Police are searching for a 28-year-old woman who ran away from a Social Affairs-run women’s shelter in Jeddah on Friday.Col. Misfar Al-Juaid, spokesman for Jeddah police, said the woman ran away while the police were preparing to take her to jail in line with a court order. He further urged the young woman to surrender and warned the public against giving her shelter.

She must have done something heinous to have an all-point bulletin issued by an entire Kingdom. What was her crime?

The court had ordered the police to take the woman to jail while it examined a case filed against her by her father. The woman fled her parents’ home after accusing them of abusing her and sought refuge at the shelter.

The woman had earlier complained against her father at a summary court. The father had then filed a counter-case against her, accusing her of disobeying her parents, a culpable offense under Saudi law. The court refused to entertain the woman’s petition and instead began examining the father’s complaint.

Before issuing a final verdict, the court ordered police to take the woman to jail. When police arrived to take her, the woman said she needed to use the toilet and on entering the ladies’ toilet she fled.

The woman accused her father of abusing her. The father responded to the court that she had done something much worse – she had disobeyed him. So the Saudi justice system, naturally, decided to drop the charges for the abuse crime and start a nationwide hunt for the 28 year old woman who disobeyed her father.

The Saudis aren’t monsters, though. They have a solution:

Urging the young woman to return to her senses and surrender to the authorities, Dr. Ali Al-Hanaki, director of the Ministry of Social Affairs Ministry in Jeddah, said, “The solution now lies in her own hands. Each additional day she refuses to obey the authorities will only worsen her problem.”

He added that the ministry had pledged to resolve her problem without sending her to jail. “We have informed the court of our plans, which include arranging for her to marry and reconciling her with her family,” said Al-Hanaki.

See? They’ll find her a husband! No doubt he will be a prize catch for her, arranged by the government itself.

Almost as much of a prize as her father evidently is:

He also requested her father to stop sending threatening messages to the authorities.

The report was mainly written by Marc Garlasco, who had famously blamed Israel for the very ambiguous Gaza beach blast in 2006 and whose credentials as an expert are equally ambiguous.

I didn’t have time to look at the report too carefully, but it follows the normal HRW playbook of doing everything possible to blame Israel for not being perfect.

The main example was the famous case of Israel bombing what appeared to be a group of men loading a truck with missiles.

To support its statement, the IDF released video footage of the attack, made available online, probably taken by the drone that launched the missile. It showed a group of at least one dozen men casually loading cylindrical objects crossways onto an open truck immediately before the missile struck. At least five more men are seen standing around the vehicle.The IDF video does not show any secondary explosions, which would have indicated the presence of weapons-grade explosives or propellants at the site. Nor was the destruction at the site consistent with the presence of rockets. Had the truck been carrying Grad rockets with warheads, the truck and adjacent buildings would have been destroyed. Even without warheads, the propellant in the rockets would have destroyed the truck.

Credible doubts about the attack arose on December 31, when the Israeli human rights group B’Tselem released an interview with the owner of the truck, Ahmad Samur, who said that he was transporting oxygen canisters used for welding, and not Grad rockets. According to Samur, his family was trying to move the canisters from the metal workshop he owns to protect them from looters. He denied any connection to Hamas or any other Palestinian armed group. Eight civilians died in the attack, Samur said, including three children and Samur’s son ‘Imad, age 32. Two others were severely wounded.

As HRW mentions, the video is widely available.

While HRW is probably right in that the cylindrical objects were probably not Grad missiles as they appeared, its only advice to the IDF was to notice that the objects were smaller than Grad missiles are and try to identify them better before firing. (As it was, the video shows that the IDF watched the activity for over two minutes before firing.)

However, the objects were being taken from the vicinity of a metal workshop – the places that Qassam rockets are typically built. It is a very reasonable assumption that these were weapons of some sort. HRW doesn’t even consider that the IDF might have a case in targeting these men. Would an average soldier looking at this video be able to make such an assumption that these are oxygen tanks, knowing that at that very moment there were dozens of rockets being fired at Israeli communities daily? I cannot blame the IDF for their decision – but HRW, of course, does.

One other interesting fact. HRW lists the names of those killed during the attack, and says that eight civilians were killed and none had any connection with any terror group. However, one of them, Ashraf Sayed Khamis al-Dabbagh, was identified as a “militant” by the PCHR. (#366.)

