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Yes, the IDF Is the Moral Army That It Claims To Be
November 2023: An Israeli soldier helps to provide incubators to Al Shifa Hospital in Gaza. Photo: Screenshot
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 7th 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.
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University of California Rejects Ethnic Studies Admissions Requirement in Faculty Assembly Vote
Demonstrators holding a “Stand Up for Internationals” rally on the campus of the University of California, Berkeley, in Berkeley, California, US, April 17, 2025. Photo: Carlos Barria via Reuters Connect.
The University of California (UC) Faculty Assembly has rejected a proposal to establish passing ethnic studies in high school as a requirement for admission to its 10 taxpayer-funded schools for undergraduates.
As previously reported by The Algemeiner, the campaign for the measure — defeated overwhelmingly 29-12 with 12 abstaining — was spearheaded by Christine Hong, chair of the Critical Race and Ethnic Studies department at UC Santa Cruz. Hong believes that Zionism is a “colonial racial project” and that Israel is a “settler colonial state.” Moreover, she holds that anti-Zionism is “part and parcel” of the ethnic studies discipline.
Ethnic studies activists like Hong throughout the University of California system coveted the admissions requirement because it would have facilitated their aligning ethnic studies curricula at the K-12 level with “liberated ethnic studies,” an extreme revolutionary project that was rejected by California Gov. Gavin Newsom in 2023. Had the proposal been successful, school officials of both public and private schools would have been forced to comply with their standard of what constitutes ethnic studies to qualify their students for admission to UC.
Being indoctrinated into anti-Zionism and “hating Jews” would essentially have become a prerequisite for becoming a UC student had the Faculty Assembly approved the measure, Tammi Rossman-Benjamin, executive director of antisemitism watchdog AMCHA Initiative, told The Algemeiner on Friday. AMCHA Initiative first raised the alarm about the proposal in 2023, calling it “a deeply frightening prospect.”
“Ethnic studies never intended to be like any other discipline or subject. It was always intended to be a political project for fomenting revolution according to the dictates of however the activists behind the subject defined it,” Rossman-Benjamin explained. “And anti-Zionism has been at the core of the field, and this became especially clear after Oct. 7. Most of the anti-Zionist mania on campuses that day — the support for the encampments, the Faculty for Justice in Palestine chapters — it was a project of Ethnic Studies. At UC Santa Cruz, 60 percent of Faculty for Justice in Palestine members were pulled from the ethnic studies department.”
Founded in the 1960s to provide an alternative curriculum for beneficiaries of racial preferences whose retention rates lagged behind traditional college students, ethnic studies is based on anti-capitalist, anti-liberal, and anti-Western ideologies found in the writings of, among others, Franz Fanon, Huey Newton, Simone de Beauvoir, and Karl Marx. Its principal ideological target in the 20th century was the remains of European imperialism in Africa and the Middle East, but overtime it identified new “systems of oppression,” most notably the emergent superpower that was the US after World War II and the nation that became its closest ally in the Middle East: Israel.
UC Santa Cruz’s Critical Race and Ethnic Studies (CRES) department is a case study in how the ideology leads inexorably to anti-Zionist antisemitism, AMCHA Initiative argued in a 2024 study.
Following Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, massacre across southern Israel, CRES issued a statement rationalizing the terrorist group’s atrocities as political resistance. Additionally, the department days later participated in a “Call for a Global General Strike,” refusing to work because Israel mounted a military response to Hamas’s atrocities — an action CRES called “Israel’s genocidal attack on Gaza.” Later, the department held an event titled, “The Genocide in Gaza in our [sic] Classrooms: A Teaching Palestine Workshop,” in which professors and teaching assistants were trained in how to persuade students that Zionism is a racist and genocidal endeavor.
Imposing such noxious views on all California students would have been catastrophic, Rossman-Benjamin told The Algemeiner.
