Does Macron Not Know How Israel is Preventing Civilian Casualties?

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Israel is justifiably worried that other European suppliers of arms to the IDF will follow French President Emmanuel Macron’s lead and halt their own sales of weapons to the embattled Israelis. He is setting a terrible example. More on his call for an embargo on weapons for Israel can be found here: “Macron urges countries to ‘stop delivering weapons’ to Israel for war in Gaza,” by Niha Masih, Bryan Pietsch, and Ellen Francis, MSN, October 6, 2024:

Macron said that terrorism should not be fought by “sacrificing a civilian population” and that he had expressed those concerns to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu….

It is Hamas that is “sacrificing a civilian population” by placing its operatives, its weapons, its rocket launchers, its command-and-control centers, among civilian areas and buildings, including schools, mosques, hospitals, and apartment buildings. Macron knows this. And he knows that the IDF makes every effort to prevent civilian casualties, by warning those civilians away from areas about to be targeted. Already by March (and many more in the months since then), the IDF had dropped nine million leaflets, sent fifteen million text messages, and made sixteen million robocalls, all to warn civilians away from such areas. Israeli pilots have instructions to abort their missions when they spot too many civilians below; about half the time they do so. That, too, must surely be known to Macron, who nonetheless accuses the IDF, not Hamas, of “sacrificing a civilian population.”

Finally, Macron should realize that of the nearly 42,000 Gazans killed — if we accept the number claimed by the Hamas-run Gazan Health Ministry — close to 20,000, or nearly half, were Hamas fighters. Before October 7, in Gaza about 800 people died each month on average of diseases (cancer, heart disease, COVID, etc.) and from accidents. Assuming that number has held steady, in the twelve months since October 7, 2023, 9600 of those 22,000 civilian deaths were due to diseases and accidents. Thus only 12,400 civilian deaths can be attributed to the IDF.

This brings us to the key ratio by which the conduct of wars may be judged: the ratio of civilian-to-combatant deaths. The UN has claimed that in all the wars fought since 1945, that average ratio has stood at 9:1 — nine civilian dead for every combatant. In Afghanistan, the Americans brought that ratio down to 4:1; in Iraq they did even better, bringing it down to 3:1. But in Gaza, the IDF has done what no other army has ever done, by achieving a ratio of 12,400 to 20,000, which is much less than 1:1. No wonder that Colonel Richard Kemp, who led the British forces in Afghanistan and has fought in a half-dozen campaigns, has called the IDF “the most moral army in the world.” And Professor John Spencer, a professor of Urban Warfare at West Point, has claimed that “Israel has done more to prevent civilian casualties in war than any military in history — above & beyond what international law requires.”

Has no one told Macron any of this? Or does he knows it all, but doesn’t care? He wants to secure the support of the Arabs, for obvious financial reasons. Qatar alone, the supplier of billions of dollars to Hamas, the supplier of a refuge for Hamas’ leaders, who lead cosseted lives of luxury in Doha, announced earlier this year that it would be investing the colossal sum of $15 billion in France. No wonder Macron wants to please the waddling emirs of the Al-Thani family.

Netanyahu, in a video statement Saturday after Macron’s remarks, criticized the French president and other leaders who “call for an arms embargo on Israel.”

“Israel will win with or without their support, but their shame will continue long after the war is won,” he said.

In response to Netanyahu, Macron’s office said France remains a “steadfast friend of Israel,” describing Netanyahu’s reaction as “excessive and detached from the friendship between France and Israel,” according to Le Monde.

Nothing says “steadfast friend of Israel” like cutting off all arms sales to that embattled land as it is fighting a seven-front war against those who would destroy it.