One other person I noticed from the report, Adham Hamdi al-’Adani, killed when the IDF hit near a Gaza school, is this person depicted in an Al Qassam Brigades martyr poster, #33 in the PCHR list:

He is identified here as a member of the Al Qassam Brigades Deir al-Balah Battalion.

This is not to say that these bombings weren’t mistakes. Most of the victims do not appear to have been terrorists, and the IDF should – and does – do everything necessary to avoid killing civilians. There are articles and video that show the IDF aborting bombings when they see civilians in the area, evidence that the HRW seems to ignore in its reckless quest to damn Israel as being indiscriminately violent.

However, HRW either ignored evidence that some of the “civilian” victims they are talking about were actually terrorists or it didn’t do any reasonable research (typing the names into Google should have been enough.) This is either sloppy work or it is purposeful deception on HRW’s part.

When he took office, the Western press started obsessing over his non-use of the words “two state solution.” The world made the assumption – despite “Ultra-Rightist Avigdor Lieberman’s”‘ acceptance of the Roadmap – that Netanyahu was a super-hawk whose proposals for peace were smokescreens for his real desire to annex the entire Arab world and perform a genocide on all Palestinian Arabs. The pressure started to build and Netanyahu, like all recent Israeli leaders, buckled a few days ago when he tacitly seemed to accept “linkage” despite explicitly renouncing it:

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is willing to tear down settlement outposts in the occupied West Bank in return for US backing on its stance on arch-foe Iran, local media reported on Tuesday.Netanyahu told his right-wing Likud faction on Monday that Israel would have to dismantle what it considers illegal outposts, as demanded by Washington, since the issue of Iran was more important, newspaper reports said.

“I identify the danger and that’s why I am willing to take unpopular steps such as evacuating outposts. The Iranian threat is above everything,” the mass-selling Yediot Aharonot quoted Netanyahu as saying.

“There are things on which you have to compromise.”

Despite the seeming waves of pressure on Israel in reaction to Bibi’s “intransigence,” however, there has been an undertow in the opposite direction from his perceived lack of support for a two-state solution.

His reticence to say the magic words “Palestinian state” are causing people to openly wonder whether a such a state is desirable or feasible.

Canada’s National Post has always been on the right wing in the Middle East conflict, but the following article (republished in the Vancouver Sun) would have been inconceivable a few months ago:

The two-state solution illusion

…A two-state solution sounds pleasant to Western ears. It seems the proper thing for Canadian politicians to say. Certainly the media would pillory Harper and Ignatieff were they to refuse to play along. But were Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to endorse the plan tomorrow—as Barack Obama wants as precondition to helping Israel resist Iranian nuclear agression—it would be utterly meaningless. “There is no partner on the Palestinian side,” [Jerusalem Post reporter Khaled] Toameh says. Israel’s West Bank settlements are no obstacle, he adds; they are a red herring: a minor issue that Jerusalem will easily handle—based on its readiness to dismantle its settlements in the past—when the moment is right. That time is not now, and is not coming soon. Because, in today’s environment, whatever proposed peace agreement is backed by Abbas would only be instantly rejected by Hamas, and any deal with Hamas—were any possible—reflexively rejected by Fatah. And neither group has much validity in citizens’ eyes, he reports. In fact, Toameh mischievously suggests Netanyahu might be clever to try what Obama wants and publicly back a two-state plan immediately, if only to put the Palestinians and international peace-plan backers “in a corner” by revealing to all how truly impossible implementing anything of the sort would be under the current circumstances.

The international community’s error, says Toameh, is that it seems to think statehood is something to be handed to Palestinians, like a gift. It is, he believes, an undeserved one. “I believe a state is not something we should be given, it is something we should earn,” says the West Bank-born journalist. Far from demonstrating a capability to create a functioning, responsible civil society, he says, Palestinians have only proven their willingness to tolerate chaos, mob-rule and terror. They watched as, instead of building hospitals and schools and infrastructure with the billions sent to Ramallah and Gaza, Arafat lined his own pockets, Fatah fattened its cronies, and Hamas purchased weapons. On the one hand, Palestinians have fallen again and again for rotten leadership, which in turn, do their best to suppress the emergence of more responsible alternatives. On the other, Toameh seems to suggest that the Palestinians are getting the government they deserve. “Everything is going in the wrong direction, largely because of the failure of Palestinians to hold [their] government accountable,” he says.

