Speaking at the Reichman University conference on Wednesday, IDF Military Advocate General Maj. Gen, Yifat Tomer-Yerushalmi said that the ICC and ICJ had erred in coming after Israel, while pointing out that the outgoing ICJ president herself emphasized in an interview that all rulings to date have been interim, and not final determinations about Israel's conduct of the war.
Tomer-Yerushalmi added multiple explanations of where she believed critics have misused international law against Israel.
She noted that Hamas, not the IDF, should be held responsible for additional Palestinian civilian deaths caused by their using civilians and their homes, and hospitals and mosques, as human shields or protected locations.
IDF efforts to protect civilians
Further, she said that the IDF has continued to warn Palestinian civilians to leave certain areas before attacking.
The IDF chief lawyer cited having made over 15 million calls, sent over 15 million text messages, and having dropped over 10 million flyers to get Gazan civilians to evacuate areas which the IDF plans to attack.
Despite these efforts, she acknowledged that the IDF was not carrying out as many "roof-knocking" or other physical on the ground warnings before attacking, as it had in past conflicts.
Roof-knocking is where the IDF fires a non-explosive missile to bang and make a loud sound on a roof to convince resistant civilians to evacuate, without causing them danger.
Tomer-Yerushalmi said it was not feasible to carry out roof-knocking as much in a war where the goal was eliminating Hamas, which required the element of surprise and using heavier firepower.
Last month, the IDF military advocate general announced that she is probing over 70 cases of alleged criminal wrongdoing by soldiers during the war.
A number of the cases relate to dozens of Palestinians who have died unjustifiably while in Israeli prisons custody.
Still, both last month and on Wednesday she declined to give any timeframe whatsoever for issuing updates regarding the 70 cases.
Although the IDF has issued updates about specific bad incidents, such as the World Central Kitchen incident on March 31, another reason the ICC has indicated that it has moved against Israel is because the war has lasted nine months and the ICC believes Israel is moving much too slowly on its probes.