TSE’ELIM MILITARY CAMP, Israel – Recently, the world watched as Israeli troops targeted terrorists in the mostly-Arab city of Jenin in northern Israel. 

As in a number of these missions, controversies emerged – such as charges that Israelis killed Palestinian children.

CBN News met with those who must answer such charges at a special base that trains troops to fight, both fiercely and morally.

As we saw after 9/11, military combat has moved from open battlefields to mainly urban settings: cities, villages and buildings.

For a better understanding, we met with Israel’s Government Press Office Foreign Press Director Ron Paz and a top Israeli general at the Tse’elim base camp near the Gaza Strip.

Here, the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) built an urban setting many blocks wide and long. It mimics the real locales where they’re fighting their main foes in the current era: terrorists and guerilla fighters.

Paz told us, “It’s all about urban warfare at the end of the day. There are no more divisions of tanks, one against another, or air forces or ships.” 

At one point we walked through an entire simulated Arab city where soldiers can practice. It had everything from minarets to high-rise buildings. 

There’s even graffiti of guerilla fighters sketched on many buildings, as if you were in a city where real terrorists live.

“The guerrilla is hiding behind human shields, in places just like that,” Paz explained as he pointed to a building with artwork of a hooded terrorist throwing a grenade. “And the challenge: how do you separate between militants who are dressed up as civilians and innocent people who, God forbid, we should want any of them harmed? This is exactly the facility that’s supposed to have you trained for that assignment.”

Paz insists the troops fighting in Jenin recently were so well-trained, they absolutely caused no collateral damage and killed no civilians. “It was, for sure, the first large-scale operation that ended up with zero civilian casulties,” he noted. “And this is remarkable. It’s unprecedented.”

General Bentzi Gruber, vice commander of IDF Armored Division 252, explained, “Jenin is a great evidence of what we’re trying to do.”

He added, “We are trying to kill the enemy without hurting anyone else.”

Still, Israel’s military faced international criticism and media scrutiny over charges of child-killing in Jenin.

Paz pointed out those supposed children killed were 3 gun-toting young terrorists in their late teens.

“If a 17-year-old shoots at you, he’s a terrorist or he’s a gunman or he’s a militant – or you want to call him ‘freedom fighter,’ go ahead.  Nevertheless, if he’s not killed, he will kill. So what do you call a 17-year-old who shoots to kill?”

Watching and hearing about the training of IDF soldiers, including his own son, Paz has seen how they learn to soberly consider the power of life and death that’s in their hands.

He said, “Their training has involved very serious and thorough lecturing about ethics and about when you can and cannot open fire.”

Some of that was recently shared with a group of international media at Tse’elim. First on the agenda was a lecture by and IDF general on what the Israeli soldiers are taught about ethics.

Gruber said some Israeli soldiers have actually gone to jail for abuses of force, while on the other side, the terrorists are celebrated for their killings and their families even paid for them.

Next, the media toured places on base which give specialists like snipers maximum practice with absolutely no danger.

We’re used to the idea that pilots have flight simulators, but at Tse’elim, they have combat simulators.

Extremely hi-tech binoculars and advanced weapons allow troops to hit simulated urban targets precisely – surgically – so there’s little collateral damage.

Then, General Gruber led us to an adventure underground: hiking through an elaborate replica of a Hamas terrorist tunnel.

We followed the general inside that tunnel, where it was easy to imagine being under fire from terrorists. That’s why Israeli soldiers are trained there.

The military told of an actual case where terrorists had kidnapped Israeli soldiers and took them into such a tunnel. Other soldiers had to follow them in and fight.

It was unsettling, imagining bullets flying around in extremely tight quarters with concrete walls pressing in on you and ricocheting bullets everywhere.

Still, the training goes on in the Tse’elim camp so the I.D.F. can strike back fiercely against its foes, but with a moral edge.

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