Bibi has moved the very parameters of the debate, and that points to incredible political power.

The Arab/Israeli conflict is, ultimately, binary. There might be 22 Arab nations, 57 Islamic nations and an entire building of diplomats in New York’s East Side who love to dump on Israel, but in the end Israel does not have to go along with anything that compromises its own red lines. Unfortunately, those lines have become fuzzy, to put it mildly, and each time Israel’s leaders retreat from one of them the vacuum is instantly filled with more pressure to bring the lines in ever closer.

What Bibi has inadvertently proven is that the opposite is still true. If Israel’s leaders stake out an uncompromising position that pushes the lines outward, even at this late date, there will be a perceptible shift in the world’s reaction, even amongst the predictable criticism.

While previous Israeli governments have effectively ceded parts of Jerusalem, Bibi is at least publicly moving that line back outward. If he doesn’t yield, the net effect would be to change the very discourse from “how much of Jerusalem should Israel give away” to “should Israel give any away.” Similarly, his public statements on natural growth in the settlements would also change the very terms of the debate from “Israel should return all of the West Bank” to “How much should Israel return?”

When all is said and done, the resolution to the problem is not to be found in legal or historic or religious arguments – it will be the result of negotiations. Netanyahu has the potential to strengthen Israel’s negotiating position immensely, if he chooses to, by simply being strong in his convictions.

As one of the sides in this lopsided conflict against her, Israel holds some impressive cards that cost little to show. And if Israel is to learn anything from its Palestinian Arab neighbors, it is that the consequences of saying “no” often end up being rewards.

In March, the Palestinian Center for Human Rights widely released a report detailing the people who were killed in Gaza during Operation Cast Lead. This report was a seemingly comprehensive list of the details about every death: the name, gender, age, location, and job of each person is detailed. Most importantly, the PCHR classified all the victims as being either “militants” or “civilians,” and their counts indicated that 1181 of 1417 victims were civilians.

Meanwhile, the IDF has claimed that there were 1166 killed in Gaza, of whom 709 were known Hamas or Islamic Jihad militants.

The IDF did not release their list of casualties, so its claims cannot be independently verified at this time. On the other hand, I and two other bloggers have been researching the PCHR’s claims and have found serious inconsistencies with that organization’s methodologies and classifications.

Our team cross-checked the names listed by PCHR with lists of “resisters” compiled by the Al Mezan Center for Human Rights as well as lists of “martyrs” published by Hamas, the Popular Resistance Committees and other militant groups in Gaza, as well as from the Ma’an News Agency, Palestinian Arabic discussion groups and other sources.

Our preliminary results show that at least 166 of the people killed, that PCHR classifies as “civilians,” were, in fact, militants.

PCHR’s criteria to determine exactly who is a “militant” is unclear. They seem to claim that they are only counting those whom they had direct evidence were engaging in hostilities at the moment of their deaths, but this is far from clear. At any rate, the term “militant” is not a legal term, and in common usage it refers to anyone who belongs to a military or paramilitary group. The PCHR’s statistics are deceptive and slanted towards creating a false impression of IDF brutality.

So far, we have identified members of Hamas, Islamic Jihad, the Popular Resistance Committees, the PFLP and the DFLP who are all considered “civilians” by the PCHR. The full list can be seen at http://elderofziyon.blogspot.com/2009/04/more-of-those-civilians-killed-in-gaza.html. These include the links to the original sources where the victims are associated with these various militant groups.

This is far from a comprehensive list. This is only based on the names that we have found. We are not trying to create a full count of civilians and militants; rather we are showing that the statistics given by the PCHR and publicized in the media are knowingly false.

The IDF has categorized most or all of the Hamas police force as “Hamas or Islamic Jihad operatives” and therefore as legal targets. The PCHR takes strong exception to this categorization, and reveals its own definition of “combatants”:

PCHR consider the IOF’s classification of police officers as combatants illegal: this classification constitutes a wilful violation of the principle of distinction, a key component of customary international law. Hamas is a multi-faceted organisation, exercising de facto governmental control of the Gaza Strip. As an organisation, it cannot be considered an armed group. Rather, a distinction must be made between Hamas’ armed and political/civil components. The Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades are the military wing of the Hamas organisation, they are an armed group, and are considered as combatants according to IHL. However, Hamas’ political and civil wings are comprised of civilians, who are legally entitled to the protections associated with this status, provided they do not take an active part in hostilities. Civil police, and governmental officials cannot be considered combatants. Attacks intentionally directed against these individuals constitute wilful killing, a grave breach of the Geneva Conventions, and a violation of customary international law.

