During Israel’s war with Hamas in 2014, the IDF was widely accused—including by the U.S. State Department—of showing flagrant disregard for civilian casualties. Evelyn Gordon refutes this libel by a comparison with the recent U.S.-led battle to evict Islamic State (IS) from Raqqa:

[The estimated] 3,000 casualties in Raqqa represented 1 percent of the city’s pre-IS population and a whopping 12 percent of its population as of early September. The casualties in Gaza, by contrast, represented about 0.12 percent of that territory’s population. Thus, as a proportion of the population, casualties in Raqqa were somewhere between ten and 100 times higher than those in Gaza, and almost certainly much closer to the higher figure. That is an astronomical difference.

Moreover, the real difference is probably even greater, due to the second critical factor: the effect of Raqqa’s more extensive property damage. . . . [O]n top of the 3,000 people known to have been killed in Raqqa, “many others are missing.” And many of the missing probably died and were buried under the rubble. . . .

In Gaza, . . . because the property damage was much less extensive, all the dead were located quickly and a total could be announced almost immediately. Final casualty totals in Gaza are being compared with very partial and preliminary counts in places like Raqqa and Mosul, making the Gaza conflict look bloodier by comparison than it really was.

IS and Hamas employ virtually identical tactics, which is why comparing Gaza with Raqqa . . . makes sense. Both dig extensive tunnel networks under civilian buildings, wire civilian buildings with explosives, stockpile arms in civilian buildings, and fight from the midst of a civilian population. These tactics greatly increase both property damage and civilian casualties, whether in Gaza, Syria, or Iraq.

Yet despite the enemy’s similar tactics, Israel produced vastly lower casualties as a proportion of Gaza’s population and much less property damage as a proportion of Gaza’s property than the Western coalition against IS did in Syria and Iraq. In other words, the very Western countries that accused Israel of “disproportionate” and “excessive” harm in Gaza were guilty of far greater harm in Syria and Iraq.

In the past few days, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), the al-Qaeda offshoot that led the overthrow of Bashar al-Assad, has consolidated its rule in the core parts of Syria. Its leader, Abu Mohammad al-Jolani, has made a series of public statements, sat for a CNN interview, and discarded his nomme de guerre for his birth name, Ahmad al-Shara—trying to present an image of moderation. But to what extent is this simply a ruse? And what sort of relationship does he envision with Israel?

In an interview with John Haltiwanger, Aaron Zelin gives an overview of Shara’s career, explains why HTS and Islamic State are deeply hostile to each other, and tries to answer these questions:

As we know, Hamas has had a base in Damascus going back years. The question is: would HTS provide an office for Hamas there, especially as it’s now been beaten up in Gaza and been discredited in many ways, with rumors about its office leaving Doha? That’s one of the bigger questions, especially since, pre-October 7, 2023, HTS would support any Hamas rocket attacks across the border. And then HTS cheered on the October 7 attacks and eulogized [the Hamas leaders] Ismail Haniyeh and Yahya Sinwar when they were killed. They’re very pro-Palestinian.

Nonetheless, Zelin believes HTS’s split with al-Qaeda is substantive, even if “we need to be cognizant that they also aren’t these liberal democrats.”

If so, how should Western powers consider their relations with the new Syrian government? Kyle Orton, who likewise thinks the changes to HTS are “not solely a public-relations gambit,” considers whether the UK should take HTS off its list of terrorist groups:

The better approach for now is probably to keep HTS on the proscribed list and engage the group covertly through the intelligence services. That way, the UK can reach a clearer picture of what is being dealt with and test how amenable the group is to following through on promises relating to security and human rights. Israel is known to be following this course, and so, it seems, is the U.S. In this scenario, HTS would receive the political benefit of overt contact as the endpoint of engagement, not the start.