Charlie Kirk believed the claim that Israel “targets civilians” isn’t just wrong — it is a lie born of anti-Israel propaganda. In his view, no other army in history has shown more restraint, more moral discipline, or more compassion toward enemy civilians than the Israel Defense Forces.
Israel Warns Before It Strikes
Israel takes extraordinary measures to avoid killing civilians. They call residents, drop leaflets, and even send “roof knock” warnings before striking Hamas targets. “Roof knocking” is when Israel fires a non-lethal warning bomb on a building to alert civilians to evacuate before striking the actual target with live ammunition.
“Israel is so ‘bad’ that they tell people to leave before they bomb them,” Charlie told an attendee on his Live Free Tour. “Hamas comes on a holy day into kibbutzes and cuts women’s heads off at concerts.”
Charlie was bothered by the obvious double standard: the world condemns Israel for defending itself, but ignores how it does so.
“The IDF, when they do something right, they get no credit,” he said during a debate at the Oxford Union. “When they do life-saving surgeries onf a Gazan child, they get no credit. When they drop leaflets, they get no credit. But when they happen to bomb a place where [Hamas is] operating their military from—which we now know from third-party verified sources, hundreds of Hamas military operations are in mosques, schools, and hospitals—I’m sorry. The country that was living in relative peace on October 6, then all of a sudden we had a war. And Hamas started the war.”
On The American Comeback Tour, when a student claimed the IDF targets Gazan civilians, Charlie corrected him: “They drop leaflets before they bomb. They do medical emergency surgeries for people of Gaza every single day all throughout Israel. They are saving people’s lives in Gazaof Gaza every day.”
Israel’s Humanity in the Midst of War
During Israel’s 12-day war against Iran in June 2025, the precision of Israeli strikes shocked even Charlie. On his show, he highlighted an example of Israel’s attempts to protect civilians: a missile fired by the IDF into a high-rise residential building in Tehran, hitting only the apartment of the target and leaving the others intact. He shared a photo showing a hole in the side of the building, which otherwise remained untouched.
“The stereotype and the prejudice against Israel is that, ‘Oh, they take down residential buildings just for fun and to go after civilians,’” he said. “I think that picture is a very important picture that I hope is included in the international narrative — that Israel actually decided not to take down that entire residential building. Israel very well could have collapsed the entire building and they could have said, ‘Hey, you know, these are command and control centers. What’s the big deal?’ That picture shows that the apartments above and below are kind of untouched.”
Civilians Die When They’re Used as Shields
To Charlie, the tragedy of civilian deaths was not evidence of Israeli aggression — it was proof of Hamas’s evil. Hamas embeds itself in civilian areas precisely to maximize casualties and create global outrage.
“They build their headquarters under hospitals. It’s a fact,” Charlie said. “They use the entire population of women and children in Gaza as a massive 2.5 million-person human shield. That’s sick. There are no good solutions here… It’s all crummy. It’s all hell. And they invited hell.”
He made it clear that Hamas intentionally brought war upon its own people.
“A tragic truth of war is that civilians die. I don’t like it and you don’t like it. And they brought it upon themselves. The only operation and entity to blame is the leadership of Hamas, not the Israeli government for fighting this defensive war after they were invaded.”
When college students would criticize Israel’s response to October 7th, Charlie would often ask them what Israel should have done. Time and again, they couldn’t offer a practical solution. Some even suggested that Israel surrender and live under Islamic rule.
War Is Ugly — But Necessary
Charlie believed moral clarity doesn’t mean naivety. War is ugly, and civilian deaths are tragic — but sometimes necessary when the alternative is annihilation.
“You’re right. There are kids that are going to die,” he told a student on the Live Free Tour. “That pains me. The heaviness should be on you. But the answer is you just kind of roll over and allow people to come into your country, into kibbutzes, into concerts, mowing down people, and say, ‘catch you next time’?”
He also compared Israel’s war against Hamas to America’s fight against Nazi Germany.
“Something that we like to gloss over as Westerners is we get to live in a very peaceful society, relatively. And we don’t realize that sometimes you need a Dresden. And that’s a really hard thing to swallow. But guess what? What we did in World War II to defeat the Nazis was 100% morally defensible. And there were people that also died. Israel has a right to defend themselves, and they’re going to retaliate. And Hamas — they brought this upon themselves.”
Moral Clarity Over Media Spin
Charlie’s position was simple: civilians dying in war is tragic — but Israel doesn’t target civilians. Hamas does. Israel fights to survive. Hamas fights to kill Jews.
“I can’t see a single instance of Israel going out of its way to kill civilians,” he said.
In Charlie’s eyes, this wasn’t a war of equals. It was a war between civilization and barbarism — between a nation that drops leaflets before striking and a terror group that livestreams beheadings. And when forced to choose, Charlie knew exactly where he stood.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wYX0IstPd9s
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ETN3d1YuJRA
