Lord Roberts of Belgravia
Main Page: Lord Roberts of Belgravia (Conservative - Life peer)Department Debates - View all Lord Roberts of Belgravia's debates with the Cabinet Office
Gaza: Humanitarian Situation
Lord Roberts of Belgravia Excerpts(10 months, 2 weeks ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Watch Debate Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Lord Roberts of Belgravia (Con)
My Lords, even if we were to take as accurate Hamas’s statistics and the 27,500 figure—there is no reason why we should; we do not do that with Putin or ISIS—if one subtracts the number of Gazans who have been killed by the quarter or so of the Islamic Jihad and Hamas rockets that fall short, one is left with a less than 2:1 ratio of civilians to Hamas terrorists killed, of whom there have been more than 9,000 so far. War is hell, and every individual civilian death is a tragedy, but—I speak as a military historian—less than 2:1 is an astonishingly low ratio for modern urban warfare where the terrorists routinely use civilians as human shields. It is a testament to the professionalism, ethics and values of the Israel Defense Forces.