Nine Months of Genocide: My Analysis of the Gaza Strip and the Principles of a Just War

As I reflected on some relevant aspects of just war thinking that I mentioned in my recent Pearls and Irritations post on “Why Israel’s War Violates Just War Principles,” I decided that it would be worthwhile to explore some of these questions further, and also to address some important ones that I did not discuss at the time. I do this partly in response to comments I have since received from a number of people on my earlier presentation.

In my previous PI In my post, I said that Israeli leaders invoked the right of self-defense to defend their invasion, which addresses only one of the conditions that just war theory requires to justify the use of war, and ignores several others. The one they invoked was just cause, which is part of jus ad bellum (or, as I will call it more succinctly, JAB), and the other important conditions of JAB that were ignored were the requirements of last resort, reasonable prospect of success, right intention, and proportionality. They must of course also satisfy the conditions of jus in bello (or JIB) regarding permissible conduct during war, in particular the principle of non-discrimination (or distinction, as it is called in international law), which requires immunity for non-combatants. I have spent most of my essay criticizing Israel’s conduct of the war and its defense in this regard, focusing on the background and reality of the way in which its attacks in Gaza have deliberately or recklessly caused an extraordinary amount of death, injury, and deprivation among Gaza’s civilian population. With regard to this “extraordinary amount,” it is worth revisiting the comparison between Israel’s civilian bombings and the Allied city bombings of Germany in World War II, which I discussed in my earlier article, to show that the Israeli leaders who used this comparison to defend their actions were inadvertently invoking war crimes, not legitimate attacks. I will return to this issue below.

However, I would like to begin by noting not only the disregard of these conditions of the JAB, but also what their observance would have said about Israel’s right to launch a war of this magnitude. We must consider these conditions precisely because a “just cause” is an essential but only weak justification for war, since the other conditions must also be met. Only then the last resort. This condition requires that all reasonable alternatives to war in response to a grave injustice must be carefully considered before resorting to military action can be morally justified. This is directly related to another condition of the JAB that I mentioned in my earlier essay, namely the proportionality of the proposed military attack. The last resort would require the consideration of many other options besides war, and even if a military response were required to realistically achieve greater security against terrorist attacks such as those on October 7, the proportionality criterion of the JAB is relevant and would certainly have militated against such a massive and devastating response as occurred. Other options that should have been considered would include defensive measures such as better Israeli security at the borders, but also addressing legitimate Palestinian grievances that encourage Hamas violence. Such alternatives include expelling the settlers in the West Bank, ending draconian measures in the occupied territories and thereby creating more peaceful conditions for ordinary Gazans. Another option that has been suggested to me could be to consider strong legal measures against at least the leaders of the October 7 perpetrators, although the difficulties of identifying and arresting them with minimal violence pose problems.

As for the condition of a reasonable prospect of success, the repeatedly claimed aim of the invasion, to eliminate Hamas or, what seems to amount to the same thing, its military and political power altogether, is obviously contrary to that prospect, since the condition of proportionality excludes the massive slaughter that the current plan envisages. In any case, any assessment of “success” must take into account not only the prospect of eliminating all Hamas militants, but also the general impact on Israel’s reputation and the prospects of creating new Hamas volunteers and other militants, as well as the risks of drawing other states such as Lebanon into the military chaos. As a result, the “required” devastating slaughter of huge numbers of Palestinian civilians and the impact on their livelihoods have all but isolated Israel in the eyes of the world, far beyond the naive expectations of the crude ideologues currently ruling the country.

Aside from the immorality of this violence, the main reason for the killing, homelessness, disruption of food supplies and destruction of key institutional and social structures is clearly the long-term devastation of the living conditions of the people of Gaza. This violates the JAB requirement of good faith and also gives rise to a plausible accusation of genocide, the legal aspects of which are currently being seriously considered by the International Court of Justice.

In my earlier essay, I pointed out the irony of Israeli leaders defending themselves by drawing an analogy between their urban bombings and the Allied bombings of German cities in World War II, since much of that bombing was an obvious violation of the JIB principle of non-discrimination, which was designed to protect civilian immunity from attack. In terms of relative disproportionality, it is worth noting the further grim irony that the highly controversial British bombing of Dresden, from which, as I mentioned, even Churchill subsequently distanced himself, dropped 3,900 tons of bombs, while the current Israeli onslaught has dropped over 70,000 tons of bombs since it began responding to Hamas attacks on October 7 through April 24, and continues to rise. It has actually been estimated that the mass bombings of Dresden, Hamburg and London (the latter by the Germans, of course) totalled “only” 30,700 tons. (Estimates by the Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor, quoted by Muhammed Enes Calli in AA magazine.)

One correspondent noted that I had not taken into account the Israeli defense of its bombing, which says that the “regrettable” bombing of civilian targets is necessary because legitimate Hamas targets are hidden in areas or facilities where many civilians are present. Amid the war propaganda that both Hamas and Israel are spreading around the war, it is difficult to verify this claim, but even if it is true that Hamas targets are hidden behind the extraordinary number of homes, hospitals, universities, refugee camps and other facilities bombed by the Israeli army, the cost to civilian lives in terms of deaths, injuries, homelessness and lack of basic vital resources now and in many cases well into the future is completely disproportionate.

A correspondent recently suggested that I had ignored the mitigating circumstances, namely that the Israel Defense Forces had warned Palestinian civilians to leave the country in the face of attacks on their homes and key institutions. Such warnings can morally justify an attack in certain contexts, but there are aspects of the attacks on Gaza that go well beyond such contexts. First of all, it is questionable how often such warnings were issued, but let’s leave that aside for now. An important feature of the Israeli invasion is that they told Palestinians to leave their homes in one part of Gaza for another, safer part, and then later attacked that other part. One of the most recent distortions of this kind was the initial designation of Rafah as a “safe zone” to which the displaced could flee, but which was later accompanied by a full-scale attack. Most recently, it was reported that Israeli forces bombed a refugee area in Al-Mawasi, a coastal region west of Rafah that Israel had previously designated as a safe zone for Palestinians. Israeli authorities immediately denied this. However, in light of similar attacks, for example on aid organizations such as Doctors Without Borders, such denials should be viewed with a certain degree of skepticism.

Finally, I have been accused of falsely remaining silent on Hamas’s past atrocities against Israel, even though I condemned its October 7 attacks as terrorist. There have certainly been such attacks on Israeli civilians in the past, but if I were to speak about them, I would also have to discuss Israel’s past military misdeeds and the terrorist activities of its illegal settlers in the West Bank. This would require an exploration of the history of the establishment of a Jewish state in Palestine and its aftermath, which I will politely refrain from going into, as others are much better qualified to do so and have done so.