If we fully accept the PCHR’s definitions and interpretations of international humanitarian law (IHL) here, then they are saying that members of armed militias like the Al Qassam Brigades are legal combatants and therefore legitimate targets. By extension, it is clear that the Hamas policemen who were also members of the Al Qassam Brigades were, in fact, legitimate targets from the IDF.

Certainly, the PCHR is aware of the affiliations of many of not all of the victims in Gaza. To give one example, the Popular Resistance Committees al-Nasser Salah Addin Brigades published a list of its 18 “martyrs” on January 22, 2009. Yet nine of them – including a “commander” and a “field commander” – were classified as “civilian” by the PCHR nearly two months later. It strains credulity to think that with all the effort the PCHR made in compiling the names and classifying the victims that they were unaware of their affiliations with armed groups.

Why, then, did they classify so many known militants as civilians? One can only conclude that the PCHR is not being consistent with even its own description of who is considered a “militant” – and that the reason is to deceive the readers of its reports and the media who would uncritically report the PCHR’s conclusions.

We have identified at least 73 militants among the Hamas police force in Gaza. Most of them were affiliated with Hamas Al Qassam Brigades, and our count is not complete. Such a high number of Al Qassam members among the police that were killed indicates that Hamas itself does not distinguish between its so-called civilian and military wings. Effectively, Hamas considers its police force to be the same as its military force. If Hamas does not respect the principle of distinction in its own civilian organization, it forfeits the demand for its opponents to adhere to the principle of distinction, and the entire police force would be considered a legitimate target.

The evidence that Hamas doesn’t distinguish between its civilian and military wings is overwhelming; for more on that topic see this excerpt from Hamas: Politics, Charity, and Terrorism in the Service of Jihad by Matthew Levitt:

Because of the notion that Hamas has independent “wings,” its political and charitable fronts are allowed to operate openly in many Western and Middle Eastern capitals. In these cities, Islamic social welfare groups tied to Hamas are often tolerated when their logistical and financial support for Hamas is conducted under the rubric ofcharitable or humanitarian assistance.While convenient for Hamas and its supporters, this distinction is contradicted by the consistent if scattered findings of investigators, journalists, and analysts. A review ofthe evidence regarding the integration of Hamas’ political activism, social services, and terrorism demonstrates the centrality of the group’s overt activities to the organization’s ability to recruit, indoctrinate, train, fund, and dispatch suicide bombers to attack civilian targets.

The social welfare organizations of Hamas answer to the same political leaders who play hands-on roles in Hamas terrorist attacks. In some cases, the mere existence of these institutions is invoked to classify Hamas as a social welfare rather than a terrorist organization. To debunk these specious assumptions, it is necessary to fully expose what Hamas calls the dawa (its social welfare and proselytization network). This is sometimes difficult because, as one U.S. official explained, “Hamas is loosely structured, with some elements working clandestinely and others working openly through mosques and social service institutions to recruit members, raise money, organize activities, and distribute propaganda.”

Yet even without this knowledge, the PCHR is inconsistent in its definitions. Its only consistency, as evidenced by its use of the term “IOF” (“Israel Occupation Forces”) instead of IDF, is a desire to make Israel look as bad as possible. This is not the function of a “human rights” organization – it betrays a political agenda rather than a humanitarian one.

The al-Fakhoura UNRWA School

An interesting finding from the PCHR report regards the al-Fakhoura UNRWA school in Jabalya. On January 6th, 2009, the IDF returned fire from nearby the school, and the initial reports from various Gaza organizations charged that between 30 and 50 people were killed there. The PCHR wrote then that the IDF killed “27 civilians instantly” (not counting the Deeb family which was not near the school and indeed appears to have been killed by an errant shell.) The IDF, on the other hand, has claimed that 12 were killed outside the school.

The PCHR report lists exactly 12 victims from near the al-Fakhoura school, although they do not line up with the names and descriptions given by the IDF. Even so, the PCHR does not seem to be interested in publicizing the discrepancy between its initial reports of a massacre and what it later admits.

