On June 12, 2026, I watched an episode of Lazar Focus in which Lazar Berman interviewed Germany’s ambassador to Israel, Steffen Seibert. The interview was thoughtful and, at first, seemed reassuring. Seibert reaffirmed Germany’s commitment to Israel’s security, condemned antisemitism, and acknowledged the horrors of October 7.

Germany has done more than perhaps any other nation to confront the crimes of its history. It has built memorials, funded Holocaust education, paid reparations, and repeatedly acknowledged its responsibility for the murder of six million Jews. German leaders frequently speak of a special obligation to Israel arising from that history.

Yet by the end of the interview, I was left with a disturbing thought. If Germany has worked so hard to confront its antisemitic past, why did its ambassador seem so confident in criticisms of Israel’s conduct of the war when many respected military experts regard the matter as far from settled?

The question has stayed with me ever since.

A number of highly respected military professionals have argued that the Israel Defense Forces took extraordinary measures to reduce civilian casualties in one of the most difficult combat environments in modern military history. These include urban warfare expert John Spencer, retired British commander Richard Kemp, retired U.S. Air Force Lieutenant General David Deptula, former British Army officer Andrew Fox, and members of the High Level Military Group—a body composed of former senior military officers and national security officials from democratic countries.

These experts do not claim that every Israeli action was lawful or that mistakes never occurred. Nor do they deny the terrible suffering experienced by Palestinian civilians. Rather, they argue that Israel faced an extraordinarily difficult battlefield created in large part by Hamas’s strategy of embedding fighters, weapons, command centers, tunnels, and rocket-launching infrastructure within civilian areas. They point to the IDF’s extensive use of warnings, evacuation notices, phone calls, text messages, legal review procedures, and other measures designed to reduce civilian casualties. Some have gone so far as to argue that no military in history has taken comparable precautions on a similar scale.

Reasonable people........

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)