{"id":9581,"date":"2023-10-18T10:21:02","date_gmt":"2023-10-18T10:21:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/kohelet.org.il\/article\/the-siege-of-hamas-is-no-war-crime\/"},"modified":"2024-06-24T08:12:43","modified_gmt":"2024-06-24T08:12:43","slug":"the-siege-of-hamas-is-no-war-crime","status":"publish","type":"article","link":"https:\/\/www.kohelet.org.il\/en\/article\/the-siege-of-hamas-is-no-war-crime\/","title":{"rendered":"The Siege of Hamas Is No War Crime"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Israel\u2019s critics level false war-crimes charges to\u00a0keep\u00a0the Jewish state from\u00a0defending itself<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Most victims of the Oct. 7 massacre in Israel weren\u2019t yet buried when some prominent international voices\u2014including U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders, the nonprofit Human Rights Watch, and Josep Borell, the European Union\u2019s top diplomat\u2014suggested that Israel\u2019s first efforts to defend itself are war crimes. This raises an important question: Does international law require a nation to choose between committing war crimes and having war crimes committed against it?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The answer is no. One of the great tragedies of war is that civilians often become victims. That is why countries like Israel resort to war only as self-defense, which, according to the United Nations Charter, is every nation\u2019s inherent right. But if even unintentional harm to civilians constitutes illegal \u201ccollective punishment,\u201d as Rep.\u00a0Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez\u00a0has called Israel\u2019s operations in Gaza, even defensive war is effectively precluded.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The law of war prohibits directly targeting civilians. Israel has made clear that its objectives are only military. \u201cThe IDF will destroy Hamas,\u201d Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said Thursday, \u201cand we will hunt down every last man with the blood of our children on his hands.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But military targets can be attacked even when doing so may result in the loss of civilian life. International humanitarian law requires that civilian casualties from a particular action be balanced against \u201canticipated military advantage,\u201d a rule known as proportionality. In practice, as this rule is understood by Western countries, even significant civilian casualties don\u2019t necessarily make strikes on legitimate targets illegal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Hamas has violated international law by hiding among civilians. But international law doesn\u2019t reward the use of human shields. Instead, it makes clear that \u201cthe presence of civilians within or near military objectives does not render such objectives immune from attack.\u201d Israel\u2019s critics want it to fight in a way that would have made it impossible for democracies to wage war in every conflict from World War II to the U.S.-led campaign against ISIS, which killed about 10,000 civilians by some estimates.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A legal analysis of Israel\u2019s response must take into account the barbarity and scale of Hamas\u2019s attack. Israel now knows that Hamas\u2019s goal is the annihilation of the Jewish people and the Jewish state. Defeating Hamas isn\u2019t simply a tactical military goal but an existential national one\u2014a military objective of the highest order. There is no basis on which to bar Israel ex ante from a generally lawful means of warfare such as siege, or maneuver in urban areas.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Israel\u2019s critics will denounce any significant measure the country deploys as a war crime. Israel has laid siege to Gaza, prompting the usual array of EU-funded organizations to accuse it of starving civilians and violating the law of war. But siege is a \u201clegitimate\u201d and ordinary part of lawful war, in the words of the U.S. Defense Department law-of-war manual. As West Point law professor\u00a0Sean Watts\u00a0put it in 2022, \u201cSiege\u2014or encirclement as military doctrine refers to it\u2014is an essential aspect of modern military operations. .\u00a0.\u00a0. Only starvation directed specifically at civilians is prohibited.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This should be obvious: An army need not help its enemy obtain provisions during a conflict. When military objectives and civilians are intermingled, siege aimed at the former also will affect the latter. As with other situations of collateral damage to civilians, international law permits a siege as long as it isn\u2019t \u201cfor the purpose of denying sustenance to the civilian population.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There is no indication that Israel has any strategy of starving out civilians. Nor could it. Gaza has a long border with Egypt, which has long been used by Hamas to smuggle supplies. The evacuation of civilians is a standard measure to avoid humanitarian crises. Israel has moved tens of thousands of its own citizens away from the area along the Gaza border. Hamas, by contrast, has ordered its civilians to stay put, presumably to increase the tally of civilian deaths for propaganda purposes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Egypt is cruelly denying entry to those fleeing the war zone. Israel\u2019s critics clearly aren\u2019t interested in saving civilian lives, because they aren\u2019t offering to take in Gaza\u2019s civilians. Nobody says refugees from Iraq, Syria and Afghanistan should be trapped in conflict zones. European countries consider it a virtue to accept them as refugees. But to Hamas\u2019s human shields, the world says: \u201cDon\u2019t go anywhere, we want you right where you are.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It is unclear whether such voices are merely naive or wish to leave Israel perpetually exposed to genocide. What is clear is that if these voices prevail, the commitment of modern international law will have changed from \u201cNever again\u201d to \u201cWhenever they want.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

First published in the Wall Street Journal<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Israel\u2019s critics level false war-crimes charges to\u00a0keep\u00a0the Jewish state from\u00a0defending itself Most victims of the Oct. 7 massacre in Israel weren\u2019t yet buried when some prominent international voices\u2014including U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders, the nonprofit Human Rights Watch, and Josep Borell, the European Union\u2019s top diplomat\u2014suggested that Israel\u2019s first efforts to defend itself are war crimes. This raises […]","protected":false},"featured_media":4683,"template":"","article-category":[525],"custom-tags":[539,694,41,538,710],"ppma_author":[60],"class_list":["post-9581","article","type-article","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","article-category-publications","custom-tags-gaza","custom-tags-hamas","custom-tags-international-law","custom-tags-israeli-palestinian-conflict","custom-tags-war"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nThe Siege of Hamas Is No War Crime - kohelet<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.kohelet.org.il\/en\/article\/the-siege-of-hamas-is-no-war-crime\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The Siege of Hamas Is No War Crime - kohelet\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Israel\u2019s critics level false war-crimes charges to\u00a0keep\u00a0the Jewish state from\u00a0defending itself Most victims of the Oct. 7 massacre in Israel weren\u2019t yet buried when some prominent international voices\u2014including U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders, the nonprofit Human Rights Watch, and Josep Borell, the European Union\u2019s top diplomat\u2014suggested that Israel\u2019s first efforts to defend itself are war crimes. 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