Hamas terrorists carry grenade launchers at the funeral of Marwan Issa, a senior Hamas deputy military commander who was killed in an Israeli airstrike during the conflict between Israel and Hamas, amid a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas, in the central Gaza Strip, Feb. 7, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Ramadan Abed

In the ongoing war between Israel and Hamas, one narrative dominates hostile media exchanges: civilian casualties — especially children.

It strikes a deep emotional chord — and rightly so. The death of any innocent person is a tragedy. But the death of a child should transcend politics.

Yet in Gaza, the innocents are victims of Hamas, which deliberately brought war to their doorsteps when it invaded Israel on October 7, 2023 — and then used them as human shields throughout the war by fighting in civilian areas.

We must also be honest: there is no such thing as a “clean” war. From ancient times to modern warfare, civilians have always been caught in the crossfire. The real question is not whether civilians die — but why and how, and who made it inevitable.

What Hamas is doing in Gaza isn’t just reckless — it’s criminally malicious. Hamas has embarked on a calculated strategy to maximize not only Israeli deaths, but Palestinian ones too. Hamas launches rockets from apartment blocks, stores weapons in schools, uses hospitals as command centers, and hides beneath UN facilities.

Each of these is a war crime — and every one of them is committed with intent.

To Hamas, every civilian death is a strategic victory. Why? Because it knows — and tragically, it is right — that images of Gazan casualties will be weaponized to turn public opinion against Israel and smear its name on the world stage.

And it’s working.

In war, mistakes happen — sometimes tragic ones. Israel is no exception. But crucially, when mistakes occur, Israel admits them, investigates, and takes corrective action. That is what democracies do.

Hamas, by contrast, deliberately endangers its own civilians — because that serves its narrative.

There is no moral equivalence between a country trying to protect civilians and a terror group using them as shields and human sacrifices.

Yet the failure of much of the international community to recognize this is a moral collapse — resulting in empty gestures and virtue-signaling, like the recent joint statement signed by 28 countries, including Australia, calling for an unconditional ceasefire that would leave Hamas in power.

That statement completely ignored the work of the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), which has delivered more than 95 million meals and bypassed corrupt UN aid systems that Hamas routinely exploits to feed its fighters and fund terror.

Is it any wonder Hamas praised the statement?

Hamas knew that its October 7 invasion and massacre would set off a chain reaction leading to Gaza’s devastation and tragic loss of life. It correctly calculated that as images of carnage circled the globe, international pressure would mount on Israel to stop the war — even as Hamas vowed to repeat the attacks of October 7 again and again.

So to expect Israel to stop fighting while Hamas remains in power is absurd and unprecedented.

Would the UK, France, or the US ever allow such a threat to exist on their doorstep? Of course not. So why would — or should — Israel?

This is where the hypocrisy lies. Israel is expected to:

• Fight a war unlike any other in history;
• Feed its enemy’s population through corrupted international bodies;
• Avoid all civilian casualties — something no military has ever achieved;
• Provide exact, real-time casualty figures on the local population while still engaged in house-to-house combat.

During the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, neither the US nor the UK could provide reliable figures on civilian deaths.

Back then, even Pentagon spokesman Jim Turner admitted: “I have nothing on Iraqi civilian casualties.” (2004)

And then British Foreign Minister Jack Straw dismissed media estimates entirely: “This is an estimate relying on media reports, and which we do not regard as reliable … It relies on media reporting to decide who is a civilian and who is not.”

Sound familiar?

Today, many of those same governments and media outlets treat Hamas’ Health Ministry numbers as gospel — even though Hamas refuses to distinguish between civilians and combatants. They claim roughly 58,000 deaths. Israel estimates it has killed about 25,000 terrorists.

Even if we take Hamas’s figures at face value — which is generous — that would mean something like a 1:1 civilian-to-terrorist ratio. That is far lower than in Afghanistan (3:1) or Iraq (4:1), according to former British Armed Forces Commander Col. Richard Kemp.

And unlike the US and UK in Iraq and Afghanistan, which delivered aid primarily after combat zones were secured, Israel is facilitating humanitarian assistance in real time — even as it fights an enemy embedded among civilians. That level of restraint and risk is virtually unprecedented in modern warfare.

Chastising Israel for failing to meet impossible standards no other nation has met — while ignoring Hamas’ atrocities — is not just hypocritical. It is complicity.

We must stop pretending this war is being fought between equals. It isn’t.

One side fights to defend its people. The other fights behind its people.

One side seeks peace. The other seeks only destruction and endless conflict.

If the world wants peace, it must start with truth.

And the truth is this: Israel isn’t just fighting Hamas terrorists, tunnels, and rockets. It’s fighting a global campaign of lies.

