Saying that Israel attacked civilian buildings in Gaza “means nothing”, Lt. Col. (res) David Benjamin of the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs told Arutz Sheva on Monday.
Benjamin, who served in the IDF Military Advocate General’s Corps (MAG) as chief legal advisor for the Gaza Strip, was responding to the UN report which claims that Israel committed war crimes during last summer's Operation Protective Edge.
“Everything in Gaza is essentially civilian. There’s no military infrastructure in Gaza which actually looks like a military target. Everything is embedded in civilian buildings,” he explained. “So there’s nothing new when you say that Israel attacked civilian buildings, because what you have to know is the reason for the attack and what Israel knew about what was going on in those civilian buildings.”
He admitted that Israel would have a problem in explaining the reasoning for attacking these specific buildings because their reasons were based on secret intelligence information which “cannot be divulged because the adversary would be able to get hold of it and completely destroy your intelligence capabilities.”
The only solution to look into Israel’s conduct during the Gaza war, said Benjamin, is to conduct an internal investigation, and Israel is already doing that.