On the new book “Der andere Krieg” by Florian Markl
| Dossier: Israel – DIESES DOSSIER AUF DEUTSCH LESEN – Why I Am a Zionist – Did Israel violate international law in Gaza? – UNRWA: An Arsonist Playing Firefighter – Must We Condemn the Jewish Settlements in the West Bank? – Anti-Semitism in Islam – Anti-Semitism from the Left – Is solidarity with Israel unchristian? – My Statement on October 7 – Why I’m doing this |
War is terrible. When rockets strike, gunfire rings out, and women and children die—we feel compassion for the victims and revulsion toward those responsible. But who is responsible?
The Hamas terrorists who carried out the massacre on October 7, 2023, knew exactly what they were responsible for: They had fired rockets, shot fleeing festivalgoers, burned children alive, raped women, and tortured parents and children to death in front of one another. They had widely circulated video clips of these crimes on social media, thereby triggering utter horror in Israel. How could they possibly have prevented the whole world from despising them?
Terrorists Count on Our Forgetfulness
As masters of mass psychology, the terror marketers calculated: People are forgetful—and prefer to mindlessly follow their initial emotional outbursts. So all they had to do was remove their terror clips as soon as they had served their purpose in Israel and instead flood social media with images that generate hatred toward Israel.
And so, after ten days, the horror clips from October 7, 2023, disappeared from social media.
The Tools of Mass Manipulation: Images, Slogans, Repetition—and Prestige
Instead, the Hamas terrorists now flooded the media with the same motifs over and over again: on one side, Israeli soldiers with their high-tech weapons—on the other, weeping women, bleeding children, and distraught paramedics from Gaza.
The interpretation was provided right along with it: “Genocide!” it hammered home to us, “ethnic cleansing!” “Revenge against the innocent civilian population!”
For those who refused to believe these messages from dubious sources like Al Jazeera, seemingly respectable institutions were brought in: Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, the United Nations, the International Red Cross—didn’t they all say the same thing? ARD, ZDF, Der Spiegel, the BBC, The Guardian: Didn’t they all write in unison that Israel was an occupying power, that the Gaza war was disproportionate, and that Netanyahu was a war criminal wanted under an international arrest warrant? And hadn’t two respected international courts admitted the genocide case against Israel?
The terrorist strategists could have been rubbing their hands with glee: They had succeeded in harnessing prestigious Western institutions to their cause. And the global public was taken in.
To reap this bountiful harvest, the masterminds behind Hamas & Co. had set out long before October 7: Armed with lavish funding from Qatar and Iran, they had cultivated American elite universities as well as climate and human rights organizations—and, as supposedly neutral reporters, the “reputable quality media.” They didn’t have to make any effort regarding the United Nations, where autocratic regimes form the majority: those regimes had long been pursuing an anti-Zionist agenda.
How does one defend oneself against barbarians who care nothing for their own children?
And so, anyone who has retained a shred of sound judgment cannot help but be astonished: Here is the world’s only Jewish state defending itself against an inconceivably brutal horde of murderers who have set out to exterminate all Jews and who have just demonstrated just how horribly serious they are about it. And public opinion is turning not against the murderers, but against their victims.
“Victims?” comes the chirping from the “Tagesschau”-believing valley of the clueless: “Hasn’t Israel itself become the perpetrator through the Gaza War?”
That Israel would defend itself after the hellish Hamas massacre—the terrorist masters of mass manipulation had factored that in. And they had meticulously prepared for it for decades: They had set up the future battlefields in such a way that as many civilians as possible would be killed in the war. Mind you: as many of their own civilians as possible.
To inflict suffering and death on its own population in order to direct the world’s hatred toward Israel—that was the diabolical plan when Hamas relocated its military bases beneath hospitals. When it built its massive tunnel system so it could hide among civilians during the war without offering even a single one of them protection. When it stole food right from under the noses of the impoverished civilian population.
The masters of terror had radicalized their own wives and children to such an extent that they approached Israeli soldiers with white flags to blow themselves up in front of them. The terrorists mined the buildings from which they withdrew, leaving Israeli soldiers with no choice but to blow them up—in part to protect the civilian population. The resulting asphalt wastelands were a perfect excuse to blame Israel.