Justin Amler is a policy analyst at the Australia/Israel & Jewish Affairs Council (AIJAC).

Col. Richard Kemp at humanitarian aid site with Gazans. Photo: Provided

The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal have recently reported on starvation in Gaza, blaming Israel and all but absolving the terrorist group Hamas. But this ignores the reality on the ground, and only helps Hamas spin its narrative.

In the Times report, “No Proof Hamas Routinely Stole U.N. Aid, Israeli Military Officials Say,” reporter Natan Odenheimer claims:

… the Israeli military never found proof that the Palestinian militant group had systematically stolen aid from the United Nations, the biggest supplier of emergency assistance to Gaza for most of the war, according to two senior Israeli military officials and two other Israelis involved in the matter. (NYT, July 26, 2025)

For starters, the Times headline would have been less deceptive if it had read “Some Israeli Officials Say,” because there is no doubt that other senior Israeli military officials would have strongly disagreed.

In fact, at the behest of senior IDF officials, the IDF website has a special section titled The UNRWA-Hamas Connection, which includes numerous reports filled with conclusive evidence proving that UNRWA (the main UN body in Gaza that distributes aid) is essentially an arm of Hamas.

Hamas freely uses UNRWA facilities for its terrorist purposes (with only sporadic and perfunctory objections from the UN), and many UNRWA officials and workers are either closely associated with Hamas or are actual members of Hamas. UNRWA workers even took part in the October 7, 2023, mass terrorist attack on Israel.

In other words, Odenheimer’s core claim that Israel has presented no proof that Hamas stole aid from the United Nations is both inaccurate and nonsensical, since Hamas can’t, in effect, steal from itself. Taking control of UNRWA aid, appropriating some for its own use, controlling its distribution to civilians, and selling the rest to shopkeepers are basics in Hamas funding of its operations and control of the Gaza population.

In support of his claims Odenheimer cited a Reuters report based on a USAID study, noting:

An internal U.S. government analysis came to [a] similar conclusion, Reuters reported on Friday. It found no evidence of systematic Hamas theft of U.S.-funded humanitarian supplies, the report said.

This is more deception. Odenheimer omitted key points from the Reuters report, including 1) that the State Department disputed USAID’s conclusions and “accused traditional humanitarian groups of covering up ‘aid corruption,’’’ 2) that “because Palestinians who receive aid cannot be vetted, it was possible that U.S.-funded supplies went to administrative officials of Hamas,” and 3) that “The majority of incidents [of theft or diversion] could not be definitively attributed to a specific actor … Partners often largely discovered the commodities had been stolen in transit without identifying the perpetrator.”

Thus, contrary to Odenheimer’s claims, the details of the Reuters report did not exonerate Hamas at all.

Whatever the facts, it seems that Odenheimer and his Times colleagues will do journalistic backflips to deflect blame from Hamas and onto Israel.

Unfortunately, the news pages of The Wall Street Journal are no better, as exemplified in its July 24 story “More Children Starve in Gaza Food Crisis.”

Accompanied by a large photo of Palestinians carrying bags of flour, it all but concealed the reality that Hamas disrupts and exploits humanitarian aid for its own purposes and bears major responsibility for the hunger in Gaza, burying a dismissive reference to any such notion in the 13th paragraph. Thus, the emotive story about a reported increase in child starvation avers, only in passing, “Israel and Arab intelligence officials say the group [Hamas] steals aid and uses it to fund its war effort, which it denies.”

That was all — a nothing line surrounded by personal accounts of Palestinian suffering. The reference to both Israel and “Arab intelligence” could have cued the story’s reporters, Feliz Solomon, Abeer Ayyoub, and Summer Said, to investigate and report seriously on the issue.

Both Arabs and Israelis agree Hamas is stealing aid to fuel the war. Why bury that critical statement?

In an account largely blaming Israel for starving children — in fact, more children than ever — where are Journal news editors to demand full coverage by their reporters on this story? The publication trumpets its professional commitment to its readers this way: “Trust is a precious thing and …we are responsible for earning the trust of our readers every day. We are committed to providing the tools needed to help differentiate high-quality, fact-based news and analysis from misinformation.”

Omission and obfuscation of key information such as the Journal story focused on hungry children is “misinformation” that can radically mislead readers.

The opinion pages of the Journal are, as is well known, different from the news side that tilts against Israel almost daily, often presenting key factual information. Thus on July 25, an op-ed by Yasser Abu Shabab entitled “Gazans Are Finished With Hamas” described conditions in eastern Rafah where he and his Bedouin tribe have gained ascendance over Hamas, leading to greatly improved conditions in which people “all live without fear of Hamas stealing aid…”

This matter-of-fact observation underscored the common understanding about the role of Hamas in manipulating aid that The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal strain to conceal.

