Cross-Posted from The Proverbial Tundra
What many of us here have been saying all along, that the Israel Defense Forces did a miraculous job in limiting civilian casualties in the recent Gaza offensive, is now being reported by a major Italian newspaper, Corriere Della Sera.
Italian newspaper Corriere Della Sera reported Thursday that a doctor working in Gaza's Shifa Hospital claimed that Hamas has intentionally inflated the number of casualties resulting from Israel's Operation Cast Lead.
"The number of deceased stands at no more than 500 to 600. Most of them are youths between the ages of 17 to 23 who were recruited to the ranks of Hamas, who sent them to the slaughter," according to the newspaper article.
So why would Hamas inflate the civilian death count? Well, because they realize very few people would call for Israel to leave if they were trying their hardest to avoid civilian casualties and basically only killing terrorists. Unfortunately, many people here fell into that trap and were so quick to jump on the "Israel is the bad guy" bandwagon and most of those people are too proud to even contemplate apologizing for their demonization of Israel's brave men and women in uniform.
A Tal al-Hawa resident told the newspaper's reporter, "Armed Hamas men sought out a good position for provoking the Israelis. There were mostly teenagers, aged 16 or 17, and armed. They couldn't do a thing against a tank or a jet. They knew they are much weaker, but they fired at our houses so that they could blame Israel for war crimes."
The reporter for the Italian newspaper also quoted reporters in the Strip who told of Hamas' exaggerated figures, "We have already said to Hamas commanders – why do you insist on inflating the number of victims?"
You see the key line there?
They knew they are much weaker, but they fired at our houses so that they could blame Israel for war crimes."
Israel hasn't blamed their friendly-fire deaths on Hamas, they take responsibility for their actions. Hamas, on the other hand, is systematically slaughtering the people they were elected to represent and inflating casualty counts to gain sympathy from a sadly ignorant world.
I'll leave you with one final quote from the article. I want all of you who have been so critical of the IDF throughout and after Operation Cast Lead:
These same reporters mentioned that the truth that will come out is likely to be similar to what occurred in Operation Defensive Shield in Jenin. "Then, there was first talk of 1,500 deaths. But then it turned out that there were only 54, 45 of which were armed men," the Palestinian reporters told the Italian newspaper.
UPDATE: There have been a lot of comments about how the IDF is standing by their initial casualty estimates. Here is my theory why: If Israel overestimates the casualty count (as it seems they are doing), and it turns out it is much lower, they claim the moral high ground. If they now readjust their count to lower than what it ends up being, they will get a whole new round of criticism.