Child Militants

The PCHR press releases emphasize child victims of the conflict, but they do not mention another fact of which they are aware: that children are being drafted for use by militant groups.

The PCHR list includes 7 militants who were under 18. We have identified another 3 children who were members of militant groups. We have yet to see the PCHR condemn Hamas for its recruitment and use of children as fighters.

Conclusion

While the results are not complete, there is overwhelming evidence that the PCHR knowingly and maliciously lied in its statistics regarding the numbers of civilians and militants killed during Operation Cast Lead. Given its clear biases, the most reasonable conclusion is that the PCHR was not nearly as interested in the truth as it was in demonizing the IDF. The report itself cannot be considered reliable.

Given this information, it is difficult to know whether to believe that organization in other areas.

Chag Sameach!

“There is no escaping the fact that the day will come when we will free the Golan, through peace or through war,” Syrian President Bashar Assad said Thursday.

He added: “We have our principles, and whoever abides by them will not constitute a problem for us.”

According to Assad, “From the war of Palestine (in 1948) to the occupation of the Golan (in the Six Day War – R.N.) people are becoming more hostile towards Israel. There may come a generation that is unwilling to talk peace.

“There is now a resurgence of the idea of resistance. Israel is advancing in a direction that goes against its interests, and eventually all people are moving towards resistance, which is certainly in the interest of the Arabs.”

This points to a fundamental difference between Israel and most of its neighbors. To Israel, the major goal is peace. The means to get to that goal is negotiations, concessions, and sometimes through shows of strength, but the ultimate goal is to live in peace with her neighbors.

To Arabs, though, peace is not the goal. The goal is land, concessions, “Palestinian rights,” apologies, compensation, and a whole host of other demands – but the end-goal is not to have peace.

For Israel, concessions are a way to bring peace. For the Arabs, the pretense of “peace” is a way to wrangle a never-ending stream of concessions.

Which is, as Assad implies, exactly how they view war and terrorism (“resistance.”)

What kind of a peace can be expected when one side views it as a tactic and not as a goal?

Wikipedia says “Purim is a festival that commemorates the deliverance of the Jewish people of the ancient Persian Empire from Haman’s plot to annihilate them.”

Judaism 101: “It commemorates a time when the Jewish people living in Persia were saved from extermination. ”

Jewish Virtual Library: “It commemorates a time when the Jewish people living in Persia were saved from extermination.”

Notice what Purim isn’t. It is not celebrated as a military victory. Jews aren’t celebrating the death of Haman and his allies. While Haman’s death is an integral part of the Purim story, and it was necessary for him to die in order for his decrees to be countermanded, we do not specifically cheer Haman’s death except as to its role in the salvation of Persian Jewry. From Judaism’s perspective, it would have been preferable if the Jews had not been in danger at all (and if they would have repented on their own and not as a result of the direct threat to their lives.)

Purim is a joyous holiday in that it does not celebrate death, but the saving of lives.

Sometimes, war is necessary and lives have to be lost for others to be saved. Arabs tend to celebrate the (real or perceived) defeat of their enemies, and they assume that Jews are doing the same thing on Purim and Chanukah (and Yom Yerushalayim and Yom Ha’atzmaut.) This is exactly wrong: the Jews are celebrating their survival and, yes, their victory – but not the defeat of their enemies. The two are obviously related but the mindset is completely different.

One celebrates life and the other celebrates death.

Chanukah represents a spiritual victory more than a military victory; Yom Ha’atzmaut represents the revival of a millennia-old dream of Jewish nationhood on its own land; Yom Yerushalayim celebrates the return of Judaism’s holiest city to Jewish control. All of these events would have been preferable had no blood been shed. The defeat of enemies is not what is being celebrated; that is a necessary evil, not a cause for cheer.

Though of course Jews take undeniable pride in military victories, they would prefer that the engagement never happen to begin with.

Arabs cannot wrap their minds around this idea. For them, military victories are proof of their manhood, a source of “honor,” and, for Muslims, proof of their belief system being superior. Conversely, military defeats are shameful and indicate a problematic belief system, as why would Allah allow his people to be so dishonored? The point is the utter defeat – and more importantly, the humiliation – of their enemies.