Until recently, Andrea Levin was Executive Director and President of CAMERA, and Alex Safian PhD, was Associate Director and Research Director. 

Soldier stands guard next to poster with images of late Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah and late senior Hezbollah official Hashem Safieddine, at the entrance of Beirut’s southern suburbs in Lebanon, after a ceasefire between Israel and Iran-backed group Hezbollah took effect on Nov. 27, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Thaier Al-Sudani

The United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) stretches the meaning of the word “interim.” Deployed in 1978 as a peacekeeping force, its “temporary” mandate has persisted for 47 years.

During this period, three major wars have erupted between Israel and militias in Lebanon, and UNIFIL has failed to pre-empt, prevent, or resolve any of them. Costing $500 million annually, UNIFIL is an ineffective expenditure. When the UN convenes to renew its mandate in August, it should disband the force permanently.

Without UNIFIL, Lebanon’s government would be compelled to take responsibility for its sovereignty. In 2006, UNIFIL’s mandate was expanded from 2,000 to 15,000 troops, with the expectation that the increased personnel and firepower would support the Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF) in deploying south of the Litani River and keeping the area free of Hezbollah and its weapons.

However, UNIFIL peaked at 10,000 troops and remained as ineffective as before. Since its inception, UNIFIL has not engaged outlaw forces in any firefights or law enforcement actions. Instead, it focused on searching for Hezbollah’s arms caches and reporting them to the LAF — an effort in which it consistently failed.

Hezbollah, Iran’s proxy militia, thwarted UNIFIL’s efforts by sending military-age men in civilian clothing to burn tires, block roads, and throw stones whenever UN peacekeepers approached arms depots. When confronted, UNIFIL personnel did not use force to proceed; they simply retreated to their bases. As a result, Hezbollah built tunnels with entrances near UNIFIL bases, exploiting the proximity to deter Israeli strikes due to the risk of harming UN personnel.

Disbanding UNIFIL would also force Lebanon’s government to engage directly with Israel. Lebanon absurdly refuses any direct talks — military or otherwise — with Israel. UNIFIL serves as a conduit, hosting officers from both sides at its coastal base in Naqoura, across the border from Israel’s Rosh Hanikra.

Even in these UN-mediated meetings, Lebanese officers childishly address the UN mediator rather than their Israeli counterparts, despite knowing the Israelis are present. The world should not spend $500 million a year to facilitate such immature behavior. Adversaries worldwide maintain hotlines for communication without implying normalization or recognition. Lebanon should do the same.

Dissolving UNIFIL would also increase pressure on Hezbollah. With UNIFIL doing little military work in south Lebanon, it has shifted to funding civilian projects, such as digging wells, purchasing generators, and building roads. These initiatives, funded by UNIFIL’s $500 million budget, indirectly support Hezbollah’s position. Without this funding, Hezbollah would face greater pressure to act responsibly, prioritize economic development for its supporters, and avoid conflict with Israel in favor of peace.

Critics, including some within the US government and foreign policy circles, oppose disbanding UNIFIL. They argue for a gradual drawdown, with a phase-out over three years. However, there is no logistical justification for such a prolonged timeline. The US withdrew 50,000 troops from Iraq in six months; withdrawing 10,000 lightly armed UNIFIL personnel is a simpler task. All that is needed is the political will to end this outdated mission.

In 1978, Israel invaded south Lebanon to protect its northern border. Twenty-two years later, in 2000, Israel withdrew unilaterally, without an agreement with the Lebanese government, which was dominated by the Assad regime in Damascus. The United Nations established the Blue Line to demarcate the border between the two states, and then-Secretary-General Kofi Annan informed the Security Council that Israel had fully complied with UN Security Council Resolution 425, which mandated the withdrawal.

Even at the pivotal moment of de-escalation in 2000, UNIFIL neither disarmed Hezbollah nor dissolved itself. Instead, then as now, it functions as an entrenched component of Lebanon’s dysfunctional and corrupt state apparatus.

The Lebanese government has already urged world capitals to renew UNIFIL’s mandate at the UN’s August meeting. Local media reports suggest that the US Envoy to Syria informed Beirut officials that UNIFIL would remain, though this stance appears inconsistent with Washington’s current policy deliberations.

France, which contributes thousands of troops to UNIFIL, also opposes disbanding the force, offering no clear rationale for maintaining the status quo. Historically, Paris has maintained a conciliatory approach toward Hezbollah and played a key role in repeatedly renewing UNIFIL’s mandate.

This August, Washington must take a firm stand. Dismantling UNIFIL would foster accountability and progress in Lebanon, Israel, and the broader region.

Hussain Abdul-Hussain is a research fellow at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies (FDD).