Smoke rises above Gaza after the fighting. (Abed Rahim Khatib/Flash90)

A British reporter covering the conflict was astounded by the efforts the IDF takes to protect Palestinian civilians from harm.

A correspondent for the UK’s Telegraph newspaper who was in Israel and Gaza to report on the conflict could not believe what he saw and heard: the IDF going to extraordinary lengths just to avoid collateral damage in the strikes it was forced to take after terror groups in Gaza launched 460 rockets at Israel this week.

The reporter, Raf Sanchez, tweeted, “We’ve just come out of Gaza for a quick trip to see how things are after this week’s fighting. A couple of observations.”

“We got a sense of how careful Israel was to avoid civilian casualties during the airstrikes in Gaza,” he explained.

“The Israeli army called one guy we met and spent 45 mins on the phone with him, getting him to evacuate his neighbors before they blew up a Hamas media building next to his,” reported Sanchez.

Sanchez was referring to the IDF policy of warning Palestinian civilians prior to strikes, which it does in order to prevent innocent civilians from being injured or killed when action must be taken against the terror group that rules the Gaza Strip, Hamas, or other factions there, such as Islamic Jihad.

Unfortunately, Sanchez also reported that Hamas was touting its rocket attacks on Israel as a major win, doing TV interviews in front of Gaza sites destroyed by Israeli retaliatory strikes to brag about Hamas’ “military victory.”

In the wake of the attacks, and the Israeli government’s reaction to these attacks, Defense Minister Avigdor Liberman stepped down from his post, a move for which Hamas took credit.