CBNNews.com - JERUSALEM, Israel - IDF (Israel Defense Forces) Major General Yoav Galant, chief of the Southern Command, said few armies could have matched Israel's ratio of terrorists to civilians killed in Operation Cast Lead.

"A feeling of pride washes over me because we have a moral army that adheres to international law," Galant told participants of a conference honoring the IDF's medical corps in the Southern Command.

"Eight hundred terrorists and 300 civilians, whom we did not want to harm, were killed in the last operation," the general said.

"This ratio - almost a quarter [of the individuals who were] uninvolved [in the fighting] - is an achievement unmatched in the history of this kind of combat," he said.

"The combat soldiers were faced with difficult moral dilemmas. Commanders had to find a moral balance at a time when every mistake could have brought about the failure of the mission or the death of civilians," he said.

The general's remarks and the IDF's statistics are in sharp contrast to worldwide criticism against the three-week military operation in the Gaza Strip, aimed at stopping the daily rocket attacks on southern Israeli communities.

Source: The Jerusalem Post