How Israel's War Became Unjust

New York Times

3 days ago

Israel's war in Gaza is not a genocide. It is a war for a just cause, the elimination of a cruel, fanatical, itself potentially genocidal terrorist organization that oppresses its own people, holds innocent hostages and will pose a severe danger to the state of Israel so long as it holds power.
The war's heartbreaking civilian toll is inextricably linked to that terrorist government's refusal to obey the laws of war, its unwillingness to surrender no matter how much its own people suffer, its willingness to accept famine rather than give up control of humanitarian aid, its inclination to let cease-fire negotiations spin endlessly in the apparent hope that international pressure will save it from defeat.
But despite all these realities, despite the fundamental responsibility that Hamas bears for all the horrors of the conflict it initiated on Oct. 7, 2023, Israel's warmaking at this moment is unjust.
One can have a righteous cause, one's foe can be wicked and brutal and primarily responsible for the conflict's toll, and still — under any coherent theory of just war — there is an obligation to refrain from certain tactics if they create too much collateral damage, to mitigate certain predictable forms of civilian suffering and to have a strategy that makes the war's outcome worth the cost.
These are tests that Israel is failing. The first one is the hardest to assess, because every protracted war yields inevitable civilian suffering, and an urban war against an entrenched enemy especially will have cruelties that can't be refined away. Such a war cannot be fought exclusively with precision strikes, the soldiers fighting it cannot be prevented from making terrible mistakes, and war crimes are inevitably committed even in righteous conflicts. So there is no way to look at the rubble in Gaza and the death-toll estimates and offer a mathematical proof that Israel is failing to exercise adequate restraint. I just think it's true.
Deaths from famine are a clearer matter, which is why the threat of starvation is leading even some of Israel's strongest supporters to warn its government that something must be changed. Here, Israel has made a strategic choice, trying to separate food distribution from a system that it argues Hamas was exploiting for its own purposes. But if your strategic choice leads to children dying of starvation when the food is available to feed them, then a civilized nation has to make a different choice — even if that makes things easier for its enemies to some degree.
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