Useful Idiots of Terror
But how is it that the streets of New York, London, and Berlin were already filling with pro-Hamas hysterics while Hamas’s terror clips were still online and the Israeli counteroffensive hadn’t even begun?
Well, here the propagandists of terror could rely on the support of anti-Israel intellectuals: They had twisted the minds of Western progressives with the fantasy of postcolonialism.
Postcolonialism divides the world into two hostile groups: on one side, the evil colonialists; on the other, the beloved colonized. The colonialist exploiters embody all the evils of this world, while the colonized and exploited are incapable of any wrongdoing.
According to this twisted logic, violent Islamists are also counted among the exploited. The fact that their atrocities cannot be denied is no problem: they are simply blamed on Israel, the meta-colonial state in this postcolonial fairy-tale land.
It works something like this: What, the noble Hamas “resistance fighters” rape women? And so brutally that they break their bones? And they shoot them while doing so? And continue the rape on the corpse? Then the Israelis must be very evil indeed.
This completes the united front against Israel: What the Islamists call the “little Satan” is, for the postcolonialists, the colonial state par excellence. The hatred is the same.
Jews Are Indigenous
Wait a minute: Israel—a colonial state? Haven’t Jews lived for millennia in the land now called Israel?
Of course. They had always maintained their connection to this land. When more and more European Jews immigrated in the 19th and 20th centuries, they did not come as colonial rulers, but as refugees—outcasts from all over the world, those who had fled murderous pogroms, and those left behind in the former Nazi concentration camps even years after the war ended.
Yet today, European Jews do not make up the largest share of Israel’s Jewish population. Rather, it is the descendants of Jewish refugees from Arab countries. And while two million Palestinians live in the comparatively tiny state of Israel today—as citizens with equal rights—only a few thousand Jews remain in the Arab countries.
Two million Arabs in the tiny Jewish state—a few thousand Jews in the vast Arab region with its 22 states. How did that go again: Who is accusing whom of colonialism, ethnic cleansing, and apartheid here?
But such facts play no role in postcolonial ideology. And so it happens that queer people demonstrate for Palestine, even though they would be dragged to their deaths there. There they stand in our streets, shouting their hatred against the only state in the Middle East where queer people can live unmolested.
“The Other War”: Countering the Madness of Israel-Haters with Facts
Florian Markl, research director of the Vienna-based Middle East think tank “Mena-Watch,” counters this blind, rabid hatred with sober facts in his latest book:
- Florian Markl (2025): The Other War. How International Law Is Being Abused Against Israel
He focuses on the question: What is the truth behind the allegations that Israel violated international law with its conduct of the war in Gaza? That it is committing genocide by using hunger as a weapon, indiscriminately killing civilians, using prohibited weapons, and more?
Just how meticulously Markl refutes these allegations, which international laws he cites, and how he substantiates his arguments—that would go too far here. Therefore, I will summarize only a few of his arguments that I consider particularly important, sometimes presenting them in a more pointed manner. A nuanced account and detailed references can be found in Markl’s book.
Allegation No. 1: “Israel is not permitted to defend itself militarily against Hamas because Hamas is not a state.”
Of course, Israel has the right to defend itself against Hamas. Hamas’s terrorist attack on October 7 was deliberate, armed, and severe, and Israel’s response was prompt: that is what matters under international law. The fact that Hamas is not a state is irrelevant.
Allegation No. 2: “Israel intentionally killed a disproportionate number of civilians during the Gaza War.”
Can a country that must defend itself in a densely populated area against a lawless gang of murderers hiding behind their own women and children adhere to international law?
Yes, they can. Israel was in this horrific situation, and it adhered to international law.
Contrary to public opinion, the verdict of most military experts and many specialists in international humanitarian law is this: As required by international law, Israel’s strategy was to attack only military targets and to do everything possible to minimize harm to the civilian population. Of course, not every soldier did the right thing in every situation, as is the case in any war. But as a general rule, the operations were as targeted as was possible under the circumstances.
