince reconciles Saudi priorities with this shifting diplomatic landscape will be pivotal, defining both his leadership and the future of the peace process, diplomats said.

The current US administration has not given up hope for a deal on security guarantees before Biden leaves office in January, but a number of obstacles remain. One person in Washington familiar with the talks said there was reason to be skeptical about whether there was enough time to strike a deal.

US officials are mindful that the kingdom is still interested in formally cementing the guarantees it has been seeking, especially to gain access to more advanced weapons, but are uncertain whether it would prefer to get it done under Biden, or wait for Trump, the source said.

“We continue to discuss and have many lines of effort on the table [with the Saudis],” the US official said.

The White House National Security Council declined comment when asked about efforts toward reaching a deal on US security guarantees for Saudi Arabia.

Netanyahu’s office declined to comment when asked about the Saudi position on Palestinian statehood.

A defense treaty giving Saudi Arabia US military protection in exchange for recognizing Israel would reshape the Middle East by uniting two long-time foes and binding Riyadh to Washington at a time when China is making inroads in the region.

It would allow the kingdom to shore up its security and ward off threats from Iran and its Houthi allies, to avoid a repeat of the 2019 strikes on its oil facilities, which Riyadh and Washington both blamed on Tehran. Iran has denied any role.

A senior Saudi official said the treaty was 95 percent complete but Riyadh opted to discuss an alternative agreement, given it was not doable without normalization with Israel.

Depending on the format, a scaled-down cooperation agreement could be approved without going through Congress before Biden leaves office, two of the sources said.

There were other stumbling blocks in the negotiations to secure a mutual defense treaty.

For instance, there was no progress in the talks about civil nuclear cooperation because Saudi Arabia refused to sign a so-called 123 Agreement with the US that would have denied Riyadh the right to nuclear enrichment, the six sources said.

Saudi objections to articles related to human rights proved to be another area of disagreement, one Saudi source close to the talks told Reuters.

‘THE BIG PRIZE’

While the Saudi leadership strongly advocates Palestinian statehood, it remains uncertain, according to diplomats, how the crown prince would respond if Trump revives the deal he floated in 2020 to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

The plan marks a dramatic shift in US policy and international agreements by overtly aligning with Israel and deviating sharply from the long-standing land-for-peace framework that has historically guided negotiations.

It would allow Israel to annex stretches of land in the West Bank, including Israeli settlements and the Jordan Valley, and recognizes Jerusalem as the “undivided capital of Israel,” denying Palestinian claims to East Jerusalem as their capital.

Saudi officials insist that the creation of a Palestinian state in accordance with previous international agreements, including East Jerusalem as its capital, remains an essential condition for long-term regional peace and stability.

Without it the cycle of violence will continue to jeopardize any normal relations, they say.

“How can we imagine a region integrated if we sidestep the Palestinian issue?” a senior Saudi official said. “You can’t prevent the Palestinian right to self-determination.”

And in some of the harshest criticism of Israel since the start of the Gaza war, the Crown Prince Mohammed called Israel‘s military actions in Gaza “collective genocide” in his address to an Arab and Islamic summit in Riyadh this month.

The potential for Saudi normalization with Israel, however, could be revisited in the future, perhaps once the dust settles after the Gaza war — and possibly under a different Israeli government, diplomats said.

Fawaz Gerges, a Middle East expert at the London School of Economics, said Trump would leverage all possible avenues to secure historic normalization between Saudi Arabia and Israel.

“For Trump, Saudi Arabia is the big prize,” said Gerges.

“As to how normalization could happen despite repeated Saudi leaders insistence they will not recognize Israel until a real path to a Palestinian state is set, Trump could promise a ceasefire in Gaza in return for normalization and tentative promise to support a Palestinian state, without obliging Israel to make any real concessions to the Palestinians.”

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