This is why Arabs cannot understand Purim, and they cannot understand Jews. They project their own belief system and the honor/shame culture on their enemies. They cannot conceive that the defeat of one’s enemies is not the overriding goal of an embattled and surrounded people. All of the vitriol heaped on “Zionists” about their supposedly racist and genocidal goals is nothing more than Arab projection of their own belief system on Jews.

And, as Adin Steinsaltz notes, there are only two ways for Jews to counter the anti-semitism of both Haman and Hamas:

The conclusion of this is that we only have two possible responses. First, we can do our best, as was done in the days of Esther and in other generations, to defend ourselves against evil and fight it. This needs to be done in any case, even if only to gain a respite from the outbreaks of hatred.

The second possibility is to laugh. Laugh not only about the defeat of our enemies, but also about the absurdity, ridiculousness, and inherent contradictions of anti-Semitism. The laughter does not mean that there is an answer, yet this is our way of declaring that we have removed ourselves from the irrational interaction of hating Haman. We laugh at Haman, Ahasuerus, and all their successors, because after all we shall prevail and stick around, and they shall become the subject of jokes.

This is what Purim is about – celebrating Jewish survival. Our enemies’ defeats are incidental, and eventually comedic, but they are not central.

Today, we have a novel method of undermining the holy site: by deliberately introducing immodestly dressed women to the area. From Palestine Today:

The “Noble Sanctuary Heritage Institution” charges that Israel is violating the holy Al-Aqsa Mosque by allowing the Jews and foreigners to enter the area with scandalous clothing.

The institution stressed that the occupation authorities deliberately introduced thousands of Jews and foreign tourists to Al Aqsa clothing does not respect the sanctity of the place, especially women.

They said that “the Israeli authorities that accompany tourist groups prevent any of the guards of the Al-Aqsa Mosque or the Muslim faithful patrons from approaching the tourists to object to their semi-naked and provocative behavior.”

Another brilliant Zionist plot against Islam!

Hamas, he pointed out, consistently urged the continuation of its July 2008 Egypt-sponsored ceasefire with Israel and even its extension for up to 10 years. According to the respected British newsweekly, The Economist, Falk noted, Hamas proposed an extension of up to 20 years. “What is so revealing is the Israeli refusal to even acknowledge that this was a diplomatic initiative that would have probably ended any violence.”

I already showed on my blog that Falk is, quite simply, a liar. At that time, I wasn’t aware of any specific Hamas truce offer that he was referring to, so I couldn’t prove that he was lying on that specific point, but this repetition  spurred me to research this supposed truce extension.

I could not find any mention of this in The Economist (although I did find an article that called Falk’s obscene comparison between Israel and Nazi Germany “absurd.”) But I did find some articles about Hamas’ offer of a twenty year truce, and as I thought, it was not an “extension” of the existing six month calm period that Falk claims. It was a fake offer that Hamas had made years ago whose terms were that after Israel withdraws completely from all lands captured in 1967, then Hamas would offer a ten or twenty year truce without recognizing Israel’s existence.

Falk explicitly calls this a “continuation of its July 2008 Egypt-sponsored ceasefire” and he knows very well that it was nothing of the sort. And when Hamas was given the chance to continue the truce, it rejected it.

Falk knows this – and he lies anyway.

Normally, if a moonbat professor wants to lie like this, it is no big deal, because there is no shortage of people with letters after their names willing to lie for their pet political causes. Falk, however, has the gravitas of being a UN representative and as a result his speeches get coverage. And his speeches are consistently oriented towards demonizing Israel for doing things that are often, as we see, fiction.

Falk has no credibility and it is way past time for him to be called to the carpet for his consistent, sickening and verifiable lies.

The problem, of course, is how can an open society cover up so many deaths? How could Israel cover up the funerals and the publicity that would come with all those dead soldiers?

The Islamic Jihad-oriented Palestine Today figured it out!

An intrepid PalToday journalist saw a news story that 13 Israelis have been killed in traffic accidents this month, and many others critically injured. Obviously, these deaths were really soldiers who were killed by the brave mujahadeen, and Israel only pretended that they were killed in traffic accidents in order to boost the morale of their soldiers.

Because we all know that Israeli drivers are incredibly careful and never get into accidents.

This only explains less than half of the supposed IDF losses, so we can be sure that more equally compelling theories will be forthcoming. I mean, if Hamas said they killed so many soldiers, it must be true.