To protect the civilian population, Israel went beyond what is required by international law. Legal experts specializing in international humanitarian law—and considered exceptionally competent—were involved in military planning. Israeli Army commanders had real-time access to their legal advice before and during their operations.
Israel protected the civilian population in Gaza, among other things, by urging them to leave the endangered area before attacks, whether via leaflets, phone calls, text messages, or radio announcements. Often, the army accepted the risk that terrorists would also learn of a planned attack and be able to flee to safety. When circumstances did not allow for prior warning—for example, during targeted strikes against Hamas commanders—the army took other measures to minimize civilian casualties as much as possible.
The fact that civilians were nevertheless killed was unavoidable, as Hamas, in violation of international law, misused civilians as human shields. However, if one compares the number of civilian casualties to the number of terrorists killed, the ratio is likely approximately 1:1.7. In other words, of the 27 people killed, 10 were terrorists.
Of course, every civilian killed is one too many. We should feel compassion for all the bereaved, regardless of which people they belong to. But that is precisely why it is also important to note: Relatively speaking, the number of civilian casualties in the Gaza War was likely lower than in any other armed conflict ever fought in an urban setting.
Proportionate?
So was Israel’s use of force proportionate?
The use of military force is always terrible. But when we ask about proportionality, what matters under international law?
Under international law, the decisive factor is the relationship between the means employed and the objectives pursued—in this case, the liberation of the hostages and the destruction of Hamas.
These objectives were legitimate. To achieve them, it was of course also lawful to shift the war to where Hamas had entrenched itself behind the civilian population and where it was holding the hostages.
In this situation created by Hamas, Israel has evidently done everything it could to keep the number of civilian casualties as low as possible.
Allegation No. 3: “The high proportion of women and children among the casualties shows that the war was directed against the civilian population.”
According to UN figures, the Gaza War had claimed over 63,000 lives by September 2025. But how credible are these figures—and how many of the dead are women and children?
The UN figures are based on data provided by Hamas. A look back at history shows that their data cannot be trusted: During the war from late 2008 to early 2009, Hamas ordered the population not to disclose any detailed information about those killed, in particular to conceal their affiliation with Hamas. In the end, Hamas claimed that of the 1,300 killed, only 48 were Hamas “fighters.” Later, it was forced to concede that analyses by the Israeli army were correct, showing that the proportion of Hamas terrorists killed was far higher: 709 according to Israel, 600 to 700 according to Hamas.
Hamas also lied during the Israeli military operation in the summer of 2014. At that time, it instructed the population to conceal the status of killed “fighters” and instead always refer to them as “innocent civilians” or “innocent citizens.” During another conflict three years later, Hamas reported 55 civilians killed, but shortly afterward had to correct itself: of the 60 killed, 50 had been Hamas members.
Hamas’s figures regarding the proportion of women and children among the dead are utterly absurd. On some days, this proportion was allegedly as high as 99 percent. To help inflate the numbers, people with male first names were sometimes listed as women. On other days, the proportion of women and children in the total number even exceeded 100 percent.
Comparing different Hamas lists of names reveals hair-raising contradictions: thousands of allegedly identified victims vanish without a trace, and adults are reclassified as children. In May 2024, the UN had to admit that the number of children allegedly killed in Gaza was half what had originally been claimed.
These are just a few of the many inconsistencies that have been proven to stem from Hamas. We hear nothing about this in supposedly reputable media outlets such as CNN, the BBC, or the New York Times. They continue to follow the United Nations, which, undeterred, keeps claiming that Hamas’s figures are reliable. Any subsequent corrections, if they appear at all, show up weeks later on the back pages and go virtually unnoticed.
The Guardian took it a step further: It simply equated the number of Hamas fighters killed whose names were known with the total number of terrorists killed—as if murderers whose names are unknown were not murderers at all. This led it to a civilian casualty rate of 83 percent. Although this calculation is obviously nonsensical, the figure is cited time and again.