“The goal of admissions requirements is to make sure that students are adequately prepared for college,” she noted. “Their goal was to use their power to force students to take the kind of Critical Ethnic Studies that is taught at the university, with the goal of revolutionizing society. The idea should have been dead on arrival, being rejected on the grounds that there is no evidence that it is a worthwhile subject that should be required for admission to the University of California.”
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.
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Israeli FM Praises Paraguay Decision to Label Iran’s IRGC, Proxies Hamas and Hezbollah as Terrorist Organizations
Paraguayan President Santiago Peña praying at the Western Wall in Jerusalem on Dec. 12, 2024. Photo: The Western Wall Heritage Foundation
Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar praised Paraguay’s decision to designate Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) as a terrorist organization, and to broaden the country’s previous designation to include all factions of Hamas and Hezbollah.
The top Israeli diplomat congratulated the South American country and described President Santiago Peña’s decision as a “landmark move” in addressing security challenges and fostering international peace.
“Iran is the world’s leading exporter of terrorism and extremism, and together with its terror proxies, it threatens regional stability and global peace,” Sa’ar wrote in a post on X. “More countries should follow suit and join the fight against Iranian aggression and terrorism.”
I commend Paraguay and @SantiPenap for the landmark decision to designate the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, Hamas, and Hezbollah as terrorist organizations.
Iran is the world’s leading exporter of terrorism and extremism, and together with its terror proxies, it threatens… https://t.co/OzWACbWcno— Gideon Sa’ar | גדעון סער (@gidonsaar) April 24, 2025
On Thursday, Peña issued an executive order designating the IRGC as a terrorist organization “for its systematic violations of peace, human rights, and the security of the international community.”
The executive order also expanded Paraguay’s 2019 proscription of the armed wings of the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas, the al-Qassam Brigades, and Hezbollah, the Iran-backed terrorist group in Lebanon, to encompass the entirety of both organizations, including their political wings.
“With this decision, Paraguay reaffirms its unwavering commitment to peace, international security, and the unconditional respect for human rights, solidifying its position within the international community as a country firmly opposed to all forms of terrorism and strengthening its relations with allied nations in this fight,” Peña wrote in a post on X, emphasizing the country’s strategic relationship with the United States and Israel.
Iran is the chief international backer of Hamas and Hezbollah, providing the Islamist terror groups with weapons, funding, and training. According to media reports based on documents seized by the Israeli military in Gaza last year, Iran had been informed about Hamas’s plan to launch the Oct. 7 attack months in advance.
Last year, Peña reopened Paraguay’s embassy in Jerusalem, making it the sixth nation — after the US, Guatemala, Honduras, Kosovo, and Papua New Guinea — to establish its embassy in the Israeli capital. During the same visit, he condemned the Hamas-led massacre across southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, calling the perpetrators “criminals” in a speech at the Knesset, the Israeli parliament.
The Trump administration also praised Paraguay’s decision to officially label the IRGC as a terrorist organization, describing it as a major blow to Iran’s terror network in the Western Hemisphere.
“Iran remains the leading state sponsor of terrorism in the world and has financed and directed numerous terrorist attacks and activities globally, through its IRGC-Qods Force and proxies such as Hezbollah and Hamas,” US State Department spokesperson Tammy Bruce said in a statement.
The US official said Paraguay’s action will help disrupt Iran’s ability to finance terrorism and operate in Latin America — particularly in the Tri-Border Area, where Paraguay borders Argentina and Brazil, a region long regarded as a financial hub for Hezbollah-linked operatives.
“The important steps Paraguay has taken will help cut off the ability of the Iranian regime and its proxies to plot terrorist attacks and raise money for its malignant and destabilizing activity,” the statement read.
“The United States will continue to work with partners such as Paraguay to confront global security threats,” Bruce added. “We call on all countries to hold the Iranian regime accountable and prevent its operatives, recruiters, financiers, and proxies from operating in their territories.”
During his first administration, Trump designated the IRGC as a foreign terrorist organization (FTO), citing the Iranian regime’s use of the IRGC to “engage in terrorist activities since its inception 40 years ago.”
