The months-long investigation into the war by the High Level Military Group (HLMG), made up of retired generals and defense officials from nine countries, concluded that Israel not only abided by the laws of armed conflict, but far surpassed their requirements.

Israel's "knock on the roof" technique, telephone calls and leaflets dropped warning non-combatants to leave the area of impending attacks and missions canceled due to possible civilian casualties represented a far higher level of restraint than other Western armies, the report concluded.

The IDF standard, explained one HLMG author, Richard Kemp (former commander of British forces in Afghanistan), would be "a hindrance to Western military expediency".

The report also concluded that much Western media commentary on the 2014 war included "stark, unwarranted condemnations of the IDF's conduct that do not accord with our own examination".

HLMG blamed the "vast majority of civilian casualties" on Hamas, who "instituted a deliberate policy to cause as many Palestinian civilian deaths as possible in order to wage a PR war against Israel." Such policies, largely ignored by the British media, included the systematic use of human shields "to avert strikes on its military infrastructure embedded in urban Gaza"