The Counter-Calculation
So if the United Nations accepts Hamas’s figures without verification, they cannot be trusted. But let’s assume, for the sake of argument, that the total number of 63,746 deaths by early September 2025 is roughly accurate. Then we must subtract nearly 10,000 deaths that have nothing to do with the war. That is how many people would die even in peacetime, given a total population of about two million. We must also subtract the terrorists killed—according to Israeli figures, already about 20,000 by early 2025, and certainly significantly more by early September. This brings the total number of civilian deaths to less than—and likely far less than—34,000.
From this figure, we must further subtract the deaths directly caused by Hamas and other terrorist groups themselves. This is because many of their rockets did not strike Israel but exploded in Gaza, where they presumably caused hundreds, if not thousands, of deaths.
Allegation No. 4: “Israel has failed to fulfill its responsibility under international law, as an occupying power, to provide for the occupied population.”
Israel was not an occupying power in Gaza. Nevertheless, it provided for the population.
In 2005, Israel evacuated its settlements in Gaza and withdrew its soldiers. Since then, it has clearly not been an occupying power there under international law. The Strip has been governed by Hamas since 2007.
In order to denounce Israel as an alleged occupying power nonetheless, international law was distorted and far-fetched concepts such as “atypical” or “functional” occupation were invented. Israel was accused of establishing no-fly zones and blocking sea and land borders. However, this was necessary to prevent the import of weapons. Moreover, Israel did not even control all land borders, as there is also a border with Egypt. Controlling the borders into its own country is called border control, not occupation.
So even though Israel was not an occupying power in Gaza, it supplied the hostile population with humanitarian aid throughout the entire Gaza War. A brief interruption in the spring of 2025 occurred on the assumption that there was still enough food in Gaza. However, because Hamas withheld this food from the population, Israel soon resumed food deliveries. Hamas was responsible for the supply shortages, as it stole food and forcibly prevented civilians from accepting it.
Allegation No. 5: “Israel used white phosphorus, a banned incendiary weapon that causes horrific burns.”
Even a lighter can cause horrific burns. But you can also use it to light a candle.
What matters is not what a weapon could theoretically do, but how it is used in practice. And Israel did not use white phosphorus as an incendiary weapon, but as an illuminant during nighttime operations and to create smoke screens intended to block visibility. These uses are not prohibited under international law.
Allegation No. 6: “Israel committed genocide in Gaza.”
Genocide charges against Israel are currently pending before two international courts: the International Criminal Court (ICC) and the International Court of Justice (ICJ).
The prosecutors must prove that Israel waged war with the clear intent to “destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial, or religious group as such.” Israel’s intent, however, was clearly entirely different: the return of the hostages and the destruction of the genocidal terrorist group Hamas.
Nevertheless, in order to accuse Israel of intent to commit genocide, South Africa has, before the ICC, taken quotes from Israeli politicians out of context, truncated them in a way that distorts their meaning, and interpreted them misleadingly. Emotional statements made in the immediate aftermath of the Hamas massacre were cited as evidence, even though the politicians had retracted those statements shortly thereafter. It also made no difference whether threats uttered by individual politicians in the heat of the moment were actually carried out by the government or not. Clear statements by the government regarding legitimate war aims were ignored.
Thus, Israel must endure insults from South Africa, a country where rapists go unpunished, refugees are denied medical care, journalists are threatened, and protesters are brutally mistreated by the police.
The plaintiff state, Ireland, is pursuing a different strategy: Knowing that Israel is not committing genocide, it has called on the ICJ to redefine the term “genocide” so that Israel falls under its scope: The Court should broaden “the interpretation of what constitutes genocide committed by a state.”
Civilian Casualties: Intended by Hamas, Avoided by Israel
Amnesty International, too, pays no heed to facts in its genocide allegation. In its 2024 account, it completely ignores the circumstances and motives of the war. Everything that could explain Israel’s actions—from Hamas’s tunnel system to the mining of buildings—is glossed over. Amnesty acts as if Israel were attacking defenseless civilians for no reason, rather than a well-prepared, 30,000-strong murderous gang hiding behind civilians.
In particular, the entire Amnesty report omits the number of terrorists killed. Yet that is what it all comes down to. For that figure would demonstrate the incredible precision with which the Israeli army strikes terrorist targets while avoiding civilian casualties—a precision that has never been achieved in any war even remotely comparable.