At the time, Trump said this designation “recognizes the reality that Iran is not only a state sponsor of terrorism, but that the IRGC actively participates in, finances, and promotes terrorism as a tool of statecraft.”
“The IRGC is the Iranian government’s primary means of directing and implementing its global terrorist campaign,” he continued.
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Yale’s Silence Is Allowing Blatant Campus Antisemitism — and Betraying the Promise of ‘Never Again’
Yale University students at the corner of Grove and College Streets in New Haven, Connecticut, U.S., April 22, 2024. Photo: Melanie Stengel via Reuters Connect.
As darkness fell over Yale University on Wednesday evening, Jewish students faced intimidation that echoed history’s darkest chapters. The following day, as the sun rose on Holocaust Remembrance Day, the world solemnly reflected on the devastating consequences of unchecked hatred.
Yet, disturbingly, at Yale, the shadows of that same hatred linger once again.
For several nights now, radical anti-Israel activists, primarily organized by “Yalies for Palestine,” an anti-Israel hate group, have targeted Jewish students at Yale — in many cases, based solely on their outwardly Jewish appearance.
On Wednesday, protestors blocked walkways, physically intimidated Jewish students, and hurled bottles and sprayed liquids at them — all while campus police stood by and did nothing.
One Jewish student described her chilling encounter with the protesters the night before, on Tuesday: “When I tried to get through, they blocked me, ignored my requests to pass, and handed out masks to those obstructing me. Yale security told me they couldn’t help.”
The immediate trigger for this harassment is the invitation extended by Shabtai, a Yale Jewish society, to Itamar Ben-Gvir, an Israeli government minister. Whether one supports or opposes Ben-Gvir’s politics is beside the point. Notably, Naftali Bennett, a former Israeli prime minister, was also protested and disrupted during a separate campus event in February, underscoring a broader trend of hostility toward Israeli speakers regardless of their political affiliation.
These events signal more than isolated protests; they constitute a redux of hatred that historically escalates when met with institutional silence or indifference.
Yale’s administration, under President Maurie McInnis and Dean Pericles Lewis, has failed to adequately respond. Though Yale revoked official recognition from Yalies for Palestine, its tepid actions have not halted the dangerous slide toward overt hostility. The silence — from both the university and the Slifka Center, Yale’s center for Jewish life — is deafening.
This isn’t the first troubling instance at Yale. A year ago, similar demonstrators disrupted campus life with vitriolic anti-Israel rhetoric, silencing dialogue and fostering an atmosphere hostile to Jewish students.
Earlier this year, CAMERA on Campus documented Yale’s Slifka Center pressuring students to erase evidence of anti-Jewish harassment during a pro-Israel event, effectively whitewashing antisemitism and emboldening extremists.
As CAMERA’s Ricki Hollander has powerfully documented, the rhetoric of anti-Zionism today often revives the antisemitic patterns of the past, particularly those propagated by the Nazi regime in the 1930s. These tactics, she explains, echo Nazi-era propaganda that portrayed Jews as subhuman, sinister, and uniquely malevolent — a narrative used to justify marginalization and, ultimately, genocide.
These dynamics — scapegoating, dehumanizing, and ostracizing Jews under the guise of “anti-Zionism” — are not relics of history. They are alive and active across elite American campuses. And now, unmistakably, they have taken root at Yale.
McInnis must break the silence and condemn the open harassment and assault of Jewish students. She must also hold the perpetrators of the heinous actions and those responsible for the safety of students accountable for their inaction.
This week has revealed a grave failure of moral and institutional duty on many fronts. When law enforcement stands by as Jewish students face intimidation and assault, it sends a chilling message: their safety matters less.
We must demand a full investigation and real accountability. Condemnations of antisemitism are not enough. Policies must be changed to ensure Jewish students and organizations can freely exercise their right to free expression without being subject to harassment and assault. Anything less would betray Yale’s stated values — and the promise of “never again.”
Douglas Sandoval is the Managing Director for CAMERA on Campus.
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