 Hello friends, Twitter subscribers and anybody else who watches my videos on the internet. My name is Daniel Rosal, I am a Jewish Israeli who moved to Israel from Ireland in 2015 and today I'm going to tackle I think one of the most difficult questions that's possible to ask about this conflict. What do people in the pro-Israel camp think about the spiralling death toll from the conflict in Gaza? If you really want to hear my perspective, please just take a minute to get through this part because it's going to turn a lot of people off, I can predict. But this has to be said. The death toll being reported from the Palestinian side is coming from a Hamas body, the Palestinian Ministry of Health in Gaza. Hamas for people who don't know is committed to the complete destruction and annihilation of the Jewish people in Israel. Hamas isn't in favor of a two-state solution, Hamas is in favor of a very specific version of a one-state solution which involves absolutely no Jews living in this part of the world. I'm not suggesting for a single moment that the death toll isn't big and that there aren't a large number of innocent Palestinians being killed in this conflict. However, I'm saying that if you consider the death toll, it's important to remember its source that is coming from Hamas. Why does this matter? Because in the Hamas worldview there isn't any meaningful difference between a competent member of one of the Palestinian militant brigades like Hamas's Al-Qasam brigade or an ordinary Ghazan. All Palestinians, all Ghazans in the Hamas worldview are Mujahideen, fighters, Jihadis in the struggle to eliminate Israel and therefore when they offer these numbers and reports, they're not tabulated based on that basis. If you take a large collective of people like most countries and with almost 10 million people Israel is certainly a fairly big country, you're going to get a wide variety of opinions. For sure there are some Israelis I think a very small minority who are happy to see Palestinian children dead but the vast vast majority of Israelis and me as well are very very unhappy and sad to see this lamentable loss of life. Unfortunately, Israel has been forced to conduct a war and people seem to be forgetting that war isn't pretty. It's also very important to understand the concept of proportionality in international humanitarian law to get some kind of idea of whether the amount of people being killed in the Gaza Strip is necessary and what's called proportionate. For those looking for an introduction to the concept the doctrine of proportionality in international humanitarian law or IHL, I recommend the videos of Natasha Hostdorf being posted by UKFLI. UKFLI is UK Lawyers for Israel. It is a partisan organization as the name suggests, but Natasha does a deep dive into proportionality as an international lawyer. It's a one hour video and she also interviews a former US Armed Forces commander who explains more about how that actually plays out on the battlefield. Proportionality is currently being misstated including by many world governments as simply being a body count. If 1400 Israelis were killed on October 7th then that means Israel has a right to kill 500, 600, 700, even people who seem to take that logic don't have exactly an answer as to what would be considered acceptable. But even looking at proportionality according to its real definition it's immensely nebulous. It's based not on a body count but on a strike by strike basis and is asked to consider whether this amazing reasonable military commander would consider the potential civilian death toll anticipated in a strike as reasonable given the circumstances and the potential military gain that would be gotten from achieving that strike. Unfortunately the word reasonable in various parts of this definition really leaves a lot of grey space for discussion. But that's why I think that a lot of countries who are prejudging Israel very harshly saying that it's being grossly disproportionate without having the first hand information from the front lines are being a little bit ridiculous. As somebody who hasn't participated in this battle in Gaza, sitting here in Jerusalem I don't have first hand insight into what the calculus looked like for every single one of those decisions. So for me to say that Israel is either being completely proportional or completely un-proportional I think is totally unrealistic. There is however plenty of evidence that Israel is doing a lot to attempt to minimize civilian life in the Gaza Strip. Why are women and children dying if Israel is doing all these things? I invite anybody to look at the Gaza Strip on Google Maps, look at the scale and see how small the place is. Then look at the population density and you'll quickly see that Gaza is one of the most densely populated places on the planet. Consider as well that Hamas has essentially turned the entire Gaza Strip into terrorist infrastructure with a massive underground network that is larger than some underground metro systems solely dedicated to moving fighters about and transporting rockets to be targeted at Israeli civilians. Finally, consider the fact that Hamas has been recorded on satellite imagery footage to be actually stopping civilians attempting to use the evacuation routes that the IDF has set up, as well as a fact that Hamas has repeatedly dressed in civilian clothing thereby endangering proximate civilians and even engaged in human shields using innocent Palestinian civilians as protection to attempt to get advantage in the military conflict. Hamas has even gone so far as to make military use of many of the largest hospitals in the Gaza Strip, including the Shifa Hospital, where it was positioning terrorists in the intensive care units the ICUs as decoy doctors and nurses and using decoy ambulances to avoid Israeli strikes. Under this climate, it becomes a little bit easier to understand why unfortunately civilians are dying in this conflict with Israel. I find it interesting that apparently no other armed force is being held to the absolutely impossible standard Israel is being held to by the international community in which it's being asked to adhere in real time and without other people knowing the details to some impossible imagined definition of proportionality that seems to constantly change but always work against Israel. Let me conclude with the question that I have for all these countries who are criticizing Israel from thousands of kilometers away without any insight into what's happening on the front lines of this battle. If you agree with me that Israel has a right to destroy the Hamas terrorist organization then what do you think that Israel should be doing differently? If you say that we should have a permanent ceasefire why do you think it's fair that ordinary Israelis like me should be asked to live indefinitely next to a terrorist organization bent on our destruction? If you agree that Israel has a military, legitimate military objective to pursue in the Gaza Strip then when you talk about proportionality and reasonableness what exactly is the yardstick you'd like us to be measured against because it seems to be very unclear as to what you consider proportionality. One facet of this conflict that I've criticized on many occasions is that people on either side of it the pro-Israel camp and the pro-Palestine camp seem to be pulled to the extremes and to subscribe to this belief that you have to be 100% for that side in order to be considered legitimately pro-Israel or pro-Palestinian. I think that's nonsense and makes a very muddy situation even more unclear because it just polarizes and forces people to maintain on tenuous arguments. I consider myself broadly pro-Israel I support 100% Israel's military action in the Gaza Strip however I'm a little bit uneasy about the number of casualties. At the same time I understand that I don't have firsthand information from the front lines and asking this very very impossible question to answer whether Israel is doing enough in order to avoid civilian casualties or whether it could be doing more. That's what I feel about it it's a very sad situation it's also very complicated and it's very difficult for the vast majority people without insight to actually make reasonable conclusions. Thanks for watching and if you want to get more videos from me on YouTube follow me as Daniel Rossell or on Twitter I'm tweeting from DanielXRossell