The UN Human Rights Council has also presented the common false allegations against Israel as facts. In a September 2025 report, this body—known for its hostility toward Israel—constructed a case of genocide based on the mere fact that people die in war. If one were to follow its line of reasoning, every war of self-defense would be genocide.
Allegation No. 7: “Netanyahu is a war criminal wanted under an international arrest warrant.”
The fact that Israel’s prime minister is currently wanted on an international arrest warrant has nothing to do with any war crimes, but everything to do with a crime that is not alleged against Netanyahu, but against his accuser: rape.
When the ICC’s chief prosecutor, the alleged abuser Karim Asad Ahmad Khan, requested arrest warrants against Netanyahu and then-Defense Minister Gallant, the woman accusing him of serious sexual abuse, including rape, was about to testify against him. Since she, like him, was hostile toward Israel, he had leverage over her: He canceled a long-planned research trip to Israel, hastily cobbled together the arrest warrants against Netanyahu and Gallant without further investigation, and then pressured his victim with the argument that if she were to incriminate him—the prosecutor behind the arrest warrants—with her allegations of abuse, she would also discredit the arrest warrants themselves.
This made an impression on the abused colleague. It was only because he continued to abuse her that she finally broke her silence. Afterward, another woman accused him of repeatedly pressuring her into sexual acts.
And that’s not all: Khan has previously issued an arrest warrant against an individual in a case that cast serious doubt on his integrity; that person then had to be released from prison due to lack of evidence.
So this is the suspect who, in order to divert attention from his own misdeeds, wants to put Israel’s prime minister and its former defense minister behind bars with hastily concocted allegations. And this despite the fact that the ICC has no jurisdiction over the case at all, because Israel is not a state party and Palestine is not a state within the meaning of the Rome Statute.
Absurd allegations from an unreliable source
Khan’s allegations are equally baseless:
- Khan claimed there was a blockade of Rafah at a time when this border crossing was not under Israeli control and was usually open for aid deliveries. And this despite the fact that Israel had repeatedly lobbied Egypt to open this border crossing.
- Khan alleged a water blockade, even though Israel had never been Gaza’s main source of water. Of the three water pipelines to Gaza, Hamas damaged two, but they were soon repaired.
- Khan accused Israel of cutting off electricity supplies, even though it was Hamas that had destroyed nine of the ten power lines running from Israel to Gaza. Since these lines could not initially be repaired due to Hamas’s constant rocket fire, Israel initially supplied fuel for the numerous power generators in Gaza.
- Khan accused Israel of deliberately causing a famine in Gaza, based on UN warnings that had to be retracted shortly thereafter as inaccurate.
- Khan’s allegation of “extermination” was so absurd that it was directly rejected even by the Pre-Trial Chamber of the ICC itself.
So here we have an arrest warrant, issued by a court without jurisdiction, based on obviously false grounds, requested by an alleged abuser who sees international law as a means to divert attention from his own crimes: Who can seriously believe that states are obligated to comply with such an absurd arrest warrant?
How much longer are we going to let ourselves be blinded?
An Arabic proverb circulates among Islamists: “After Saturday comes Sunday.” Meaning: After Jewish Israel, we’ll turn our attention to the Christian West.
It’s time for us in the West to stop letting Israel’s enemies walk all over us. They are our enemies, too.
Why don’t they demand “Free Iran!”?
Today, January 6, 2026, I would like to add: The enemies of Israel are also enemies of the Iranian people. For whose victory are they hoping for: the victory of the people who are now risking their lives in Iran for their freedom? Or the victory of the mullahs, the state-sponsored terrorist supporters of Hamas and Hezbollah?
If Palestine activists are for freedom, as their slogan “Free Palestine” suggests: Why don’t they take to the streets for the freedom of the Iranian people, now that the people in Iran so desperately need our solidarity?
No: It is not Israel’s enemies who stand for freedom, but Israel itself.
Israel is one of us. Its values are our values.
It is not Israel, but its enemies, who trample on international law and seek to destroy everything that is sacred, dear, and precious to us.